The letter of the Provost-Marshal General was forwarded to Mr. Watts, through the Assistant Provost-Marshal’s office at Charleston, accompanied by an order from the latter office requiring him to take the Convention oath of ’62, or cease to preach, and report himself at headquarters, St. Louis. He went to St. Louis, took what was called the “Gamble oath,” returned home and resumed his ministerial labors.
The correspondence here given is specially valuable for the light it throws upon the spirit and bearing of the military authorities in the direct issue they made with the clergy of the State. Many ministers of the gospel were more oppressed and persecuted, but all of them did not so far yield to military authority on the one hand, nor so sharply contend for the rights of conscience on the other.
The “Special Order, No. 61,” has a history of itself that will be unveiled in due time, and the true nature of the proscription and persecution under it will be better disclosed in another place.
This forcing the conscience of ministers by prescribing “test oaths” is not a new thing. It is as old as the second great persecution under Domitian, A. D. 81, and as cruel as the Spanish Inquisition.
When State Conventions and military commanders in Missouri prepared political “test oaths” for ministers of the gospel as a class, and ordered all non-juring ministers under disability, the object was not doubtful in the minds of those acquainted with the history of religious persecutions.
Another martyred minister of the gospel, the horrible murder of another of God’s chosen messengers of salvation, and scene first of the great Missouri tragedy closes, the curtain falls, and both writer and reader may seek temporary relief from what Dr. Summers, in a private note, calls “a terrible narrative.” When the curtain rises again it will unveil other scenes in this wonderful histrionic drama, of which those already presented are but the preparation and prelude.
The trials and persecutions of the faithful men of God already narrated are sufficient to present the moral and religious phases of the war in Missouri to an intelligent public. Would to God the pall of oblivion could settle down upon the whole history. But if the world still retains its interest in truth; if the Church is still the repository of the testimony of Jesus and the divinely accredited authority for works of righteousness; if the ministers of the gospel are yet responsible for the “faith once delivered unto the saints,” for the purity of the gospel and the integrity of the kingdom of God on earth, and if history is valuable for the lessons it teaches and the principles it vindicates, then that truth, that righteousness, that faith, that history, all demand the record here made, the lessons taught and the principles vindicated in the trials and sufferings of God’s annointed servants during the recent reign of terror.
The following shocking narrative of murder must, according to the decision of the publisher, close the first volume.
Rev. Thomas Glanville and Son.
The subject of this sketch was long and favorably known to the Church in Missouri, and was highly esteemed for his integrity, honesty and fidelity to principle as well as for his general usefulness as a minister.