Who Shot Callaway Manes? Part 7

Ready to Die

In brief:  An encounter between the Manes brothers and the Chitwood gang.  The targeting of preachers by Union forces.  A dire warning for Callaway to stop preaching.  This section ends with the family's plea to heed the warning.  
Time period 1862 - 1864.

Another encounter heightened the tension between the Manes family and the Chitwoods. "During the Civil War Grandfather Callaway and Great Uncle Seth and Uncle Ben Clark went to Linn Creek at about wheat harvest time. On the way they passed near to the place of Major Thomas O'Halloran, where the Chitwood gang hung out. They were intercepted by some of the soldiers, bushwhackers, or militia, or whatever they were, and ordered to get out of the wagon and cut O'Halloran's wheat."(1)

"Grandfather said, 'Gentlemen, I am as ready to die as I ever expect to be. I propose that, when I do die, it shall be as a free man and not as a slave. I will cut no wheat and I will resist to the limit of my power any effort to force me to do anything against my will.' At this, he and Uncle Seth seized their guns which were in the wagon and, standing back to back in the wagon, Uncle Seth said, 'Now men, we don't want to die, but we will not cut your wheat while we are alive and we can't cut it when we are dead, so you can make nothing by killing us. You can kill us, but we will get some of you while you are at it, so do your worst.''"(1)

"Uncle Ben got out of the wagon,  got down on his knees and begged the Manes brothers to go with him to the wheat field, but they refused and continued to defy the crowd against them until they finally agreed that they might go. They refused to go without Clark and ordered him to get in the wagon. He drove off, while Grandfather and Uncle Seth faced the rear with their weapons in their hands."(1)

During this time Federal forces were systematically warning preachers out of the pulpit. The majority of Missouri churches were either Methodist Episcopal South or Southern Baptist, both organized in 1845.  An account from the Friendship Baptist Church founded by Callaway Manes relates that "One day during the war while they were at church, when services were over and they went outside, there was a man waiting who had ridden a little bay mare.  He got on a stump and demanded their attention and forbid them holding services any more."(2) 

"Federal military authorities in Missouri arrested, fined, imprisoned, or banished over sixty clergymen on general charges of disloyalty to the United States."(7)  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.

Preachers that refused to leave or stop preaching were sometimes killed by Federal forces.  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."(4)  

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."(5)

"Ordinary Missourians went to church to seek solace and hope.  As one church member said, 'We have the war all the week, and want the gospel on Sunday.' "(6)

Image from The Night Riders by Henry C. Wood.  Project Gutenberg ebook. June 21, 2011 [EBook #36487]

In the weeks leading up to his murder, Callaway Manes was ordered to stop preaching. After preaching next to his last sermon in Waynesville, a bunch of switches was laid at the door with a note saying that if he preached there again, they would kill him.(2)  The bundle of switches, an omen of a slicking, was a last dire warning used during this era. If the warning went unheeded,  the subject was drug out in the middle of the night and beaten with the switches until the entire bundle was exhausted.(3)  The first slicking took place in Camden County in 1832.(8)  The popularity of slickings spread from punishments administered to cheaters to become a method of intimidation.  

Callaway's wife and children begged him not to keep his next appointment.(2)

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Sources:

(1) Manuscript of family history and letters written by Samuel Jasper Manes and Jesse Gustin.  These pages are contained in the collection edited by E.V. Brezeale.  The collection is available on microfilm at the Springfield, Missouri Public Library or the microfilm may be requested at any LDS Family History Center.

(2) "Where there is no vision, the people perish" by Oma Hensley Willits.  Printed by Missouri Baptist Press in 1970.  The book is available through the Family History LIbrary in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the William Jewell College Library in Liberty, Missouri.

(3) "Bald Knobbers:  The Ozark Vigilantes"  by Gerry Darnell.  Bittersweet Summer 1979.  Issues are available online at http://thelibrary.org/lochist/periodicals/bittersweet/toc.htm.

(4) "Marker Dedicated to Methodist Minister Killed in the Civl War:" Salem, Missouri News Online. May 15, 2012.  http://www.thesalemnewsonline.com/news/local_news/article_a85ec98c-9ea3-11e1-8eeb-0019bb30f31a.html

(5)  The War Of the Rebellion: a compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate armies. United States. War Dept., John Sheldon Moody, Calvin Duvall Cowles, Frederick Caryton Ainsworth, Robert N. Scott, Henry Martyn Lazelle, George Breckenridge Davis, Leslie J. Perry, Joseph William Kirkle. Published by the Government Printing Office in Washington, 1894. These records are available online at http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/m/moa/,

(6) The Homefront in Civil War Missouri by James W. Erwin.  Copyright 2014.  The History Press.  

(7)  Missouri Historical Review Volume 106, No. 1 p. 14.

(8)  Beyond the Sabbath:  Missouri and Her Violent Heritage by Dick Steward.  Copyright 2005.  Vintage Publications.