Martyrdom in Missouri, Volume 1 (of 2)

Indiscriminate Robbery, Pillage, Arson and Murder—Banditti and Revenge—Black-Mail and Espionage—Panic, Depopulation and Plunder—Demoralization—Virtue Sacrificed—Some who Would not Bow the Knee to Moloch—God had an Altar and Israel a Priest—Persecution, Arrest and Imprisonment of Revs. J. Ditzler, J. B. H. Wooldridge and D. J. Marquis—Many others Suffered in Like Manner—Rev. James Fewel Arrested, Cruelly Treated, and Died from the Effects of Inhuman Treatment, aged Seventy-two Years—Many such Victims—The True Office and Work of the Ministry—Its Spirit and Mission—Any Departure Unsettles the Public Mind—A Sad Day for the Country, Church and State—Relations and Dependencies—Three Thousand and Fifty New England Clergymen Before Congress—A Solemn Protest and its Effects—Then and Now—Ecclesiastical Bodies on the “State of the Country”—Ecclesiastical Bummers—A Settled Policy to Drive the Old Ministers out of the State—General Halleck’s Order.

The events of 1861 had a very decided moral effect upon the public mind. Several severe battles were fought in the State during the year, and the armies and armed bodies of men were largely recruited. Men who, at the first, had no thought of entering either army found themselves forced, by circumstances, to take up arms in what was, by construction, called self-defense—that is, by constant annoyance from armed men, by harassing fears, from threats and rumors of mischief to person and property, frequent arrests, pillage, plunder, etc., many a peaceable, quiet, orderly citizen was tormented into the necessity of taking up arms.

Armed bands appeared in every part of the State—some on one side and some on the other, some with authority and some without, but all subsisting as they could, and but few caring how. These bands, many of which were irresponsible brigands and marauders, usually “foraged” on the citizens whose sympathies were on the opposite side. They did not always stop at the necessary supplies for subsistence, but were robbers of houses, and many of them indiscriminate and general thieves, taking horses, mules, cattle, wagons, corn, hay, flour, bacon, fruit, blankets, quilts, feather beds, carpets, clothing of every kind, from elegant silks, furs and shawls to children’s shoes and toys; money, watches and jewelry were often taken from the persons of ladies. These highwaymen would often put the torch to dwelling houses at night and take a fiendish pleasure in seeing the awakened inmates make their escape or perish in the flames. Men were shot down by them on the highway, in the fields, the woods and at the doors of their houses as though life was of little value, and its appreciation was about equal to the effect of one bootless, midnight murder upon the great question of Union or division. At all events, after the battle of Lexington, September 21, 1861, and the rapid movements of armies which followed, human life was at the caprice of the armed banditti that multiplied so rapidly over the State.

Many defenseless citizens suffered such indignities and insults from them, in addition to the loss of all they had on earth, that they fled to the army for protection, or to the brush and banded together for revenge. Men, whose houses were destroyed, and whose wives, and daughters, and sisters had been worse than insulted by inhuman ruffians, swore the direst vengeance, and with unsparing recklessness scattered desolation and death in their tortuous track. For their deeds military commanders of posts would hold defenseless communities responsible, levy black-mail upon them, sometimes to the full value of their property, and institute a system of espionage that would put an eavesdropper under nearly every man’s window and a detective in every social circle and public assembly. Property and life were thus put at the mercy of unprincipled detectives and spies, selected often from the lowest and most unscrupulous classes of men and women. With such a system of military despotism no man’s life was safe, and indeed many men were accused, arrested, imprisoned, tried, convicted and put to death without ever knowing the charges against them.

It is not difficult to conjecture the effect of this state of things upon the public mind. To say that the people in some whole counties along the borders of Iowa and Kansas were seized with panic and consternation is not more than the truth. Men and families broke up, and taking what they could with convenience and safety fled for life and protection, some North, some South, some to Canada, some to California, some to the army, some to the large cities, and some to the brush. Some men ordered and some frightened their neighbors away, and then, to furnish them means to travel, bought their stock and lands at a nominal price—in some instances for a mere song. What a farmer, or mechanic, or merchant left behind in his flight was seized as lawful prey by the first that found it and appropriated to private use. Indeed, in one instance a whole county was depopulated outside of the towns, by military order, and devoted to pillage and plunder, and that the third county of the State in population and wealth.

It was even worse, if possible, in the track of large armies and in those parts of the country upon which they subsisted.

No part of the State suffered more than the Southwest, extending from a line that would strike Rolla, Sedalia and Fort Scott, in Kansas, to the State of Arkansas. Many parts of that section of the State were literally laid waste, and made a desolation by fire and sword. The breath of war, like the simoon, swept over the country, leaving a wide waste of desolation and death, which the benignity of peace and the hand of industry can not reclaim and rebuild for many long years.

To say that public sentiment in the State was demoralized by such scenes before the end of 1861 is an expression too tame to reflect adequately the real fact. The moral forces of society were paralyzed, social restraints were broken down, and even religious character was powerless either for protection or public good. The old standards of virtue, integrity, honesty and right principle were borne down and swept away, and men became reckless of the laws of God and man. In the fury and fire of partisan strife, and amid the familiar scenes of blood and death, men trampled upon right, crucified truth, murdered innocence, loved vengeance, despised virtue, abandoned principle, forgot their loves, left their dead unburied and their buried uncoffined, and hung upon the bloody war path like avenging furies.

In the midst of such fearful and wide-spread demoralization God preserved only a few thousand who would not bow the knee to the bloody Moloch. Israel was not without an altar, and the altar was not without an acceptable sacrifice; but the spirit of anti-Christ seemed the more embittered and enraged by that fact, and the persecution became more general and unrelenting throughout the State.

Many congregations of quiet worshipers were dispersed; many societies were broken up and scattered; many churches were burned, and many ministers arrested, silenced or banished—not in the cities so much as in the country.

Amongst the first arrests was that of the Rev. J. Ditzler.

In 1860 and ’61 Rev. J. Ditzler was stationed in Jefferson City, in charge of the M. E. Church, South. He was also chaplain to the lower House of the General Assembly.

After Governor Jackson and General Price had evacuated the State capital and the United States forces under General Lyon had taken possession, Mr. Ditzler remained as a non-combatant, supposing that he would not be molested. In this he was mistaken. He was not allowed long to remain in his quiet study at the Ferguson House or to attend to his pastoral duties. An “orderly,” with a guard of seven men, called on him at the Ferguson House, arrested and marched him through the city, and put him with others in an old meat (smoke) house. He was taunted and sneered at by his guard—the Dutch—through the cracks of the old log house. Mr. Ditzler talked back at them in German, Italian, Spanish, French, Greek and Hebrew, quoting freely from Schiller, Goethe and other German authors of note, for his own relief and their amusement, until he was reported to Col. Boernstein, Post Commander, and by him unconditionally released, solely upon literary grounds. No charges were preferred against him, nor could he ever find out why he was imprisoned. His father fought at Tippecanoe, in 1812, and his grandfather at Valley Forge, under Washington, and this treatment was not borne without some little indignation.

Brigadier-General Brown succeeded Col. Boernstein, and Mr. Ditzler was apprised of the purpose to re-arrest him. He was advised by his friends to flee, and accordingly took the train late Saturday night for St. Louis; and at noon the next day (Sabbath) a posse of ten armed soldiers entered his church to arrest him, but he was gone. They followed him to St. Louis only to find that he had taken a train on the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad and made his escape.

The Rev. J. B. H. Wooldridge, the Rev. D. J. Marquis, and other ministers, were arrested and imprisoned about the same time, and without cause. Indeed, it became so common for ministers to be arrested that by the last of the year 1861 it ceased to be a matter of surprise to any. The only novelty was in finding a minister out of the army who had not been arrested by one party or the other, and the most that could be hoped was that life and liberty to non-political and non-juring ministers would be exceptional.

If he lived out of the track of large armies, he would not escape the marauding bands; and if his home should be so secluded and retired that he could not be reached by the public highway, or easily found, there were always unprincipled men in every neighborhood who, to seek revenge, gain favor with the authorities, or to make an opportunity to pillage and plunder from the sheer love of it, would go to the nearest military post, inform on the quiet “parson,” and volunteer their services to guide the ruffian soldiers to the home of the innocent victim. From such causes many an innocent man suffered both in property and person.

When ministers of the gospel happened to fall into the hands of regular army officers or those lawless brigands they were treated with a severity and cruelty that was not often visited upon others, and which indicated with alarming certainty the policy that would be pursued toward the enemies of all unrighteousness.

Amongst the many instances of cruelty to ministers of the gospel who had committed no offense whatever against the peace and dignity of the State, it is sufficient here to mention the case of the Rev. James Fewel.

This venerable servant of the regular Baptist Church, who had lived and labored in Henry county, Mo., for many years—known, respected and honored as a peaceable, upright, good and useful citizen—was found and arrested near his own residence and taken off as a political prisoner to Sedalia, thence to St. Louis, where he lay in prison more than a month, and until death came to his relief.

His death was due solely to the cruel treatment he received from his captors and persecutors. He had never taken up arms against his country, had never committed a crime of any sort—not even what irresponsible persons call treason—and had never been engaged in lawless acts of any kind; but, then, he was a minister of the gospel, and the parties who arrested him, and those who afterward guarded him, had commiseration neither for his profession nor gray hairs. He lacked only three days of being seventy-two years old when he died.

He was arrested by Capt. Foster’s company of Col. Hubbard’s regiment, Missouri State Militia, in the latter part of December, 1861, near his own residence, in Henry county. The weather was cold, and when the old man found that he would be taken off he begged permission to go to his house for more and warmer clothing. This was refused him. He then asked the natural privilege of sending a message to his aged companion, to inform her of his condition and obtain at least a blanket to protect him from the weather. Even this poor boon was denied the old man, and he was torn from his home and hurried away to Sedalia. The weather turned bitterly cold, and the freezing December blasts swept mercilessly across the extended prairie the livelong night, while this old man was kept in an open railroad car, shelterless, bedless, blanketless and comfortless. His very prayers and tears seemed to freeze on the chilly night air as he thought of home and his long years spent in the service of God for the good of his race. But he had to suffer this cruel treatment and trust the God of Elijah to prepare him for what was still in store for him. The morrow came, and with it still further and severer trials. The weather did not moderate, neither did the severity of his persecutors. With others he was placed in a common stock car and sent to St. Louis. With no better protection, no better accommodations, than the horned beasts who had been temporarily displaced by them, and even with insufficient supplies of food, they were kept traveling and stopping all that day and night. Chilled through and through, hungry and half dead, this old man reached St. Louis and was hurried off to the military prison, in which he soon fell a victim to pneumonia, and lingered—without accusation, without trial, and without even permission to be seen by his friends—until February 1, 1862, when death came to his release and found him ready to “depart and be with Christ, which was far better.”

If any charges were ever preferred against him they never came to light.

This is only one of the many instances of cruelty that occurred during the latter part of this year, in which ministers of the gospel were persecuted and imprisoned, and some of them died of their treatment, not because they had been in rebellion, or because they were trying to save the Union, but because they were ministers trying to save the souls of men.

We have been accustomed to look upon ministers of the gospel as the divinely commissioned ambassadors of Heaven, sent forth with a dispensation of the gospel of peace, preaching “Jesus and the resurrection,” and “praying men in Christ’s stead to be reconciled to God;” that their one work was to preach the gospel, build churches, devise ways and means for the furtherance of the kingdom of grace, project schemes for the enlargement of the borders of Zion and for the diffusion of the power and spirit of Christianity; to plant the gospel standard where it is not, and build up the waste places; to do the most possible good to the greatest number, and to do this work of love in the spirit of the divine Master, by “being an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity,” “by pureness, by knowledge, by long suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned.” In this way and in this spirit to spread “scriptural holiness over these lands,” and promote “peace on earth and good will to men.” These ideas of the spirit and work of the gospel ministry have become so deeply rooted in the hearts of men, and so thoroughly interwoven with their thoughts, that any departure from that work as thus understood creates surprise, suspicion and distrust in the public mind.

When ecclesiastical bodies assemble it is assumed that they meet to deliberate upon the legitimate interests of the Church of Jesus Christ—how that form of it committed to them may be made more efficient in bringing men to a saving knowledge of Christ Jesus, the Head of the Church, and how their plans and polity may be improved and vitalized.

It was a sad day for this country when the gospel ministry first departed from this work and began to legislate upon questions purely secular and political; and if our free government should ever be broken up and our free institutions destroyed—if our religious liberties should ever pass away, and a political and ecclesiastical despotism be established in this land—the philosophic historian of the future, whose melancholy task it will be to chronicle the “decline and fall” of the greatest republic of the world, will linger with painful interest upon that sad event as the beginning of the catastrophe.

The separate but mutually dependent relations of Church and State, the support of the Church and her ministry by the voluntary contributions of the people, liberty of thought and speech, the freedom of worship and the rights of conscience, are almost peculiar to our country and form of government. In these things our institutions are distinct from, and in contrast with, the Church establishments and ecclesiastical hierarchies of Europe and Asia.

They constitute the soul and centre of our free Republican government. The very genius of our institutions resides in them, and the ægis of liberty shields and protects them. The State may not restrict or control them, and the Church dare not intermeddle with the affairs of State.

Tho two may exist together, but can never coalesce. They must be distinct and separate in their laws, their government, their administration, their spirit, their agencies and their objects, while they have the same subjects. So long have Church and State existed separately in this country, and so widely different in their spirit, agencies and objects, that it is both natural and philosophical for the public mind to be disturbed and alarmed by every attempt of the one to intermeddle with the legitimate affairs of the other.

Few events in the history of this country caused greater alarm for our peace and safety in the minds of reflecting men than the appearance before the Congress of the United States of three thousand and fifty clergymen of New England in the following protest against the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, in 1854:

“The undersigned, clergymen of different religious denominations in New England, hereby, in the name of Almighty God and in his presence, do solemnly protest against the passage of what is known as the Nebraska bill, or any repeal or modification of the existing legal prohibitions of slavery in that part of our national domain which it is proposed to organize into the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas. We protest against it as a great moral wrong, as a breach of faith eminently unjust to the moral principles of the community, and subversive of all confidence in national engagements; as a measure full of danger to the peace and even the existence of our beloved Union, and exposing us to the righteous judgments of the Almighty: and your protestants, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

“Boston, Massachusetts, March 1, 1854.”

This pretentious protest—“in the name of Almighty God”—was the first open and bold attempt of the clergy in this country to influence national legislation; and while Messrs. Mason, Douglass and others in the United States Senate administered to these officious clergymen a severe rebuke for thus intermeddling with the affairs of the National Government, good men were justly alarmed for the result, and the whole country was appalled by this bold advance of the Church toward the control of the affairs of the State.

Then the finest model of ecclesiastical polity in the world trembled and the wisest frame work of civil government felt the shock. Then the work of our fathers—combining the wisdom of the ages and the religion of the gospel in one grand structure of civil and religious liberty—the glory of Washington, the pride of every American, the dread of tyrants and the admiration of the world, began to reel upon its throne and totter to its fall. Then the deadly virus was injected, and the veins and arteries of national life carried the poison to every part of the body politic, and from that day forth “death was in the pot.” Then the axe was laid at the root of the fair tree of liberty, whose roots had been fastened deep in the national heart, and whose branches already spread over a continent and toward heaven, under which the oppressed of every nation found shelter, and the down-trodden of every clime sought repose, peace, liberty and life. Then the religious and political waters mingled, and the whole stream of national life was corrupted and hastened on in turbulent commotion to the “blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke” of ’61.

Ministers contented themselves then with a firm and solemn protest; they afterward made imperious demands. They sought then to prevent the enactment of “a measure full of danger to the peace and even the existence of the Union;” they afterward demanded, in the name of Almighty God, the enactment of laws, the conduct of the war, the election of men to office, the success of party measures, manhood suffrage, and any other purely political matter, as though the union of Church and State was an accomplished fact and they were the constituted vice-regents to supervise and control the legislation of the country.

At the beginning of the war, and during its continuance, when ecclesiastical bodies met, about the gravest matter before them for deliberation was the “State of the Country,” and how they could deliver themselves so as to effect in any particular direction either the course of Congress, political elections or the movement of armies. This was true in an eminent degree of the M. E. Church, the Presbyterian Church (Old and New School), Congregational, Unitarian, and some Baptist associations of the Northern and Eastern States.

Nor wore these deliverances confined to the larger representative Bodies of these Churches, but the primary church courts, ministers’ associations, conventions and Conferences made themselves conspicuous by such unwise interference with matters purely secular and political.

Secret conclaves were held in Missouri by ministers and others professing to be disciples of Christ, in which plans were devised and projected to persecute, by proscription, robbery, arrests, imprisonment and confiscation, if not by means still severer, ministers of the gospel in this State who would not stultify themselves nor disgrace their profession by falling in with them and joining the hue and cry for blood and death.

Consultations were had and schemes devised by which the military authorities could be used to oppress and persecute ministers whose loyalty was questioned by these politico-ecclesiastics, and whose only crime was that they possessed property and stood high in the confidence of the people whom they had served faithfully for many years.

Revolutions never go backward, and it was a part of the forward movement of these scheming adventurers who followed the army to keep out of danger, and who served post and field commanders as volunteer aids for the uses they could make of them in taking possession of churches, persecuting and running off ministers and foisting another ministry on the people.

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.”