Martyrdom in Missouri, Volume 1 (of 2)

by W. M. Leftwich

It would be as unfair to say that all Northern Methodist preachers in the State engaged in this nefarious business as to say that none of them were respectable, Christian gentlemen. Suspicion rested upon all of them, because the grounds of suspicion were too strong and the evidence of guilt too general to make wholesale exceptions. Nor did the masses of the people know or care to discriminate.

It is true that very few men of worth, of ability, or of standing in the M. E. Church could be had for this work. They looked upon it as involving much toil, sacrifice, suffering, and perhaps martyrdom, for which they were not candidates. But men who had broken down in other fields, and were no longer wanted in other Conferences, and men who had despaired of distinction in the more honorable fields of competition with their brethren, embraced the opportunity thus afforded to win notoriety.

The men who could consent to do such work for a political party while they wore the cloth of a holy calling were the pliant tools of the John Browns and others who were prominent leaders in the great crusade against the institutions of the South.

It is due to the truth of history to state that the old settlers of Missouri and the slaveholders of that day were high-minded, honorable, intelligent men, who would scorn to proscribe and persecute men for opinion’s sake, or protect and harbor men who would secretly and treacherously use the hospitality of the slaveholder to reach the slave and poison his mind against his master, and inspire him with the hope of freedom by the torch and the dagger.

Missourians were not hypocrites, nor would they abuse a generous hospitality, betray either public or social confidence, or seek by underhanded, sinister means the destruction of the rights of property and the guarantees of domestic and social order. However they may be characterized by ugly epithets and maligned by partisan hirelings, they will stand vindicated on the pages of history as humane, generous, peaceful, prosperous, intelligent, honorable and high-minded citizens, who could neither perpetrate a mean act nor tolerate, even in so-called ministers of the gospel, the abuse of confidence or domestic treachery.

In illustration of the abuse of hospitality to secret abolition purposes, one instance in a thousand must suffice.

In the spring of 1856 Mr. Thomas E. Thompson, of Palmyra, Mo., was returning home late on Saturday evening, when he found a stranger by the road side preparing to camp in a corner of the fence, with his wife and child. He had unharnessed his team and stretched his wagon cloth on the fence over them for a shelter from the inclement weather.

Mr. Thompson stopped and inquired why the stranger did not go into the city and obtain better accommodations; and when informed that he had no money, and thought of spending not only the night but the following Sabbath there, and that the stranger was a Northern Methodist preacher trying to get to Kansas, he told him it would not do, invited them to his house, and offered them a generous hospitality, which was accepted. The child had never seen negroes, was much alarmed at the sight, and would not remain in their presence.

During the night the preacher got to talking to one of the colored women, tried to persuade her that she was free, and that he would assist her to reach Illinois. She reported the facts to Mr. T.; and on Sabbath afternoon he overheard the preacher talking with the husband of this woman in the stable, telling him that he was not only a free man, but that he would do right in taking Mr. T.’s horse, or anything else by which he could gain his freedom. The negro told the preacher to go off and let him alone, that he had a good master, a good home and everything in plenty, and he did not want to be free. Mr. Thompson ordered the preacher to leave, telling him that he could not protect him from violence if the community were apprised of the facts. He let him depart in peace.

If Northern Methodist preachers were condemned, it was not for preaching the gospel and trying to save the souls of men, but for a palpable violation of plighted ecclesiastical faith, and more particularly for their partisan services in the cause of emancipation.