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1864. McPherson, "History

CHAP. XV. partments to permit ministers of the Gospel bearing March 10, the commission of these Mission boards to exercise the functions of their office and to give them all the aid, countenance, and support which might be practicable.

of the Rebellion," p. 522.

Report of JudgeAdvocate General, April 30,

1864.

March 7,

1864.

But before and after these orders there was much clashing between the military and the ecclesiastical authorities, which had its rise generally in the individual temperaments of the respective generals and priests. There was an instance in one place where a young officer rose in his pew and requested an Episcopal minister to read the prayer for the President of the United States, which he had omitted. Upon the minister's refusal the soldier advanced to the pulpit and led the preacher, loudly protesting, to the door, and then quietly returning to the altar himself read the prayer not much, it is to be feared, to the edification of the congregation. General Butler arrested a clergyman in Norfolk, and placed him at hard labor on the public works, for disloyalty in belief and action; but the President reversed this sentence and changed it to one of exclusion from the Union lines. The Catholic Bishop of Natchez having refused to read the prescribed form of prayer for the President, and having protested in an able and temperate paper against the orders of the commanding general in this regard, the latter ordered him to be expelled from the Union lines, although the order was almost immediately rescinded. General Rosecrans issued an order in Missouri requiring the members of religious convocations to give satisfactory evidence of their loyalty to the Government of the United States as

a condition precedent to their assemblage and pro- CHAP. XV. tection. In answer to the protestations which naturally resulted from this mandate he replied that it was given at the request of many loyal church members, both lay and clerical; that if he should permit all bodies claiming to be religious to meet without question, a convocation of Price's army, under the garb of religion, might assemble with impunity and plot treason. He claimed that there was no hardship in compelling the members of such assemblages to establish their loyalty by oath and certificate, and insisted that his order, while protesting against public danger, really protected the purity and the freedom of religion.

In the course of these controversies between secessionist ministers and commanding generals an incident occurred which deserves a moment's notice, as it led to a clear and vigorous statement from Mr. Lincoln of his attitude in regard to these matters. During the year 1862 a somewhat bitter discussion arose between the Rev. Dr. McPheeters of the Vine Street Church in St. Louis and some of his congregation in regard to his supposed sympathies with the rebellion. Looking back upon the controversy from this distance of time it seems that rather hard measure was dealt to the parson; for although, from all the circumstances of the case, there appears little doubt that his feelings were strongly enlisted in the cause of the rebellion, he behaved with so much discretion that the principal offenses charged against him by his zealous parishioners were that he once baptized a baby rebel by the name of Sterling Price, and that he would not declare himself in favor of the Union.

CHAP. XV. The difference in his church grew continually more flagrant, and was sustained by interminable letters and statements on both sides, until at last the provost-marshal intervened, ordering the arrest of Dr. McPheeters, excluding him from his pulpit, and taking the control of his church out of the hands of its trustees. This action gave rise to extended comment, not only in Missouri, but throughout the Union. The President, being informed of it, wrote to General Curtis disapproving the act of the provost-marshal, saying, in a terse and vigorous phrase, which immediately obtained wide currency, "The United States Government must not, as by this order, undertake to run the Churches. When an individual in a church, or out of it, becomes dangerous to the public interest he must be checked; but let the Churches, as such, take care of themselves."

Lincoln to
Curtis,

Jan. 2, 1863.

W. R.

Vol. XXII.,

Part II., p. 7.

But even this peremptory and unmistakable command did not put an end to the discussion. Taking the hands of the Government away from the preacher did not quench the dissensions in the church, nor restore the pastor to the position which he occupied before the war; and almost a year later some of the friends of Dr. McPheeters considered it necessary and proper to ask the intervention of the President to restore to him all his ecclesiastical privileges in addition to the civil rights which they admitted he already enjoyed. This the President, in a letter of equal clearness and vigor, refused to do. "I have never interfered," he said, "nor thought Dec. 22, of interfering, as to who shall, or shall not, preach in any church; nor have I knowingly or believingly tolerated any one else to so interfere by my

1863.

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