3. Mob violence was never instigated by these meetings, but prevented. No man suffered in person or property from them in Missouri.
In confirmation of this position it is only necessary to state the fact that the best class of citizens were the prime movers in these public meetings, and, indeed, they were only called when it became apparent that the peace and safety of the community demanded it; for in every community there are passionate, reckless men, who are ready to take the law into their own hands and vindicate their rights, at whatever danger to the public safety. But the best men of the country, and those who had the deepest interest in its peace and security, entered the most heartily into these meetings, as peace measures, and they now, and will ever, believe that such meetings were necessary to prevent mob violence and insure the general tranquillity.
The author of the Fabius Township resolutions, a distinguished citizen and lawyer of Marion county, and a colonel commanding a regiment of Missouri Militia in the Union army during the war, not only authorizes the above statement, but affirms freely that, though he had been an anti-slavery man for many years, and rejoices in the emancipation of the slaves as he does in the restoration of the Union, yet he endorses that meeting and those resolutions to-day, and would conscientiously pursue the same course again should a similar state of things exist in the community to demand it. An old citizen of Missouri, a member of no church—friendly to all—a Union man from first to last, speaking, working and fighting to restore and preserve the supremacy of the Federal government, he would make affidavit to-day that, to the best of his knowledge, the three facts above stated are fully vindicated in the Fabius Township and all similar meetings held for similar purposes in Missouri. Thousands of the best citizens of the State are ready to affirm the same facts and vindicate the good people of Missouri against the aspersions of the Northern press.
Similar meetings to that of Fabius township were held in Andrew county, in Independence, Jackson county, in Cass county, and perhaps other places, and with similar results. In no single instance was the M. E. Church, South, implicated. In no single instance were the ministers of the M. E. Church, North, mobbed or murdered, and in no single instance was mob violence against the “vilest abolition thieves” counseled or countenanced; and with all honest people who know the facts the hue and cry raised in certain quarters about religious intolerance, mob violence, persecution of ministers, and the martyrdom of innocent and holy men is as gratuitous as it is contemptible.
When the lower House of the Missouri Legislature, in February, 1855, refused, by a vote of sixty to thirty-six, to charter what was called the Jackson Seminary, in Cape Girardeau county, for the Northern Methodists, it was not because the representatives of the people opposed the establishment of literary institutions, or wished to proscribe any form of religion, but because, as then stated, the Northern Methodist preachers were the emissaries of abolitionism, and by encouraging them in establishing institutions in Missouri they encouraged their purposes and organization to subvert the lawful institutions of the State, which the lawmakers did not hesitate to affirm would be encouraging a cowardly, clandestine treason against the laws and government of the State. Four years later the Legislature refused to charter a university at Jefferson City for the Northern Methodists, for the same reason.
The “Jefferson City Land Company,” to encourage immigration, build up the city and enhance the private fortunes of its members, proposed a liberal grant of land to the Northern Methodists, or any others, who would build up and endow, with foreign capital, a university at the State Capital. Though many of the members of this Land Company were slaveholders, and some of them large slaveholders, they believed that the introduction of free labor into the State would greatly facilitate the development of her material resources, by building railroads and opening her vast beds of coal, and lead, and iron to the markets of the world. They conceived the idea of inviting and encouraging free labor from the Northern States through the active agency of the Northern Methodist Church.
The class of immigrants they desired were opposed to negro slavery, and the Northern Methodist Church was opposed to negro slavery. Methodist ministers, more than any other ministers, were in sympathy with the anti-slavery surplus populations of the Northern and Eastern States, and could influence them more. Hence the alliance.
The proposition to donate so much land for a university, even at a fictitious value, was a splendid prize for that church in Missouri, backed, as it was, by the names and influence of some of the first men of the State, and located at the seat of political power—the State Capital.
On the other hand, the promise of the most extensive and efficient agency in the world actively working throughout the dense populations of the older States to put into operation a system of emigration that would fill up the State with industrious laborers, absorb the surplus lands and enrich the centers of settlement, was a tempting premium upon the cupidity of the “Jefferson City Land Company,” for which they could afford to give up their slaves and their former principles.
The inevitable logic of facts does not compliment either the benevolence of the Land Company or the religion of the Church. The members of the Land Company may have been anti-slavery from principle, and their benevolent donation may have been unselfish: if so, they were unfortunate in their schemes; if not so, they were unskilled in dissimulation.