Martyrdom in Missouri, Volume 1 (of 2)

Conflict of Sentiment—Party Spirit—New England and Missouri Fanatics—Fraternal Blood—“Houses Divided—Three against Two and Two against Three”—Organized Armies and Predatory Brigands—Bull Run, Seven Pines, The Wilderness, Gettysburg and Vicksburg Reproduced on a small scale in every County and Cross Roads in Missouri—War upon Non-Combatants—The Bloodiest Records—Ministers of the Gospel—Their Troubles and Perplexities—Peculiar Trials and Persecutions—Military Fetters put upon the Conscience—Disloyal Prayers and Military Orders.

The mixed population of Missouri, presenting such diverse types of domestic and social life, and such different casts of political and religious belief, could not fail to be turbulent, contentious and almost self-destructive in any civil revolution. The people were not homogeneous, and could not unite upon any principles or policy, civil or ecclesiastical; but, on the contrary, each shade of political and religious faith stood out upon the face of society sharply defined, firmly set and fully armed for both offensive and defensive warfare. Party leaders were bolder, party spirit ran higher, party blood waxed hotter and party strife raged fiercer than in any other State.

When the Northern fanatics adopted a platform and announced a line of policy, the Missouri fanatics of the same school would not only fall into line, but glory in their excess of fanaticism, and push the extremest measures of their Northern masters to the most reckless results. Likewise the Southern fire-eaters, so-called, could always find in Missouri politicians the champions of their extremest measures. Hence it was a common “cant” saying among the politicians that “when the New England fanatics took snuff the Missouri fanatics would sneeze,” and, indeed, some times the sneezing was done before the snuff was taken, and in all that was revolutionary and reckless in politics and religion they could “out-herod Herod.”

The extremists, North and South, whether religious or political, found the heartiest supporters in Missouri; and that which brought the two sections together in organized warfare brought the citizens of the same neighborhood in Missouri, and even members of the same family, into the sharpest personal conflict. The great battles of Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Vicksburg, the Wilderness, Seven Pines and Gettysburg were reproduced on a limited scale in a thousand places in Missouri. The brush, the prairie, the glen, the road side all over the State sheltered concealed foes, and often witnessed the deadliest combats between neighbors and brothers. Here “houses were divided, two against three and three against two,” “a man was set at variance with his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man’s foes were they of his own household.” There was in many instances a literal fulfillment of the prediction that “the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child, and the children shall rise up against their parents and cause them to be put to death;” and the spirit of contention was too rife to confine itself to the hostile armies, or even the lawless bands of armed men, who, in the name of one party or the other, satiated their diabolical hatred and inordinate cupidity by robbery, plunder, pillage and depopulation with fire and sword.

It is no marvel that the most relentless and inhuman spirit of the war found encouragement, if not protection, and expended its force and fury upon the non-combatant and helpless population of Missouri; for this State furnished the bravest men for the armies and the most dastardly cowards for “home protection.” While her brave sons fought and fell upon the fields of honor, making the very blood and death of battle illustrious by an unchallenged heroism, the warfare at home presented scenes of outrage and horror unsurpassed by anything in the annals of civilized warfare, if, indeed, there can be such a thing as civilized warfare, for every thing about it is intensely savage.

Between the “jayhawkers” of Kansas and the “bushwhackers” of Missouri some whole counties were plundered, some were desolated by fire and sword, and some were almost depopulated. Widows’ homes were pillaged and burned, delicate mothers and daughters were captured, taken to camp and compelled to cook and wash for ruffian bands of armed men, to say nothing of nameless indignities and the most horrible crimes. Churches and dwellings were seized, converted into barracks for soldiers, stables for horses, and often burned to the ground in wanton destruction.

It was often heard in boast that the track of armies, or more properly predatory bands, should be lighted through entire counties by the glare of burning buildings, and the threat was too often witnessed in all the midnight glare of faithful execution by the pallid and panic-stricken old men, women and children in mid-winter. But the heart sickens at the recital, as the enlightened conscience revolted then at the reality. These statements must suffice to recall the scenes which were enacted and the men who educated and then hardened the public conscience for the crimes committed during the war, against God and his chosen ministers and church, and for the subsequent legislative proscription of ministers of the gospel, as a class, and Christianity as an institution.

The attitude of ministers of the gospel in Missouri toward the issues of the war, and how far they participated, on the one side or the other, in its fatal scenes require notice here.

At the first, and, indeed, for two years and more after the war commenced, the sentiment of the State was so equally divided between the contending sections that ministers who did not propose to forsake their high calling and become active participants in the strife were very cautious in their expressions of sympathy. But as the Northern or Southern feeling predominated in any given locality it became so intolerant as to demand from ministers, as well as all others, an unequivocal avowal of sentiment, which always subjected the minister to the severest criticism and the most unsparing censure when he chanced to think differently from the majority. The people of opposite sentiments denied him access to them for good, withdrew their encouragement and support, and thus forced him either into the army or into exile. The people were so prejudiced and intolerant as to believe that a man of opposite political faith was unfitted, by that fact, to minister to them in holy things—that sectional sympathy disqualified men for the ministry, and that the men who would preach Christ must either dry up the fountains of human sympathy, surrender all the rights of citizenship, or subordinate the message of life and salvation to the dictum of the leaders and representatives of the intolerant spirit of anti-Christ that prevailed. In this shape the persecution of ministers of the gospel commenced in Missouri with the first breaking out of the war. Ministers were forced to give up their pulpits and abandon their congregations where the two were not in sympathy upon the issues of the war.

Many an old man who had been settled for years in one pastoral charge, where his children had grown up and some of them had died, and where all the tenderest and dearest associations known to the sacred relation of pastor and people had ripened and matured around the fireside, in the sick room, the funeral scene, the homes and hearts of grief, and around the bridal and sacramental altars, suddenly found himself and his family proscribed, maligned and friendless in the very homes and hearts in which aforetime their pre-eminence was unchallenged. A bitter necessity forced him often to give up his home and his pulpit, leave his flock in the wilderness and seek protection and support either in the army or among strangers. In this way many ministers, old and young, were driven to a course which they did not elect, and forced into a position which was neither of their own choosing nor consistent with their sense of ministerial propriety and ministerial obligation.

And yet for a position forced upon them by the proscriptive intolerance of their former friends they were held responsible, and even severely censured by the public.

Many went into both armies—not willingly, but by constraint—not of choice, but of necessity—not to fight the living with carnal weapons, but to save the dying with the power of salvation, and to fight the battles of the Lord of Hosts with the spiritual weapons that are “mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.”

Some ministers of the gospel entered the army as soldiers to fight the battles of the country, and no doubt did it conscientiously, believing it to be a high patriotic duty. They claimed nothing on the score of their profession, but accepted in good faith the issues of war and the arbitrament of the sword. Those who survived the war claim no undue credit, and those who sacrificed their lives for a principle and a cause deserve no censure.

Those who entered either army voluntarily, either as chaplains or soldiers, did it understandingly and, perhaps, conscientiously, and accepted the penalty or reward due to such a position only. As a soldier the preacher claimed no exceptional privileges, and as a preacher the soldier claimed no exemption from duty on the field or punishment at home. But it is a notorious fact that preachers who were in the Southern army as soldiers, and who survived the war and returned to their homes in Missouri, no matter how gladly, gracefully and loyally they accepted the situation, have not met the consideration nor received the treatment in all cases meted out to other Confederate soldiers; nor have preachers from the Union army in all instances been treated as other Federal soldiers who returned from the same regiments and to the same counties. Charity at least demands the belief that this is due rather to the instinctive disapprobation in the public mind of ministers bearing arms at all than to any studied maliciousness; and the belief is just as grateful as it is warranted by the facts. But if it should fall out in the subsequent facts to be presented in this book that a studied malice and a methodical madness have done more than the anti-war sentiment, then, however ungrateful, we must accept the facts as the best interpretation of the anti-christian spirit which has exhausted itself upon the ministers of the gospel in this State.

Under this kind of pressure many pastors were without churches and many churches without pastors; and, in many parts of the State, the churches were disorganized and broken up, and the flocks scattered in the wilderness, like sheep having no shepherd. It is true, some ministers refused to be driven, but remained faithful to their trust, in the midst of many discouragements, much threatening, much murmuring, and not a little persecution. Such men, pursuing the even tenor of their way, neither turning to the right or left, reviled, but reviling not again, “counting not their lives dear unto themselves,” nor “conferring with flesh and blood,” deserve the most honorable mention; and with those who know the pressure of sentiment brought to bear upon them they will ever be revered as the finest models of moral heroism and ministerial fidelity. This class of men were not confined to any one church, but have their representatives in all the churches which, by construction, were considered unfriendly to the ruling powers of the State. Many of them were faithful men of God—men of one work—seeking the souls of men, and continuing “steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord,” through all the storm and shock of war; and this, too, at no little cost.

It was a time of wide-spread iniquity with almost all classes. Crime, in every conceivable form, reveled without shame, and hesitated at no atrocity. The officers of law and the courts were alike powerless to punish crime and protect innocence; “and because iniquity did abound the love of many waxed cold,” and the man of God who could be faithful to the souls of men without fear or favor had nerve, courage, faith.

His home was at the mercy of lawless bands whose nameless crimes his last sermon rebuked, and his head was a target for the assassin’s bullet whose cowardly heart felt the sting of conscious guilt under the searchings of God’s truth—a guilt, too, of which the minister was wholly ignorant. More than one faithful watchman, during those “times that tried men’s souls,” went from his pulpit to find his home in ashes, his wife and children shelterless in the storm, and breadless and friendless in the world; and more than one, who did not know that they had an enemy in the world, were called from their beds at midnight to be shot down like dogs, or butchered like hogs in the very presence of their families, without warning, without any known provocation, and without knowing their murderers.

Some of the brightest and purest lights of the Church went out at midnight—suddenly, appallingly—and their “souls were under the altar” many long, weary hours before the news of their murder could pass beyond the family threshold, and often days before it could even reach the family itself. Many of these murders are wholly unaccountable upon any other hypothesis than that intimated above, as the victims hereafter to be named had kept themselves from strife, and had pursued, with “singleness of heart as unto the Lord,” their one calling; they had taken neither part nor lot in the war, one way or the other, and, indeed, were not all of one political faith; their sympathies were—some for the Union and some for the South.

The men who stood faithful amid the faithless were not rash and reckless, but prudent and cautious, as it well becomes those who stand up for the truth in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. Some ministers, by a prudent, consistent course, ministering to all alike, and keeping their political views and sympathies to themselves, conquered, in a measure, the respect and confidence of the leading men of both parties, after so long a time, and they were henceforth pretty secure. But many had to abandon the ministry for the time being and seek a support in other pursuits.

For some reason, no part of the minister’s public exercises were looked to with more interest or scrutinized more closely than his extemporaneous prayers. Military officers, partisan leaders, and all men of strong sympathies either way, watched with more vigilance than devotion the objects, the subjects, the language and the sentiment of the extemporaneous prayers of the pulpit. They were supposed to show the drift of the minister’s sympathies and reflect his political sentiments, and many people felt much more interested in that than in any supplications he might make for the pardon of guilt and the salvation of the soul. Post Commanders and Provost-Marshals would not unfrequently send written orders to the officiating minister whose sympathies were suspected, commanding him to pray for Mr. Lincoln, for the flag, for the success of the army in crushing out the rebellion, or for the destruction of all traitors, or something else of the sort as a test of loyalty. And often a minister’s bread, his home, his liberty or his life were suspended upon and determined by the shade of meaning given to a word or phrase in his prayer. The effort was made to force the conscience at the point of the bayonet, and convert the prayer into blasphemy, or get from it a pretext for executing a malicious purpose already formed, and for which there existed neither cause nor occasion.