Martyrdom in Missouri, Volume 1 (of 2)

by W. M. Leftwich

DECISION OF THE SUPREME COURT.

“William A. Smith, et al., vs. Leroy Swormstedt, et al.

“This was the appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Ohio, which dismissed the bill.

“This cause came on to be heard on the transcript of the record from the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Ohio, and was argued by counsel. On consideration whereof it is ordered, adjudged and decreed by this Court that the decree of said Circuit Court in this cause be and the game is hereby reversed and annulled; and this Court doth farther find, adjudge and decree:

“1. That under the resolution of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, holden at the city of New York, according to the usage and discipline of said Church, passed on the eighth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and forty-four (in the pleadings mentioned), it was, among other things, and in virtue of the power of said General Conference, well agreed and determined by the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States of America, as then existing, that in case the Annual Conferences in the slaveholding States should find it necessary to unite in a distinct ecclesiastical connection, the ministers, local and traveling, of every grade and office in the Methodist Episcopal Church, might attach themselves to such new ecclesiastical connection without blame.

“2. That the said Annual Conferences in the slaveholding States did find and determine that it was right, expedient and necessary to erect the Annual Conferences last aforesaid into a distinct ecclesiastical connection, based upon the discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church aforesaid, comprehending the doctrines and entire moral and ecclesiastical rules and regulations of the said discipline (except only in so far as verbal alterations might be necessary to or for a distinct organization), which new ecclesiastical connection was to be known by the name and style of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and that the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was duly organized under said resolutions of the said Annual Conferences last aforesaid, in a convention thereof held at Louisville, in the State of Kentucky, in the month of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and forty-five.

That by force of the said resolutions of June the eighth, eighteen hundred and forty-four, and of the authority and power of the said General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, as then existing, by which the same were adopted; and by virtue of the said finding and determination of the said Animal Conferences in the slaveholding States therein mentioned, and by virtue of the organization of such Conferences into a distinct ecclesiastical connection as last aforesaid, the religious association known as the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States of America, as then existing, was divided into two associations, or distinct Methodist Episcopal Churches, as in the bill of complaint is alleged.

That the property denominated the Methodist Book Concern at Cincinnati, in the pleadings mentioned, was, at the time of said division and immediately before, a fund subject to the following use, that is to say, that the profits arising therefrom, after retaining a sufficient capital to carry on the business thereof, were to be regularly applied toward the support of the deficient traveling, supernumerary, superannuated and worn-out preachers of the Methodist Episcopal Church, their wives, widows and children, according to the rules and Discipline of said church, and that the said fund and property are held under the act of incorporation in the said answer mentioned by the said defendants, Leroy Swormstedt and John H. Power, as agents of said Book Concern, and in trust for the purposes thereof.

“5. That, in virtue of the said division of said Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States, the deficient, traveling, supernumerary, superannuated and worn-out preachers, their wives, widows and children comprehended in, or in connection with the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, were, are, and continue to be, beneficiaries of the said Book Concern to the same extent and as fully as if the said division had not taken place, and in the same manner and degree as persons of the same description who are comprehended in, or in connection with, the other association, denominated, since the division, the Methodist Episcopal Church, and that as well the principal as the profits of said Book Concern, since said division, should of right be administered and managed by the respective General and Annual Conferences of the said two associations and Churches under the separate organizations thereof, and according to the shares or proportions of the same as hereinafter mentioned, and in conformity with the rules and Discipline of said respective associations, so as to carry out the purposes and trusts aforesaid.

“6. That so much of the capital and property of said Book Concern at Cincinnati, wherever situated, and so much of the produce and profits thereof as may not have been heretofore accounted for to said Church, South, in the New York case hereinafter mentioned, or otherwise, shall be paid to said Church, South, according to the rate and proportions following, that is to say: In respect to the capital, such share or part as corresponds with the proportion which the number of the traveling preachers in the Annual Conferences which formed themselves into the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, bore to the number of all the traveling preachers of the Methodist Episcopal Church before the division thereof, which numbers shall be fixed and ascertained as they are shown by the minutes of the several Annual Conferences next preceding the said division and new organization in the month of May, A. D. eighteen hundred and forty-five.