Martyrdom in Missouri, Volume 1 (of 2)

Provisions of the Plan of Separation—Time of Division—The Missouri a Border Conference—Vote on Adhering North or South nearly Unanimous—The Disaffected—Covenant Breakers—The M. E. Church in Missouri after the Division—Her Ministers and Members—How Regarded—Relative Strength of the Two Churches in Numbers and Property—Sympathy—Persecution—Tenacity in Spite of Opposition—Success the only Revenge—The Class of Northern Methodist Preachers—Their Connection with Clandestine Efforts to Free the Slaves—Their Condemnation and their Secret Service—Character of the Old Missourians—Their Vindication—Northern Methodists Condemned for being Secret Political Partisans, and not for Preaching the Gospel—The Anti-Slavery Element in Missouri Ten Years before the War—Lawful vs. Clandestine Means—“Underground Railroad” and other Nefarious Schemes to Run off the Slaves of Missouri—These Things Condemned by the Anti-Slavery Party—Public Meetings of Citizens in the Interest of Order and Peace.

The “Plan of Separation” adopted by the General Conference of 1844, to which attention is given in the preceding chapter, fixed the line of separation along the line of division between the free and the slaveholding States, for the most part, and provided as follows, to-wit:

“1. That, should the Annual Conferences in the slaveholding States find it necessary to unite in a distinct ecclesiastical connection, the following rule shall be observed with regard to the northern boundary of such connection: All the societies, stations and Conferences adhering to the Church in the South, by a vote of a majority of the members of said societies, stations and Conferences, shall remain under the unmolested pastoral care of the Southern Church, and the ministers of the Methodist Episcopal Church shall in no wise attempt to organize churches or societies within the limits of the Church, South, nor shall they attempt to exercise any pastoral oversight therein: it being understood that the ministry of the Church, South, reciprocally observe the same rule in relation to societies, stations and Conferences adhering by vote of a majority to the Methodist Episcopal Church; provided, also, that this rule shall apply only to societies, stations and Conferences bordering on the line of division, and not to interior charges, which shall in all cases be left to the care of that Church within whose territory they may be situated.”—General Conference Journal, vol. 2, p. 135.

The Missouri Annual Conference was one of the Conferences “bordering on the line of division,” and the question of adhering North or South was thoroughly canvassed and decided almost unanimously in favor of the South. Those ministers favoring the North were allowed to adhere North “without blame,” by the “Plan of Separation.” They were seven out of one hundred and thirty-six.

Prior to the session of the Conference in Columbia, in the fall of 1845, when the vote was taken, the “societies and stations,” along the border particularly, were asked to decide by a vote of the members whether they would adhere North or South. The vote was so nearly unanimous in favor of adhering South that not a single “society or station” in the Conference gave a majority in favor of adhering North, and in very few of them was there a division at all. In a few societies along the border, such as St. Louis, Hannibal, Lagrange and some others, and a few scattering societies in the interior, there was a small minority in favor of adhering North. These were generally men recently from the Northern States, or mal-contents who rejoiced in the occasion thus afforded to seek notoriety or revenge in a contentious faction. Such persons are found, more or less, in every community, and unfortunately for the peace of society some sections of Missouri unwittingly offered special inducements to that class of immigrants, and received quite a large surplus of them from the older States. Amongst the few disaffected of Missouri Methodists who would not go with the majority in this division may have been some honorable exceptions, but they were few and far between, and only prove the general rule.

The vote to adhere South was so general in the State that no one thought of accepting the “pastoral care” of the ministers of the M. E. Church, North, until after that Church had pronounced the “Plan of Separation null and void,” and had proceeded to violate their plighted faith and disregard every “binding obligation in the premises.”

The right and authority of one party to set aside and declare “null and void” a solemn contract or covenant entered into by two parties, without the consent of the other party, is not debatable. The failure of the sixth restrictive rule, according to the decision of the United States Supreme Court, did not vitiate the covenant, nor had the M. E. Church, South, up to 1854, by act or deed, according to the same high authority, forfeited the covenant to the other party by any failure to comply with its provisions.

The assumption of authority, therefore, by the M. E. Church to set aside the conditions of the covenant, to violate what their Bishops had pronounced its “binding obligations in the premises,” to reject the fraternal messenger and ignore the claims of the Church, South, and proceed to “organize churches and societies within the limits of the Church, South,” could only exhibit to the world their utter recklessness of moral obligation and place them before the public as covenant breakers, “truce breakers and false accusers.”

In such light were they and their friends and abettors held in Missouri, after the Church in the whole State had decided so positively to adhere South. Indeed, so general was this decision, that for many years after the division the existence of the M. E. Church, North, in Missouri was scarcely suspected by the best informed.

There were but few places in the State where their presence was tolerated; not because of any religious or political proscription and persecution, but because their presence in Missouri was not only unauthorized, but in direct violation of the most solemn ecclesiastical compact, for which an instinctive sense of right in every community was disposed to hold the Northern Methodist preachers responsible.

All our best notions of religious toleration revolt at the idea of proscribing the largest liberties of any church in any country or community for any reasons. But, then, when a church deliberately proscribes herself and fixes her own limits of territory, transferring all her claims to property and privileges beyond her self-appointed boundaries to another and a “distinct ecclesiastical organization,” a decent respect for moral obligation and the covenanted rights of others demand that every enlightened community should hold every such church to the strictest accountability for every violation of her self-imposed obligations. Covenant breakers forfeit their claims to all the benefits of the covenant broken, if they do not forfeit their claims upon the confidence and protection of the community whose rights and privileges the broken covenant respected.

Communities whose sense of justice and moral right are outraged by religious teachers, to whom neither civil nor criminal law will apply, have recourse only to a public sentiment which can place the guilty under the ban of public condemnation. The Northern Methodist preachers who were trying to “organize societies” and “exercise pastoral care” in Missouri, from the division of the Church in 1844 to the beginning of the civil war in 1861, need not be reminded how terrible and general was this ban of public condemnation. It was not a proscription which they themselves had not authorized; nor could they claim the benefits of a persecution for righteousness’ sake without confessing to an indictment which truth and honesty found against them for obtaining said benefits under false pretenses. They raised the cry of persecution, but failed to enlist the popular sympathy due to such a cry, because the virtues and elements of a religious persecution were all wanting. They, nevertheless, managed to keep up a factious, feeble organization in some places in the State, sustained by missionary money from the North, which took advantage of every popular excitement against them to manufacture foreign sympathy, and, at the same time, furnished a convenient refuge for the disaffected, mal-contents, of the M. E. Church, South.

They sought, by maintaining a convenient proximity to the Southern Church, not only to catch the Methodist immigration from the North, but, also, to afford a convenient retreat for those who seek in prominence what they lack in piety, and to “beguile unstable souls” with the false plea of “Old Church” and “Old Methodism.” Thus, while serving all the purposes of factious agitation, and furnishing in themselves an example of covenant breaking for covetousness’ sake, which can never be reproduced and re-enacted, they have, also, served the purposes of peace and purity by receiving from other churches the contentious, the dissatisfied and the disaffected. It was an easy road to a miserable revenge, as it was often a happy riddance of a pestilent element, while the rule of loss and gain was reversed.

The relation of the two churches during that period to the people of the whole State will be seen in their statistics. At the time of the division the whole Church in Missouri numbered 26,310 members, served by 113 traveling preachers. In 1850 the M. E. Church, South, had 27,012 members and 126 traveling preachers in Missouri alone. In 1850 the M. E. Church, North, had 5,474 members and fifty-one traveling preachers in Missouri and Arkansas together.

The relative strength of the two churches in 1860 is seen in the following figures: The M. E. Church, South, had 48,797 members and 243 traveling preachers, and the M. E. Church, North, had 6,619 members and sixty-nine traveling preachers.

In church property there was a much greater difference. When the Church divided, all the property in churches, parsonages, cemeteries, colleges, Conference funds, and of every other description, passed into the hands of the M. E. Church, South, according to the “Plan of Separation.” Those who voted to adhere North were not strong enough in any one place to set up any claim to the Church property. The Church, North, was thus left without houses of worship or any other property possessions in the State. By common consent, as well as by the decision of the courts, the division of the Church extinguished the right and title of the M. E. Church to all property in the State of Missouri. The struggle for existence, under the circumstances, was a forlorn hope, and the erection of churches in communities where they were not in sympathy with either the masses or the moneyed people was a slow and doubtful enterprise. They had to rely, for the most part, upon private houses in obscure neighborhoods for places of public worship, for it was not always that they could even get the use of school houses for that purpose. In St. Louis they had one Church, Ebenezer, which had to supply them with church facilities for the whole State for many years. They built a small church in Hannibal in 1850. In 1856 they added Simpson Chapel, in St. Louis, to the list, and then, in 1858, they erected a small brick church in Jefferson City, for which they had help from abroad. These were all small churches, but amply sufficient for all their wants. They may have had a few other small churches in different sections of the State, but their number and resources were quite small, and their influence for good in each community was unfortunately counteracted by the spirit of contention and strife they created. In 1860 the whole of their Church property in this State and in Arkansas was estimated in their statistics at $36,400.

Under these circumstances it is not surprising if they made up in bitter, spiteful jealousies what they lacked in the true elements of success, and repaid the public disapprobation in a dogged tenacity that seeks revenge in success despite all opposition.

They had no friendly feeling for the Church, South, and gladly and freely employed every means to disaffect and disintegrate the Southern organization, especially in obscure neighborhoods. Nor did they scruple at the grossest misrepresentations of the facts concerning the division of the Church.

Their preachers traversed the State and visited every family that was suspected of being in sympathy with them; and wherever two or three could be gathered together of kindred sympathy they were organized into a society, regularly visited, and made a nucleus around which to gather the disaffected and disappointed of the M. E. Church, South.

The preachers engaged in this work were not of the class and style of men whose ministrations would reach and affect the intelligent and cultivated portions of the people. They were, for the most part, rough, uncultivated and illiterate, and hence their social and intellectual affinities were found among the lower classes and the ignorant. They were the kind of men to be doggedly pertinacious, and to know nothing amongst men outside of one idea, one purpose, one cause. They looked upon everything that did not favor them and their cause as wrong per se, and considered their mission unfulfilled until it was righted or removed.

They had more patience than charity. They could bide their time, but could not tolerate opposition. They could proscribe, and even persecute, others for opinion’s sake, but could not endure with fortitude the reflex influence of their own bigotry.

Public opinion and jesuitical policy required them to be discreet as ministers of the gospel in their public performances, but as partisans they were strangely indiscreet. They were sent into Missouri by the authorities of their Church distinctly and thoroughly indoctrinated in the belief that the success of the Church whose credentials they bore was in the success of the anti-slavery party; hence they were secret and earnest partisans out of the pulpit. They associated with abolitionists, and warmly espoused every measure for the abolition of slavery. Whether right or wrong, slavery existed then by the authority of the Constitution of the State and under the protection of her laws; and, like all other men, slaveholders could not surrender tamely their constitutional and legal rights to that species of property in which they had invested their money, much less could they look with indifference upon the presence and movements of men who were seeking by clandestine, “under-ground” methods to render insecure their property by means neither open nor honorable.

No class of men were more favorably circumstanced for the prosecution of such a work than these Northern Methodist preachers, and they were considered by the abolition party as indispensable to final success.

It was in the character of partisans, and not ministers, that they were put under the ban of public sentiment. The fact that they were ministers of the gospel, and that they used the privileges of their profession to further the objects of a party that sought by unlawful and disingenuous means the extirpation of slavery, made their presence, character and work the more offensive to the people of the State. The common opinion among men who cared less for the institutions of Christianity than for the institutions of the State was that the Northern Methodist preachers in this State were wolves in sheep’s clothing. Only by an unseemly torture of facts could they make it appear that they were opposed and persecuted because they were ministers of the gospel.

When ministers of the gospel become political partisans, and expect their high calling to protect them in a sinister attempt to abolish the institutions and laws under which the rights of property are protected, they should not complain if honorable men detect and denounce the hypocrisy.

The spirit of reckless insubordination that animated these fanatical preachers has often, of late, found emphatic utterance through their Church papers. This is its language: “We must teach people to make better laws, or trample upon such as are made, if we expect to meet God in peace.”

But in those days the utterance was in the signs and symbols of secret societies, and the execution was in the by-ways, around the corners, in “Uncle Tom’s cabin,” in occasional doses of poison and midnight arson, with the aid of butcher-knives, axes and “under-ground railroads.” For such work true ministers of the gospel are never held responsible; but when it is incited and aided by those calling themselves such, the verdict of double guilt can not be escaped.

It would be as unfair to say that all Northern Methodist preachers in the State engaged in this nefarious business as to say that none of them were respectable, Christian gentlemen. Suspicion rested upon all of them, because the grounds of suspicion were too strong and the evidence of guilt too general to make wholesale exceptions. Nor did the masses of the people know or care to discriminate.

It is true that very few men of worth, of ability, or of standing in the M. E. Church could be had for this work. They looked upon it as involving much toil, sacrifice, suffering, and perhaps martyrdom, for which they were not candidates. But men who had broken down in other fields, and were no longer wanted in other Conferences, and men who had despaired of distinction in the more honorable fields of competition with their brethren, embraced the opportunity thus afforded to win notoriety.

The men who could consent to do such work for a political party while they wore the cloth of a holy calling were the pliant tools of the John Browns and others who were prominent leaders in the great crusade against the institutions of the South.

It is due to the truth of history to state that the old settlers of Missouri and the slaveholders of that day were high-minded, honorable, intelligent men, who would scorn to proscribe and persecute men for opinion’s sake, or protect and harbor men who would secretly and treacherously use the hospitality of the slaveholder to reach the slave and poison his mind against his master, and inspire him with the hope of freedom by the torch and the dagger.

Missourians were not hypocrites, nor would they abuse a generous hospitality, betray either public or social confidence, or seek by underhanded, sinister means the destruction of the rights of property and the guarantees of domestic and social order. However they may be characterized by ugly epithets and maligned by partisan hirelings, they will stand vindicated on the pages of history as humane, generous, peaceful, prosperous, intelligent, honorable and high-minded citizens, who could neither perpetrate a mean act nor tolerate, even in so-called ministers of the gospel, the abuse of confidence or domestic treachery.

In illustration of the abuse of hospitality to secret abolition purposes, one instance in a thousand must suffice.

In the spring of 1856 Mr. Thomas E. Thompson, of Palmyra, Mo., was returning home late on Saturday evening, when he found a stranger by the road side preparing to camp in a corner of the fence, with his wife and child. He had unharnessed his team and stretched his wagon cloth on the fence over them for a shelter from the inclement weather.

Mr. Thompson stopped and inquired why the stranger did not go into the city and obtain better accommodations; and when informed that he had no money, and thought of spending not only the night but the following Sabbath there, and that the stranger was a Northern Methodist preacher trying to get to Kansas, he told him it would not do, invited them to his house, and offered them a generous hospitality, which was accepted. The child had never seen negroes, was much alarmed at the sight, and would not remain in their presence.

During the night the preacher got to talking to one of the colored women, tried to persuade her that she was free, and that he would assist her to reach Illinois. She reported the facts to Mr. T.; and on Sabbath afternoon he overheard the preacher talking with the husband of this woman in the stable, telling him that he was not only a free man, but that he would do right in taking Mr. T.’s horse, or anything else by which he could gain his freedom. The negro told the preacher to go off and let him alone, that he had a good master, a good home and everything in plenty, and he did not want to be free. Mr. Thompson ordered the preacher to leave, telling him that he could not protect him from violence if the community were apprised of the facts. He let him depart in peace.

If Northern Methodist preachers were condemned, it was not for preaching the gospel and trying to save the souls of men, but for a palpable violation of plighted ecclesiastical faith, and more particularly for their partisan services in the cause of emancipation.

Let it be understood, also, that Missourians did not so much oppose the emancipation of their slaves as they did the means used to accomplish it. For thousands of slaveholders believed that the abolition of slavery would be a blessing both to the slave and the master, if it could be done in a lawful and peaceable way. Many of them were laboring to reach the result through a political organization, by open-handed, lawful means.

For ten years before the war it was a foregone conclusion with the more intelligent classes that slavery would be abolished in Missouri, and a system of free labor adopted that would be more successful in developing the resources of the State. But they looked for it to be done by a change of the Constitution and the necessary legislation; and, while they expected this result to be reached in a lawful way, they heartily detested the secret organizations and treacherous agents that were seeking to decoy the slave from his master, and furnish facilities for his escape from bondage, and his protection from the legal claims of his owner.

This was against law, in contravention of law, and in flagrant violation of constitutional guaranties, which all the courts and officers of the country were sworn to protect and enforce; and hence it was considered by the people and the courts—by the law and the gospel—a crime against the peace and dignity of the State. But it was one of those crimes which either could not be covered by statutory enactments, or in the commission of which the statute could be evaded or the guilty party concealed.

Legal processes could not be served; the law could be set at defiance while the mischief was being done; and the only recourse left to the people was in such protection as they could devise outside of the law. Some carried their slaves into the Southern States and disposed of them. And in some communities, where forbearance with these disturbers of domestic tranquillity had ceased to be a virtue, the citizens assembled together in a peaceable and lawful way, interchanged views, and devised the only lawful means left them to protect themselves and secure the public peace. They adopted resolutions, stating publicly and openly their grievances, and warning the abolition emissaries to desist from intermeddling with their property and their rights, and if they could not settle down and become peaceable, law-abiding citizens, then to leave the country for the country’s good. In a few counties of the State these public meetings were held, and in no instance was there any indignities or outrages committed on the person or property of any man by such public assemblies or by their authority.