INTRODUCTION.
BY
REV. T. O. SUMMERS, D.D.
The author of the following work has desired an expression of our opinion in regard to its publication. We have read the manuscript with painful interest, and are free to say that we have had some misgivings as to the expediency of sending it forth to the world. The facts here brought to light are so revolting, and their record is so damaging to the reputation of those by whom they were perpetrated and their aiders and abettors, that we might well hesitate, as to the propriety of their publication. As Methodists, in particular, we are strongly tempted to throw the veil of oblivion over those scenes of oppression and outrage, in which many of our co-religionists of the North bore so conspicuous a part.
But the cause of truth and righteousness demands the publication. There is a measure of retribution which must not be relegated to the “judgment to come,” but which must be dealt out in the present world.
We owe it to “the noble army of martyrs,” whose lives were sacrificed to appease the demands of fanaticism, bigotry, cruelty, and hate, that their murderers shall not go unwhipped of justice—at least, such castigation as the truth of history can inflict.
We owe it to those who were made widows and orphans by the monsters who enacted these bloody scenes, to let the world know that the husbands and fathers of these innocent sufferers were not rebels and traitors, but good men and true, “of whom the world was not worthy.”
We owe it to the institutions of our country to let it be known that the appalling scenes that were enacted during the late reign of terror were not the result of the principles which underlie our Federal and State governments, but of the palpable contravention of them.
We owe it to the ecclesiastical bodies of the South that posterity shall be told who invaded their rights; who robbed them of their churches, parsonages, cemeteries, and seminaries; who murdered, scourged, and plundered, and banished many of their ministers and lay members, including even women and children, because they would not compromise principles which they held dearer than life itself.
It is well for the world to be told that moral heroism has not, like Astræa, left the earth and ascended to the skies. Thank God! there have been heroes in our times; and we are encouraged to believe that the race will not soon become extinct. The night of persecution would bring such stars to view again. Daniel and the “three children,” the Maccabees, the Apostles, Polycarp, Ignatius, and other victims of Pagan persecution in primitive times—the Albigenses, Waldenses, Huguenots, the Marian martyrs, and other victims of papal persecution—Nonconformist and Remonstrant confessors, who “took joyfully,” or at least patiently, “the spoiling of their goods,” imprisonment, exile, and sometimes death—these have had their successors in the fearful times through which we have passed, and the record of them gives us a guaranty that under similar circumstances such heroes will appear again.
In perusing this work one is constantly reminded of the saying of the wise man, “Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time which was before us.” He had seen similar evils to those which we have seen and suffered. “There is an evil which I have seen under the sun as an error which proceedeth from the ruler: folly is set in great dignity, and the rich sit in low place. I have seen servants upon horses, and princes walking as servants upon the earth.” “So I returned and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter.” Then, as in our late calamitous times, good men mourned as they were forced to
——bear the whips and scorns of time,