About this time there was intense excitement in St. Louis, especially over the capture of Camp Jackson, the burning of bridges on the Pacific Railroad, and the retreat of Governor Jackson and General Price from Jefferson City. This excitement was greatly increased by the soldiers firing into promiscuous crowds of citizens along the streets, in which a number of citizens, with some women and children, were killed and wounded; and also the battle of Boonville, in which it was reported in the Missouri State Journal and other papers that Gen. Lyon’s forces had been badly cut to pieces, but which the knowledge of the facts afterward modified to some extent. The small engagement between the Federal and State forces at Rock Creek, near Independence, Mo., about the same time, added somewhat to the general excitement, which by this time had spread throughout the State.
Along the border of Kansas the people of the State were kept in constant alarm by the depredations of what were called at that time “Kansas Jayhawkers.” Many families were robbed, houses burned and preachers forced to fly for safety, as the following extract from a letter to the St. Louis Christian Advocate, from the Rev. N. Scarritt, a highly esteemed minister and a presiding elder then laboring in Kansas, will show:
“In addition to this, some of our preachers in the southern portion of the Conference have been compelled to quit the field and leave their work for the present, on account of the violence of civil strife so prevalent in that section.
“Our preachers there have taken no part in the political questions that are involving the country in so much trouble. They have been peaceable, law-abiding citizens, leaving politics alone, and devoting themselves exclusively to the peaceable work of preaching the peace-making gospel of the Prince of peace.
“Yet, though this has been their known and acknowledged character, it has not been sufficient to protect them from the rage of fanaticism and outlawed violence. Several of them have had their horses stolen from them by the Jayhawkers. Repeated threats of hanging, shooting, &c., have been made against them by the jayhawking tribe, though no attempt, so far as we know, has been made in the form of any overt act to execute these threats.”
In Southwest Missouri several of the ministers of the M. E. Church, South, were robbed and otherwise maltreated, amongst them Rev. W. H. Mobley, now gone to rest, and Rev. John Monroe, one of the oldest ministers of any Church in Missouri. These occurrences began to attract attention by their frequency and atrocity, and it was soon discovered that a systematic effort was being made to so annoy, and harass, and persecute the Southern Methodist ministers that they would have to abandon the State, and leave their churches and flocks to be seized and absorbed by others.
The following editorial in the St. Louis Christian Advocate, of July 25th, indicates but too plainly the condition of things then being forced upon us at this early period of the war:
“Traveling Preachers.—We are sad, sad indeed, when we think of the privations and sufferings of many of the traveling preachers of our Church in Missouri during these troublous times. The treatment some of them have received has been severe, not to say cruel. Bad men have sought to implicate them in measures with which they had nothing to do, and have them annoyed and distressed merely that private piques and personal animosities might be gratified. A number have literally been driven from their work, either by the malice of their enemies or by pressing want. Some, it may be, have acted imprudently—have become partisans in the strifes now going on, and thus, in part at least, were the authors of their own troubles. We have, at present, only a word to say. We hope that the preachers will remain at their work as generally as possible, that they will devote themselves to their work to the fullest possible extent, reproving, exhorting, comforting, etc., with all long suffering and kindness. In these times we must all suffer, more or less, and let us suffer with our people, and be sure that we suffer for righteousness’ sake and not as evil-doers. God rules, and they that serve him in spirit and in truth shall find him a very present help in time of trouble.”
The purpose to destroy the M. E. Church, South, in Missouri, was not only formed, but expressed also, and the Northern Methodist papers were then earnestly engaged in the effort to convince those in authority, and to fasten it upon the public mind, that but for the Southern Methodists treason and rebellion could not exist in Missouri. Such declarations as the following, taken from the Central Christian Advocate, of August 7, ’61, were of weekly publication in the most conspicuous places in their papers, and industriously circulated in the centres of military power:
“A Ruined Church.—An excellent brother, for the present a local elder of the M. E. Church, South, in Missouri, under date of July 27th, writes to us as follows: ‘I shall endeavor to advance the interests of the Central; I have no Christian fellowship with traitors and treason. Dr. M‘Anally has ruined the Church in this country, and I hope to see the time when a loyal Church will occupy this entire ground.’”