But neither rhetoric, nor eloquence, nor professions of loyalty to the constitution could prevent secession, or that firing of the shot on Sumter which unified the North. The news of this overt act of hostility at once sharply divided the congregation, and a number of the very best men and women in the church, some of them Mr. Chambers's oldest and warmest supporters, withdrew into other churches, mostly Presbyterian, or united themselves with the Central Congregational Church, where they and their children and grandchildren form a notable element in that honored church. Others, like Anna Ross, the soldiers' friend, became actively identified with patriotic measures. The loss to the First Independent church was a rich gain to other churches. Four out of six of his elders, Daniel Steinmetz, Joseph B. Sheppard, Rudolph S. Walton, and John Yard, Jr., among his ablest laymen, withdrew into Presbyterian churches to help build them up with their talents, generosity, and consecration, or initiated new enterprises. Others, though they did not take away their letters of membership, never again or rarely, worshipped in the church edifice. Probably the number thus lost to the congregation ran into the hundreds, but the break was because of conscience and conviction. Nevertheless God was glorified and Christ honored even in farewells. The partings were in friendship. These were not personal quarrels, and the relations between man and man for Christ's sake were always maintained. John Chambers's own testimony on this point is clear. In 1875 he said "We did not dispute. They treated me and they have always treated me with the greatest respect and they were among our most useful men ... and we have been on the terms of the most perfect friendship since.... We did not have any trouble with each other--we parted in peace." The most striking manifestation of the sentiment hostile to the pastor was shown by some of the trustees, yet in a way not approved of by the congregation. There was possibly some ground for the apprehension felt by the trustees, as one of them told me, that Southern sympathizers might get control of the property of the "copperhead church." Therefore, a flagstaff was erected on the roof and the stars and stripes were unfurled, and for some months waved in the breeze from morning till sunset. I was passing down Chestnut street that very morning, just as the flag was run up and a few gentlemen standing on the tin roof gave three cheers. It was a surprise and not wholly a pleasant one to me. This procedure hurt Mr. Chambers's feelings, but he said little about it. Not a few others, including the biographer, thought that peculiar kind of patriotism was, in its manifestation, entirely unwarranted. At the next election, the trustees most prominent in the flag pole business were quietly dropped. The excitement about the "copperhead church" died away, and the pole was taken down and disposed of, the flag ever remaining in honor.