"Now," continued Vance, "my beloved brethren, I have been a-readin' and a-votin' of the Democrat ticket nigh onto forty year, and I never seed the name of old Horace Greeley on a Democrat ticket before; but it's _on thar,_ brethren, and we'll vote it through if it kills us--_and it does come devilish near killing the most of us!"_ XXVII NOT GUILTY OF PREACHING THE GOSPEL THE "DRAKE CONSTITUTION" IN MISSOURI--THE CRIME OF PREACHING THE GOSPEL--A PROVISION OF THIS CONSTITUTION FOUND TO BE A VIOLATION OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES--MINISTERS OF VARIOUS SECTS TRIED FOR PREACHING WITHOUT FIRST TAKING AN OATH TO SUPPORT THE "DRAKE CONSTITUTION"--THE JUDGE FINDS THAT NOT ONE OF THEM HAS PREACHED THE GOSPEL. The "holding" of a _nisi prius_ judge upon one of the western circuits of Missouri, near the close of the Civil War, is without a precedent, and it is quite probable that no occasion will ever arise for citing it as an authority. It will remain, however, a case in point of how a "horse-sense" judge can protect the innocent against unusual and unjust prosecution. What is known in Missouri history as the "Drake Constitution" had then but recently supplanted the organic law under which the State had for a long time had its being. No counterpart of the Constitution mentioned has ever been framed in any of the American States. It could have been only the product of the evil days when "judgment had fled to brutish beasts, and men had lost their reason." Possibly at no time or place in our history has there been more emphatic verification of the axiom, "In the midst of arms, the laws are silent." The "Drake Constitution" was formulated at a time when fierce passion was at its height, when the sad consequences of civil war were felt at every fireside, when neighbor was arrayed against neighbor, the hand of brother uplifted against brother, and "a man's foes were they of his own household." As is well known, certain provisions of this Constitution were, at a later day--upon a writ of error--set aside by the Supreme Court of the United States as being in violation of the Federal Constitution. One of the thirty distinct affirmations or tests of the Drake Constitution was to the effect that, if any minister or priest should be guilty of the crime of preaching the Gospel, or of solemnizing the rite of marriage, without first having taken an oath to support said Constitution, he should, upon conviction, be subjected to a fine of not less than five hundred dollars, imprisonment for six months in the common jail, or both.