“On the first Monday of April, at our municipal election, my vote was challenged by a Lieutenant from St. Joseph, I believe. I asked on what ground. He said my name was on the disloyal list. I told him I did not put it there. Capt. Moore said it was put there by order of Gen. Loan.
“Such are some of the open effects of your published letter, and, as a lawyer, you doubtless know the extent of your legal responsibility for such publication.
“In your published letter to me you regarded me as disloyal because, as you say, I encouraged a congregation that could not endure prayers for its Government. If by the Government you mean the country and the Constitution, I beg to inform you that prayers are regularly offered for the country, in the public congregation as well as in my private family; and in private I pray to Him who is infinite in wisdom, in goodness and in power, that he would so direct in the affairs of the nation, and so control the events that are now transpiring as that all things might yet result for his glory and the well-being of humanity; that he would grant unto our rulers wisdom to adopt such measures as would speedily bring peace and prosperity to our distracted country.
“If by the Government you mean the measures of the Administration, I must say that I do not pray for the success of the President’s Proclamation liberating the slaves of the South.
“Since these troubles began, I have claimed to be, and I believe I am, as loyal a man as there is in the country, and the Constitution does not permit you, nor any body of men, to prescribe a form of prayer as a test of my loyalty. Since the commencement of these troubles I have been a man of peace. I believed that war would be disastrous to the country, and that if persevered in it would tear down the fair fabric which my fathers helped to rear, and that my children would be left without a country.
“Sir, I boast not of family, but an ancestral name stands on the Declaration of Independence, and the family has represented the Government at Paris and at London. Sir, I can pray for peace, but I can not pray for war. I never in public or in private prayed for the success of the sword as wielded by any power on earth.
“What was my offense? I labored to preserve the peace of my congregation. I thought that the Church was not the proper arena for the strife of those contending opinions that were convulsing the nation.
“Why did not Colhoun and Lyon of the Presbyterian Church offer such prayers as that offered by W. C. Toole? I will answer. They had too high a sense of religious propriety. Sir, political preaching has sown the seeds that are bringing forth the death of the nation. In more than twenty years in the ministry I have never given utterance to a political sentiment in the pulpit. But now these political preachers are heroes, and I am without a pulpit.
“You have, also, published to the world that I have no claim upon the Government for protection. Thus I am published by you as an outlaw, to be slain by any one who may be so disposed. And this, notwithstanding I have constantly performed every duty enjoined upon me by the Constitution and laws of the country.
“On last Wednesday evening, just at dark, my son William, while feeding, was shot at by some one who had secreted himself but a few yards from him. The bullet entered his cap just over his forehead and passed out behind. An inch lower would have killed him. The shot was, no doubt, intended for me.