The evening came. The sky was clear. It was neither hot nor cold. The balmy air of spring enticed people from their houses. The church was unusually well-filled, and my secession friends were present in large numbers. I read for the Scripture lesson the 13th chapter of Romans, in which Paul teaches the duty of obedience to established government. Those in the pews listened with almost breathless interest to the words of the great Apostle. But while I read, two deacons of the church, who had been engaged in seating the congregation, standing under the gallery, between the doors of entrance to the audience room, had this suggestive colloquy. Both of them were unconditional Union men; but one of them, formerly a citizen of Massachusetts, nervously anxious to keep the peace, said to the other, who had once lived in Maryland, and afterwards in Indiana, “I hope the pastor is not going to preach to-night from any text in that chapter.” His associate in office replied, “Aren’t you willing that your pastor should take his text from any portion of the Word of God?” He responded, “I ought to say yes, but I confess that in the present circumstances I can’t.” Considering the sections of the Republic from which these gentlemen hailed, we should naturally have thought that their respective attitudes would have been the exact reverse. We should have looked for unyielding grit in the New Englander, and for pliancy in the Marylander. But happily in our country geography does not determine character, and this incident shows how two good men and true in St. Louis, in those dark days, were divided as to the line of action that should be taken to secure what they mutually and earnestly desired.
But the service moved on. The very air seemed tremulous with excitement. While singing the hymn immediately before the sermon, anxious expectation was depicted on the faces of the audience. I announced as my text Romans, the 13th chapter, the 1st and 2nd verses: “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained by God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.”
When I began to speak such a hush fell upon the congregation, that at the pauses between the sentences, I could hear the flicker of the gas. A large bronze-faced man, a stranger, had been seated near the centre of the audience room, in the end of a pew, that opened into the middle aisle, so that he was directly before me. My eye instinctively turned to him and at times seemed to be riveted upon him. I thought that he must be the deacon of some Baptist church back in the State. At first he was restless, and frequently changed his position; so I concluded that he was a secessionist and did not like what I was saying. But when I was a little more than half way through my discourse, he cried out, so that all in the house heard him, “Amen,” making the a long and emphatic. My wrong impression of him was at once corrected. He was, as I had surmised, a Baptist deacon, but from Illinois, not from Missouri, and his hearty “amen” added to the already intense excitement of the congregation. The sudden consciousness of having in him an ally instead of an enemy gave me a new sense of freedom, and I preached on with more than my usual ease and fervor, closing with these words: “I wish to bear my own individual testimony, to express the feelings of my heart. I love my country—I love the government of my country—I love the freedom of my country. It was purchased by the blood of our fathers, and when I become so base, so cowardly, so besotted that I dare not speak out in behalf of that for which they so bravely fought, I pray that my tongue may cleave to the roof of my mouth.
“But, brethren, we need have no fears as to the ultimate issue. The Lord God Omnipotent reigneth. In this conflict your property may be swept away, and all may be reduced to a common level. Your life and mine may be sacrificed on the altar of our country, yet Jehovah, who presides over the scene, will bring the nation forth from the ordeal wiser, purer, nobler. If the scythe of rebellion is swung over our whole land, mowing down all of our free institutions, leave us the Christian family, the Christian Church, and the time-honored Bible, and in the track of the destroyer, they will spring up with new life, new power, and new glory. ‘The Lord reigneth: let the earth rejoice: let the multitude of isles be glad thereof.’”
For the last hymn I gave out “My country, ’tis of thee.” I am quite sure that it had not been sung for many months in St. Louis; at all events, as a congregation, we had refrained from singing it lest somebody might be offended by it. My secession friends did not even deign to open their hymn-books, but stood dumb while we sang. But compensations for their silence had been providentially provided. A part of a congregation of loyal Methodists, passing our house of worship on the way home from their evening service, had crowded into the vestibule, and listened to the close of my discourse; lingering there, they sang the national hymn as only Methodists can. Also a band of loyal Unitarians going along Locust Street by the church just as we began to sing, stood on the sidewalk, under the open windows, and sang with fervor. Half a square away a gentleman, sitting in his parlor with its windows shut, heard our patriotic song and was glad.
At the close of the service, a stranger unceremoniously approached me, and with some excitement of manner asked, “Do you expect to remain in the city?” I assured him that I did, but that it was a matter of indifference to me whether I did or not. Expressing the opinion that the people of the city would not permit me to remain, he disappeared in the departing crowd. Who he was, whence he came and whither he went, I knew not. From my own soul a burden had been lifted. As well as I could, I had spoken on behalf of our country. My mistake was that I had not spoken sooner. With a light heart I went back to my home and slept.
I must now mention what was to me an exceedingly important event, to which on account of its sacredness I should make no allusion if it were not intertwined with an incident which sets in a startling light the determination of not a few in St. Louis at that time to suppress, even by brute force, freedom of speech. Two days after the delivery of my sermon on “The Duty of Obedience to Established Government,” profoundly believing in the Union, I was married. But our city was so agitated and divided, that it was deemed best both by my bride and myself to make but a short wedding trip. We thought that we should not be long absent from pressing duties at home. So we went no farther than Cincinnati. We left behind us a flagless city; but when we reached the great city on the Ohio, it was just one gorgeous bouquet of national banners. The exhilaration and ecstasy of that scene no words can express. The remembered experience, the patriotic exultation of that hour, lingers like undimmed sunshine in my soul.
We remained in Cincinnati over the following Sunday. By a happy prearrangement, the young and eloquent Irish preacher of Quincy, Illinois, Rev. H. M. Gallaher, supplied my pulpit. As he began the evening service, a turbulent crowd gathered on Sixth and Locust Streets, in front and by the side of the church. They had evidently come together to mob me for my discourse the week before. When Mr. Gallaher was offering prayer before the sermon, some one of the crowd on Locust Street hurled a brickbat through the window, immediately to the left of the pulpit; the great window-pane was shivered in pieces, but the missile aimed at the preacher happily failed to reach its mark. It was caught by a Venetian blind and fell harmless to the floor. In spite of the sudden, unexpected crash, the plucky Irishman prayed on as though nothing had happened, and his cool persistence probably averted further disaster. My marriage had been a private one. Only a few intimate friends had witnessed it. Nobody had advertised it; so those intent on executing mob law upon me quite naturally supposed that I was in my pulpit. But, for some unknown reason, somebody in that vengeful throng began to suspect that their coveted game had slipped through their toils. While the fearless preacher in the pulpit continued to pray in apparent oblivion to splintering glass and a falling, resounding brickbat, two men from the mob without, pushing partly open one of the doors of the audience room, intently watched him. They evidently became satisfied before he closed his prayer that the object of their malice had in some way eluded them. They reported to the noisy, angry crowd in the street. The clamor gradually subsided. There followed for a few minutes a murmur of voices, then the disappointed multitude little by little melted away.
This menacing event greatly disturbed the officers of my church. Knowing the train on which we were returning to St. Louis, several of them came to greet us and tell us of the mob. They feared that it might gather again to carry out its fell purpose, and anxiously asked what line of action would be wisest and best? In a moment I decided what I should do. I told them that those who did not hear my sermon, but had learned of it merely from flying rumor, had exaggerated and false notions concerning it; that they had unquestionably misconceived its spirit; that I would at once write it out, just as I had uttered it in the pulpit, and print it in The Missouri Republican; that that journal of doubtful loyalty gladly published articles on both sides of the national question, and was very generally read by the secessionists; and that when those who were bent on mobbing their fellow-citizens for their honestly expressed political views should read it, they would not fail to see that it was not quite as objectionable as they supposed, and would lay aside their vengeful purpose.
Those who had anxiously sought my counsel approved, some of them with apparent reluctance, this proposed line of action. So I went directly from the boat on which we were ferried over the river, to my study, sat down to my self-appointed task, and did not rise until it was done. Over the sermon I wrote the following explanatory and conciliatory note.