Martyrdom in Missouri, Volume 1 (of 2)

by W. M. Leftwich

SUPPLEMENT.

The following able argument in the Louisiana Church property case, before the Supreme Court of the State, made by Smith S. Allen, Esq., of Hannibal, Mo., counsel for plaintiffs in error, is not only a part of the history of the case, but too valuable and vital to the great questions at issue to be lost. It may very properly supplement this chapter, as its merits demand a more permanent form than the newspaper columns. It will be perused with interest, especially by the legal profession, and will not be without interest and profit to the general reader.

Edwin Draper and others, }

ex parte petitioners and }

defendants in error. } Error from the Louisiana

} Court of Common Pleas.

Sam’l O. Minor and others, }

plaintiffs in error. }

If the Court please: The extraordinary conduct of part of the ex parte petitioners and defendants in error in this case is perhaps sufficiently disclosed in the written statement of facts filed by plaintiffs, which I have already drawn up and placed on the files of the Court. This part of my subject I will, however, with the indulgence of the Court, consider more fully hereafter.

This case, on the face of the ex parte petition, appears to be an application by seven of the trustees of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, at Louisiana, Missouri, made to the Louisiana Court of Common Pleas, to have two pretended vacancies in that Board of Trustees filled by appointment of that Court. These seven ex parte petitioners on the face of the petition are Edwin Draper, John S. Markley, John W. Allen, Samuel O. Minor, John Shurmur, Joseph Charleville and Ivy Zumwalt.

But in fact this is not the application of three of the pretended petitioners, to-wit, Samuel O. Minor, Ivy Zumwalt and John W. Allen; on the contrary, these three gentlemen are indignant at the proceedings. As evidence of this I will here state that they became, and are, parties to the motion to set aside the order of the Court below appointing Strother and Hunter to fill the pretended vacancies. By their affidavit, appended to said motion, they and each of them solemnly swear that said ex parte petition was gotten up, and their names used therein as petitioners, without their knowledge or consent and against their will; and that the same was filed and the unjust and illegal action of the Court below had thereon without their knowledge or consent.

These gentlemen must not, therefore, be considered as acting in concert with Draper, Markley and others, but must, in justice to them and to their action in the premises, and to their said affidavits, be regarded as honest and candid objectors to the petition and to the action of the Court thereon.

These three gentlemen stood before the court below on the hearing of the motion to set aside its illegal order and made known these facts and verified them by their affidavits, and asked the court to revoke and set aside its order. And they, with Minor and Gunn, now stand before this court in the person of their counsel and ask that said order may be set aside. And in this they simply ask that that justice may be done to them which was strangely and wrongfully denied by the court below.

Here we have the strange spectacle of three men, on whose petition this order seems to have been made, coming in and disclaiming the whole thing and asking this court to set it aside.

As a legal proposition I maintain: First, that in this country the widest latitude is given by law to religious sentiment; and second, that the temporal courts have no jurisdiction over churches or church judicatories or church members, as such, except simply to protect them, to protect the civil rights of others, and to preserve the public peace.

In the case of the Baptist Church in Hartford vs. Witherell, in the Court of Chancery in the State of New York, Chancellor Walworth, in delivering the opinion of the court, says:

“Over the Church, as such, the legal or temporal tribunals of this country do not profess to have any jurisdiction whatever, except so far as is necessary to protect the civil rights of others and to preserve the public peace.” (See 3 Paige Reports, 301.)

So in the case of Lawyer vs. Cepperly, the same court decides substantially the same thing. (7 Paige Chancery Reports, 281; see also Angel & Ames on Corporations, sec. 58, page 28, note 1, page 29; Stebbins vs. Jennings, 10 Pickering Rep., 172; Gable vs. Miller, 10 Paige Rep., 627.)

I am fully aware that courts of chancery have ample jurisdiction to determine questions touching the legal title to church property, real or personal; and that in order to protect a Church in the enjoyment of its corporate property that court might appoint trustees.

But even this is to be understood with some limitation. Suppose, for example, that a church has full and ample power by its own church laws, church courts and judicatories to protect itself or to put itself in a condition where it will not need the action of the temporal court, ought the temporal court to interfere? Most clearly not.

And more particularly the temporal court ought not to interfere in this case, for the following six plain and sufficient reasons: First, because there is no contest in this case about property; second, because no title is involved; third, because no possession is asked for; fourth, because no obedience to rightful authority or authority of any kind is sought to be enforced; fifth, because no wrong is sought to be prevented; and sixth, because no injury to the church is sought to be avoided.

If protection to church property required that Hunter and Strother should be put into this Board of Trustees, the Church, by means of its preacher in charge and Quarterly Conference, had full power to put them there to fill vacancies without action of the court below, provided vacancies existed. The church law on the subject of appointing a Board of Church Trustees and filling vacancies therein is found on page 254 of a book entitled “The Doctrines and Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.” It is a book of universal authority in that Church, as we all know, and was largely referred to by all parties to this contest on the trial in the court below, as is fully shown by the Bill of Exceptions. At page 254 I find the following plain and simple provision:

“In the appointment of Trustees, except where the laws of the State or Territory provide differently, the preacher in charge, or in his absence the Presiding Elder, shall have the right of nomination, subject to the confirmation or rejection of the Quarterly Conference. All vacancies in the Board of Trustees occasioned by death, separation from our Church, or otherwise, shall be filled without delay.”

This, then, is full and clear, and confers ample authority upon the preacher in charge and Quarterly Conference to appoint trustees for the Church and to fill vacancies without the aid or interference of the temporal courts. It is the identical same provision of the “discipline” under and by virtue of which Draper, Markley and all the other trustees of that church were themselves appointed. They were appointed under and by force of this provision long before the date of the deed of McQuie and wife to them in trust for the Church. McQuie and wife did not appoint them. They—McQuie and wife—had agreed to convey to the Church at Louisiana certain ground for a certain money consideration paid to them by the Church, and were directed by the Church to convey, and did convey, to its board of trustees then existing. As the ground was purchased from McQuie and wife, and full value received for the same, therefore McQuie and wife had no right to appoint the trustees, as they would have had if they had donated and given the lots. The Church having purchased and paid for this ground, had the sole right to say to whom it should be conveyed. If the Church had the exclusive right then to say who should hold its property in trust for it, surely it has that right now. But the Court below has destroyed that right by placing in the Board of Trustees two men—Hunter and Strother—whom the Church did not select in its appointed way, or in any other way, and by vesting in them the legal title to its property without its consent, and perhaps against its will. Against Messrs. Hunter and Strother I have nothing to say; but there is not the slightest evidence on the record, or anywhere else, to show that the Church at Louisiana is pleased with them or desired their services in the Board.

But the Church, through its preacher in charge and Quarterly Conference, as we have seen, not only had power to appoint trustees and to fill vacancies in the Board when vacancies existed, but I now proceed to show that it actually did fill said vacancies—the identical same vacancies stated in this ex parte petition to have existed at the time of the filing thereof—by appointing said William A. Gunn to fill the vacancy created by the death of said Watson, and by appointing said Samuel S. Allen to fill the vacancy created by said Stokes ceasing to be a member of the Church and leaving the State. To prove this fact I beg to be permitted to read to this Court so much of the minutes of said Quarterly Conference as may be necessary, and which was copied into the bill of exceptions from the minutes themselves, and proves the fact beyond all doubt, and is as follows:

“On motion of Brother Newland, preacher in charge of this (Louisiana) Station, Brother W. A. Gunn was nominated and confirmed as trustee in place of Bro. David Watson, deceased.”

Immediately following the above evidence in the bill of exceptions I will read further evidence in these words:

“The proceedings of said Quarterly Conference, of which the above is part, was had on the 21st day of January, A. D., 1861, and are signed by B. H. Spencer, presiding elder, and attested by William A. Gunn, secretary.”

Surely the minutes of the Quarterly Conference is the best evidence of what it did. The minutes thus authenticated by Spencer and Gunn are as conclusive in fact as they are valid in law, and do show that the Watson vacancy was duly filled by said preacher and Conference just one year, five months and fifteen days before the filing of the ex parte petition herein. With this evidence before him can any man believe, or can any court decide, that the Watson vacancy existed in the Board of Trustees when the petition of Draper & Co. was filed? Surely not. Then what right had the Court below to fill a pretended vacancy that in fact and law did not exist? Certainly none at all.

I now proceed to show that the Stokes vacancy was also a mere pretense, and did not exist in the Board when this petition was filed, having been filled by the preacher in charge and Quarterly Conference in like manner long before this petition was filed by Draper and others in the court below. The evidence to prove this fact is equally clear and conclusive. I will read to the court from the Bill of Exceptions, in these words:

“The petitioners also offered and read in evidence another portion of said minutes, proving that on the 23d day of April, A. D. 1862, and at said Conference, the Rev. G. W. Miller, then preacher in charge of said Louisiana Station, nominated Bro. Samuel S. Allen as trustee, to fill the vacancy created by the withdrawal from the church of Thomas T. Stokes; and proving, also, that said nomination was confirmed by said Quarterly Conference on the same day.”

Thus the court will readily see that the Stokes vacancy was duly filled on the 23d day of April, A. D. 1862, just two months and twelve days before this petition was filed. To say, therefore, that the Stokes vacancy existed in this Board at the time of the filing of this ex parte petition is to make sport of language, and is, in my humble opinion, wholly untrue. To say that the Watson and Stokes vacancies existed in this Board when this petition was filed is to deny that Gunn and Samuel S. Allen were members of it. And to deny that Gunn and said Allen were members at that time, is to deny that the petitioners themselves were members of it; for they were all, as we have already seen, appointed by the same power and in the same way—that is by the Church, through its preacher and Conference. In short, to deny that Gunn and said Allen were members of said Board when this petition was filed is to deny that the Church had any trustees whatever.

The Board, in fact, when this petition was filed, consisted of nine members, namely, Draper, Markley, the two Allens—John W. and Samuel S.—Minor, Shurmur, Charleville, Zumwalt and Gunn, nine in number, and it could not lawfully contain any greater number. (See Discipline, page 254.) There is, therefore, no room in the Board for Strother and Hunter. Samuel S. Allen and William A. Gunn must first be ejected from it, and this can not be lawfully done without first giving them reasonable notice and a chance to be heard in the court below. In this case there was no notice until after the court below had acted; and of course no defense was made. The action of the court below, taken without notice to these parties, is void; and this court ought, for that reason (if for no other), to reverse and set it aside. Draper, Markley, Shurmur and Charleville well knew when they filed this petition that Gunn and Samuel S. Allen had been appointed by the preacher and Conference to fill the only vacancies mentioned in the petition. These gentlemen—Draper & Co.—were both attending and attentive members of the Board. They took a lively interest in whatever affected the welfare of the Church. They had acted in the Board with Gunn and Samuel S. Allen, and knew when they filed this petition that said Gunn and Allen had been appointed to fill said vacancies and claimed to be members of the Board. But why they desired to ignore their authority and purposely avoided disclosing the fact to the court below in their petition, we are left to conjecture.

A few more words and I close. The very aims and objects of the Churches in this country constitute a powerful reason why the courts should refuse to interfere with their affairs. No man can reflect upon these aims and objects for one moment without rejoicing that he lives in a land of Bibles and Churches. These Churches, including the one in question, aim at nothing less than the promulgation of the doctrines of the Gospel among all men; the due administration of scriptural ordinances; the promotion of works of piety and benevolence; the revival and spread of scriptural holiness, and, in short, the conversion of the whole world to the faith and practice of Christianity.

An organization of men and women for these high and holy purposes ought to be permitted to choose its own officers and to manage its own affairs in its own way. Whenever the courts of the country have interfered to settle Church difficulties, they have in almost every instance created new and more serious difficulty in the Church. In this very case the action of the court below has already produced discord and alienation in the Church, which perhaps will never be cured. It has in that way, beyond all question, done the Church ten times more harm than good.

When there were vacancies in the Board the Church filled them, as we have seen, by its own laws and in its own way, and there were no complaints, no law-suits, no alienations, no withdrawals from the Church. But when this petition was filed in the court below, and acted upon by that court without notice to anybody, and the names of trustees used without their consent, a large portion of the Church was uncharitable enough to suppose that advantage was sought and wrong intended. Besides, this court having large experience in the affairs of men will readily see that action by our courts in church cases gives great encouragement to discontented and litigious persons to annoy the Church with fruitless legal proceedings, and thus retard its progress in its great work of mercy and benevolence. Better, far better, is it for all parties, and for the cause of Christianity itself, to leave these difficulties to be settled in the Church where they originate.

Thanking this Court for the patient hearing which it has given me in this case, and hoping your Honors will give to the case that consideration which its importance requires, I now take my leave of it.

CHAPTER XIII.
CHURCH SEIZURES—CONTINUED.

Church in Boonville—One of the Oldest Religious Centers—Rev. J. N. Pierce and his Exploits—“An Honest Looker On” in the St. Louis Christian Advocate—Circuit Court vs. County Court and J. N. Pierce—Supreme Court—Howard et al. vs. Pierce—Report and Opinion—Circuit Court Sustained—John N. Pierce et al. Exhibited in no Enviable Light—Legal History of the Case—Decision—Points to be Noted—Moral Travestie—Judgment of Posterity—Church in Springfield—How Obtained—How Long Used—How Released—Particulars Reported by a Committee of the St. Louis Conference—Church in Potosi—Statement of W. S. Woodard—Plattsburg, Fillmore, Macon, Glasgow and other Churches—Strange Assertion—Statistical Value of Churches Seized over $100,000—How Restored—Property Rights Secured to the M. E. Church, South—Great Moral Courage or “Hard Cheek”—“Making History”—Martyrdom of Principle.