Martyrdom in Missouri, Volume 1 (of 2)

by W. M. Leftwich

In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Missouri.

PREFACE.

“We are making history,” was the convenient and popular boast of certain politico-religious fanatics during the late civil war, and for a few years subsequent to its close. It will not be considered impertinent, now that the “piping times of peace” have come, and men are permitted to look back upon the cooled passions and crystallized events of that dreadful period with somewhat of calm philosophy, if the fact should be announced that “we are writing history.” It is one thing to make the history, it is quite another thing to write it. If others could afford to “make history,” and, then, in popular cant and with prurient vanity, boast of it, we can well afford to write it up for them. And if our part of the task be fairly, candidly and correctly done, they will have little reason to complain if they appear before the world and go down to posterity in the light of the history they have made, and with their true character brought out by the shadows they have thrown forward upon the future. History is valuable, not merely as a catalogue of events and an inventory of things, but for the principles involved and the lessons taught. The events herein narrated are notorious, the principles involved are vital, and the lessons important.

Missouri will ever be conspicuous in the annals of history as the only State in the American Union to inaugurate and authorize a formal opposition to Christianity, as an institution, and legalize the persecution of ministers of the gospel, as a class. The fact will not be denied, and the history furnishes the saddest, wisest lessons. Ministers of the gospel have been robbed, arrested, imprisoned, and even murdered, for no other cause than that they were ministers of the gospel. They have been indicted by grand juries, arrested and imprisoned with common felons, mobbed and put to death for no other cause than that of preaching the gospel without taking the “Test Oath” of the New Constitution. A pure, unsecular Christianity owes much to the moral heroism of the Missouri ministry. The faith once delivered unto the saints, the integrity of the Church of Jesus Christ, as a kingdom not of this world, the purity of the gospel, the divine authority of the ministry, the liberty of conscience, and the rightful sovereignty of Christ in his Church, with every principle and phase of religious liberty, have been illustrated in the lives and sublimely vindicated in the sufferings of the ministers of the gospel in Missouri.

The author fully appreciates the delicacy and difficulty of dealing with such recent events and so many living names—events, too, which belong to the catalogue of crime, and names that will pass into history associated with the persecution and stained with the blood of the Lord’s annointed. But if the task is difficult and the questions delicate, the duty is no less imperative. It is due alike to the martyrs, living and dead, and to the holy cause for which they suffered, that their names and deeds be preserved, and that their unswerving fidelity and sublime devotion to a principle and a cause, equal to the purest heroism of the ancient martyrs, should not be lost to the Church. It is one of the gravest responsibilities of the hour, and one of the most gracious opportunities of the Church, to preserve the history, vindicate the faith, maintain the principles and impress the lessons of the turbulent past upon the peaceful future, that grace may abound through suffering and God may be glorified in his servants.

A diluted charity says, “Let the dead past bury its dead, and let the living present draw the mantle of charity over the unfortunate by-gones.” This might be well enough if the “dead past” did not contain the imperishable gem of a resurrection life that speaks to us with authority in the vital principles of yesterday, to-day and forever, and tells us, amongst other thins, that the chief of the Christian virtues—a pure, discriminating charity—has no mantle for crime, however Christ-like may be its compassion for the penitent criminal.

Both Federal and State legislation shield those who committed the crimes of the war from legal prosecution; but such enactments possess no control over the pen and the press.

In presenting this work to the public the author is fully conscious of its many literary defects. But for all that, he dare not sacrifice the facts of history, even to literary excellence. Many subjects possess an importance and a grandeur wholly independent of those who handle them.

If, in treating of so many men and such recent events, injustice has been done the living or the dead, the author pleads the absence of intention and claims the benefit of a discriminating charity.

Both the work and the author will receive the severest criticism—perhaps censure—possibly abuse. The first—he would not escape if he could; the second—he could not escape if he would; the third—well—it is no new thing under the sun for those who are set for the defense of truth and righteousness to be abused.