It was a settled purpose to drive the old ministers out of the State. Those who had planted the Church and grown up with her institutions, and whose long and useful lives were identified with the early and heroic history of the Church, had now to give place to newcomers, whom the people did not want, or yield to the pressure of the new order of things. These ecclesiastical bummers had influence at military headquarters, and could use the officers of the army to accomplish their purpose; and it was doubtless through their influence that so many orders were issued from the Headquarters of the Department of Missouri bearing directly upon ministers as a class. Not enough to affect them as citizens in common with other citizens, but as ministers.
The following order may suitably close this chapter:
When Major-General Halleck was in command of the Department of Missouri he caused to be issued an Order, under date of February 3, 1862, called “General Orders No. 29,” requiring the “President, Professors, Curators and all other officers of the University of Missouri to take and subscribe the oath of allegiance prescribed by the sixth article of the State Ordinance of October 16, 1861,” or failing to do so within thirty days their offices will be considered vacant, and “in order that its funds should not be used to teach treason or to instruct traitors, the authorities of the University should expel from its walls all persons who, by word or deed, assist or abet treason.”
The offices of railroad companies, Government contractors, agents, clerks and Government employees, and all military officers were required to take either the same oath or the one prescribed by an act of Congress, approved August 6, 1861.
This long military order closes as follows:
“V. It is recommended that all clergymen, professors and teachers, and all officers of public and private institutions for education, benevolence, business and trade, and who are in favor of the perpetuation of the Union, voluntarily to subscribe and file the oath of allegiance prescribed by the State Ordinance in order that their patriotism may be made known and recognized, and that they may be distinguished from those who wish to encourage rebellion and prevent the Government from restoring peace and prosperity to this city and State.”
Or, in other words, “mark them that company not with us.”
CHAPTER XI.
SEIZURE OF CHURCHES—CHURCHES IN KANSAS CITY AND INDEPENDENCE.
Church Property—Can the War Revive or Create Titles—Church Property on the Border—Maysville, Kentucky—Legal Rights of Property—Attainder—Honest Inquiry—Eighth Commandment—The Truth of History—Church in Kansas City—North Methodists—Faithful Ladies—What was Said at the Time—Some who were with us Went out from us—Their loss our gain—Church in Independence—How they Got it and Why they Kept it—The Former Pastor—Why he left—Battle of Independence—“Black Thursday”—A Rev. James Lee—How he got Possession of the Church—Rev. Mr. DeMott—How he got Possession of the Parsonage—A Poor Widow Turned Out by Military Order—Strategy—Rev. M. M. Pugh Demands the Property—Why Refused—Recourse to the Civil Courts—Statement of the Case by Counsel—Side Scenes—Extracts from the St. Louis Advocate—This Property in the Statistics of Northern Methodism—Action of the Missouri and Arkansas Conferences, M. E. Church, on the Subject—Reflections.
The fact has been stated elsewhere that the division of the Methodist Church in 1844 extinguished all right and title to the Church property in this State that inhered in the M. E. Church, North. After the Missouri Conference voted, in the fall of 1845, to adhere South, and by that act became an integral part of the M. E. Church, South, according to the “Plan of Separation,” the other wing of the Church became, in fact and in law, dispossessed of all the Church property in the State. By the decree of the Church and of the civil courts the right and title of the M. E. Church, North, to all species of Church property was so effectually extinguished that no claim was ever set up and no effort made by that Church to gain possession of any church, parsonage, or other property in this State, from the vote of the Missouri Conference in 1845 to the beginning of the war in 1861. That Church accepted the situation, acquiesced in the decision, and yielded her claims to the decree of Missouri Methodism.