“The undersigned, clergymen of different religious denominations in New England, hereby, in the name of Almighty God and in his presence, do solemnly protest against the passage of what is known as the Nebraska bill, or any repeal or modification of the existing legal prohibitions of slavery in that part of our national domain which it is proposed to organize into the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas. We protest against it as a great moral wrong, as a breach of faith eminently unjust to the moral principles of the community, and subversive of all confidence in national engagements; as a measure full of danger to the peace and even the existence of our beloved Union, and exposing us to the righteous judgments of the Almighty: and your protestants, as in duty bound, will ever pray.
“Boston, Massachusetts, March 1, 1854.”
This pretentious protest—“in the name of Almighty God”—was the first open and bold attempt of the clergy in this country to influence national legislation; and while Messrs. Mason, Douglass and others in the United States Senate administered to these officious clergymen a severe rebuke for thus intermeddling with the affairs of the National Government, good men were justly alarmed for the result, and the whole country was appalled by this bold advance of the Church toward the control of the affairs of the State.
Then the finest model of ecclesiastical polity in the world trembled and the wisest frame work of civil government felt the shock. Then the work of our fathers—combining the wisdom of the ages and the religion of the gospel in one grand structure of civil and religious liberty—the glory of Washington, the pride of every American, the dread of tyrants and the admiration of the world, began to reel upon its throne and totter to its fall. Then the deadly virus was injected, and the veins and arteries of national life carried the poison to every part of the body politic, and from that day forth “death was in the pot.” Then the axe was laid at the root of the fair tree of liberty, whose roots had been fastened deep in the national heart, and whose branches already spread over a continent and toward heaven, under which the oppressed of every nation found shelter, and the down-trodden of every clime sought repose, peace, liberty and life. Then the religious and political waters mingled, and the whole stream of national life was corrupted and hastened on in turbulent commotion to the “blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke” of ’61.
Ministers contented themselves then with a firm and solemn protest; they afterward made imperious demands. They sought then to prevent the enactment of “a measure full of danger to the peace and even the existence of the Union;” they afterward demanded, in the name of Almighty God, the enactment of laws, the conduct of the war, the election of men to office, the success of party measures, manhood suffrage, and any other purely political matter, as though the union of Church and State was an accomplished fact and they were the constituted vice-regents to supervise and control the legislation of the country.
At the beginning of the war, and during its continuance, when ecclesiastical bodies met, about the gravest matter before them for deliberation was the “State of the Country,” and how they could deliver themselves so as to effect in any particular direction either the course of Congress, political elections or the movement of armies. This was true in an eminent degree of the M. E. Church, the Presbyterian Church (Old and New School), Congregational, Unitarian, and some Baptist associations of the Northern and Eastern States.
Nor wore these deliverances confined to the larger representative Bodies of these Churches, but the primary church courts, ministers’ associations, conventions and Conferences made themselves conspicuous by such unwise interference with matters purely secular and political.
Secret conclaves were held in Missouri by ministers and others professing to be disciples of Christ, in which plans were devised and projected to persecute, by proscription, robbery, arrests, imprisonment and confiscation, if not by means still severer, ministers of the gospel in this State who would not stultify themselves nor disgrace their profession by falling in with them and joining the hue and cry for blood and death.
Consultations were had and schemes devised by which the military authorities could be used to oppress and persecute ministers whose loyalty was questioned by these politico-ecclesiastics, and whose only crime was that they possessed property and stood high in the confidence of the people whom they had served faithfully for many years.
Revolutions never go backward, and it was a part of the forward movement of these scheming adventurers who followed the army to keep out of danger, and who served post and field commanders as volunteer aids for the uses they could make of them in taking possession of churches, persecuting and running off ministers and foisting another ministry on the people.