Thus ended the case as it exists plainly in the facts of history, but there are some side lights and side scenes in the details without which the affair will not be complete. A few circumstantial details, which are contained in a communication found in the St. Louis Christian Advocate, of June 20, 1866, will serve to sample the whole. Take the following extracts:
“And there, too, stands that elegant church, with its stained windows and tall, graceful spire, at once the pride and ornament of the city; but its aisles are trod by other feet, and its cushioned pews are filled or reserved for other worshipers than those who built, or bought, or owned the property. The pulpit and altar, so tastefully fitted and furnished by the young men in 1857, are now served by other hands and other tongues, and I had almost said by another gospel, than those for whom or that for which they were prepared.
“The parsonage, which has housed so many good men of our church and their families, for whom it was built, is now occupied by another; and the spacious yard, once so tastefully ornamented with shade and fruit trees, flowers and evergreens, is laid waste and almost bare—now the common resort of horses, cows, hogs, dogs and dirty children from the streets.
“Sadly I turned away from a scene of wrong and desecration to pity the moral condition of the hearts that could meditate and the hands that could perpetrate such sacrilegious injustice. What right have the Northern Methodists to this property? Did they build it? buy it? pay for it? or even give one dollar toward paying for it? What claim do they set up? What show of right? If there be a higher law than civil law—if there be another standard of moral justice and right than the inspired gospel which they pretend to preach and practice—then they may have some show of claim; not without.
“For nearly twenty years that property has been held by trustees, regularly appointed, for the use and benefit of the M. E. Church, South, and no one questioned their legal right or sought to disturb their peaceable possession.
“But during the reign of terror, in 1862, ’63 and ’64, under which so many people in Jackson county lost their lives, and so many more their property, and under the oft-reiterated threats of Northern Methodists and their hirelings, with no inconsiderable military pressure, this property passed out of our hands without the formalities and fogyism of bargain and sale, or legal transfer of title.
“* * * When the war closed, and President Johnson had ordered the return of the property taken from us in the South under the notorious Stanton-Ames order, the trustees of our church made a civil demand for the restoration of this property also, which was refused by these loyal (?) property-lovers.
“The ladies, believing that they had the first and best right to the property, and chagrined at this refusal, entered the church one day with their knitting and sewing, to the number of thirty, and disposed of themselves in a peaceable, quiet, orderly way, to spend the day in the house of worship built and paid for by their husbands, fathers and brothers. The Northern Methodist preacher, soon apprised of the fact, hastened to a civil magistrate and made affidavit that these ladies were ‘disturbing the peace,’ procured a peace warrant and a constable and proceeded to the church, where he found these orderly ladies ‘assembled, neither with multitude or tumult,’ and had them arrested and dragged before the civil officer for trial. With all of their ‘false witnesses’ nothing was found in them ‘worthy of prison or of death,’ and after binding them over to keep the peace they were released.
“* * * President Johnson was applied to personally for the restoration of this property to its rightful owners, as it had been taken under military authority and order. He referred the matter to General Pope, commanding the Department. Gen. Pope put the case, with instructions, in the hands of a subordinate officer, and he buried it so deep in his pocket that it never came to light afterward.”
These are only some of the circumstances that seem necessary to develop the whole transaction, but they must suffice. The case is on record, with many others of like character, to go down to posterity as a part of the history made during those dark days. The Northern Methodist papers have repeatedly denied that their Church ever seized, held or appropriated the property of the M. E. Church, South. One more fact will be a positive confirmation of their appropriation of this property. It is this: