The property of the Southern Methodists in nearly every part of the State suffered one way or another, and many houses of worship were seized and used by the Northern Methodists that were not reported in the public prints, adjudicated in the civil courts or published in their Conference statistics.
Amongst the latter may be mentioned the churches at Plattsburg, Macon City, Fillmore, and a church at Glasgow, built and owned by the Southern Methodists for the use of the colored people. They purchased the other half of the Plattsburg church, gave up the Fillmore church after using it about five years, and never gave up the churches at Macon City and Glasgow.
In the presence of these facts the statement so often made from the pulpit and through the press, that the ministers and members of the M. E. Church never at any time engaged in seizing and appropriating to their use the property of the M. E. Church, South, sounds very strangely in the ears of candid, honest people. They evidently did not foresee the necessity for such a denial, and consequently were not very careful to cover up their tracks. They so far gloried in the history they were making as to report the property they had seized and appropriated in their Church statistics, which they published to the world.
The following list of property is taken from the published Statistics of the Missouri and Arkansas Conference M. E. Church for 1865–6, and which disappeared as fast as the suits were decided or the cases compromised:
| Independence church | $17,000 |
| Independence parsonage | 3,000 |
| Lagrange church | 12,000 |
| Springfield church | 12,000 |
| Springfield parsonage (not reported) | 3,000 |
| Boonville church | 10,000 |
| Plattsburg church | 5,000 |
| Fillmore church | 500 |
| Louisiana church | 5,000 |
| Glasgow colored church | 3,000 |
| Macon church | 2,500 |
| Total | $73,000 |
To this may be added the churches seized and held by them for a short time only, and given up before they could be reported to the Conference, the property obtained for “less than half its value,” by buying up old debts and forcing sales, where that course was necessary, and the furniture and fixtures destroyed and damaged in the use and abuse of the property held by them for so long, and which was assessed upon the lawful owners in the claims of restored decency and comfort, and the grand total would reach over $100,000, to say nothing of rentals, costs of suits, the damage of deprivation, etc.
In the face of all these facts, it must require no ordinary degree of moral courage for men in high position to affirm that the ministers and members of the M. E. Church never stole, seized, pressed, appropriated or possessed themselves of property that did not belong to them. Only the moral abrasion of civil war could produce the requisite “hard cheek.”
The civil war has passed away. Missouri is no longer ruled by shoulder straps and bayonets—the civil law is supreme—and even by judges who “neither fear God nor regard man,” except of their own party, the M. E. Church, South, has been reinstated and secured in her property rights.
Those who figured conspicuously in this church-seizing business often and loudly proclaimed that they were “making history.” True, they made history, and now they should not complain if they stand before the world in the light of the history they have made.
If they could afford to make the history and then boast of it, we can certainly afford to record it, especially when it is a record of the martyrdom of those sacred Christian principles for which a discriminating, righteous charity has no mantle.