Baptist and Methodist preachers were systematically warned out of the pulpit by Union forces during the Civil War. Those who refused to heed the warning were murdered. The majority of Missouri churches were either Methodist Episcopal South or Southern Baptist, both organized in 1845. On December 24, 1862, General Order 35 authorized provost marshals and commanders to arrest "notoriously bad and dangerous men," even without proof of wrongdoing, and to require them to post a bond for good behavior or to imprison or banish them. Federal military authorities in Missouri arrested, fined, imprisoned, or banished over sixty clergymen on general charges of disloyalty to the United States.
The state legislature required ministers to take loyalty oaths to be able to conduct lawful marriages. A St. Louis minister who baptized a baby named Sterling Price Robbins found himself embroiled in a conflict that eventually reached all the way to President Lincoln. After months of conflict the minister chose the path of many other Missourians - he left the state.
In 2012 the Methodist Church worked to place markers at unmarked graves of Missouri preachers killed during the Civil War. "Reverend Green Woods was the Presiding Elder for the Salem area and had been warned not to preach because he belonged to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. In spite of the warning, he preached at a rural Methodist church in Dent County. The next day soldiers came to his farm where he was out in a field planting corn. The soldiers took him away. His body was found that evening with his tongue cut out and his hand cut off."(Salem, Missouri News Online May 15, 2012)
In a report to Headquarters from the 13th Cavalry MSM stationed at nearby Rolla, Major Tompkins wrote, "I arrested a minister and congregation at the place where the Reverend Wood, who was shot by Kansas Fifth, was to have preached, and preached first to the minister and then to the congregation. A more attentive audience never listened to man. I told them that they had to prove by acts that they loved our Government and we would protect them and their property. I drew more tears than the minister. Left my men (eighty) at Crows Station to bring in all who have made threats about Reverend Woods death."
In 1870, William Leftwich published two volumes titled Martyrdom in Missouri detailing Union actions against Methodist preachers. Both volumes are available free online at Google Books.
Actions against Baptist preachers by Union forces brought similar results. Many left their churches and exited the state. A detailed account of the murder of popular pioneer preacher Callaway Manes is available online at http://southcentralmolhistory.blogspot.com/2015/05/who-shot-callaway-manes-august-7-1864.html
Callaway Hodges Manes was killed at his home in Pulaski County, Missouri, on Sunday evening, August 7, 1864, at the age of fifty-five. One account relates this story: "When he heard the men, Pa got up and opened the door. Pa said, 'Come in, gentlemen.' One man asked, 'Is this Callaway Manes?' When Pa said, 'I am,' the man pulled his pistol and shot him in the chest. Pa fell back against the stairs and Polly screamed. Pa whispered, 'Hush, hush, hush.' The same party that did the shooting called for a light and Polly got the candle. He made her hold a light so he could shoot Pa through the ear."
The targeting of preachers by Union forces was not specific to Missouri. As detailed in the online account of the Manes murder, the following day his relative was shot by a Union sniper while holding services in North Carolina.
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