Martyrdom in Missouri, Volume 1 (of 2)

by W. M. Leftwich

They succeeded in this much, at least, in making the impression pretty general that their creed was a policy, and their policy was simply a question of loss and gain. Not that they loved slavery less, but that they loved money more; not that they loved the Northern Methodist Church more, but that they could use that Church better: while the success of the other party resolved itself into a question of deception; either deceiving themselves or deceiving others—possibly both.

Residing in Jefferson City at the time, and being personally acquainted with each member of the Land Company, as well as cognizant of all the facts, the author feels justified in thus making transparent the shrewd scheme about which so much was said at the time. The only motive for this expose is a vindication of the truth of history and an analysis of the spirit of the times before the war.

After the failure of the “Jefferson City Land Company” and the M. E. Church, North, to build up a Cambridge or a Harvard at the State Capital the Land Company subsided, and the Church directed attention to other expedients and sought a footing in Missouri through other agencies. Public sentiment was against them; political prejudices and social barriers denied them access to the people. All other religious denominations were unfriendly to them; their best preachers left them, and either went into the M. E. Church, South, or returned home. The better class of Northern immigrants, even from their own Church at home, found it to their interest to seek other church connections.

A suspicion followed them into the domestic, the social and the business relations of life, which manifested too clearly the instinctive sense of moral justice and religious fidelity in the public mind to be either mistaken or escaped by them as covenant breakers, false accusers and clandestine enemies to the property and peace of the State. It was natural for them under such circumstances to long for redress, and gladly embrace and use every means in their power to effect their purpose. They had a lively conception of the horrors of slavery, and more skill than conscience in magnifying them for the Northern press and the Northern public. By this means the Northern mind was misled, and many a victim of their misrepresentations was undeceived only on coming to Missouri and seeing for himself the system of slavery, not as it existed in a blinded imagination, but as it existed in the homes and on the farms of slaveholders; and abandoning their deceivers, they vindicated both the system and the people from the false impeachment of unscrupulous fanatics. This made against them and exasperated them, and when they found that they were not sufficiently successful in deceiving the public mind to secure even the letters with their bearers from their own Church in the Free States, the Missouri Conference, in 1858, uttered complaint in the following resolution:

“Resolved, That we hereby earnestly and affectionately request our brethren of other Conferences, in dismissing from their charges, by letter, members who intend immigrating to Missouri, that they be at pains to inform them that, under the blessing of the great Head of the Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church in this State is living and thriving, and urge upon them the propriety of attaching themselves to our Church here immediately on their arrival.”

Several Quarterly Conferences took action on the subject, and set forth more fully the grounds of complaint, which even Dr. Elliott could not escape or overlook in his “Southwestern Methodism.”

Perhaps no event in the history of those times furnished them more food for comment and capital than the hanging of the Rev. Anthony Bewley by the citizens of Fort Worth, Texas, in September, 1860. Out of this event the strongest system of falsehood was manufactured by designing men to fire the Northern Methodist heart against the Southern people, especially the Southern Methodists.

It was at a time when the country was convulsed with political excitement from one end to the other, and partisan politics, more or less, colored every report of the affair. It was almost impossible at the time to get a true history of the event, as the most extravagant statements were put in circulation to influence the Presidential election the following November. The reports in the papers made at the time, and under the pressure of the most exciting and embittered political campaign known to the history of this country, must be received with great allowance and heavy discount. After the heat of political excitement, when every ballot stood for a thousand bullets, and the fire and blood of the civil war that followed have all passed away, when passion and prejudice can no longer serve the purposes of party, the following facts appear upon the surface and bear the imperial image and superscription of truth:

1. That the Rev. Anthony Bewley, a minister of the M. E. Church, North, was hung at Fort Worth, Texas, September, 1860.

2. That the said Bewley had been living in Texas but a short time, operating when he could as a minister of his Church, but connected with an extensive secret organization for the purpose of freeing the slaves, at whatever risk to the peace, the property, and the lives of citizens.