During the winter of 1860–61 there was but one clergyman in the city, who publicly spoke upon the great national issue, and he was a pronounced and prominent secessionist, or, which was the same thing under a different label, a conditional Unionist. And strange to say, this good Presbyterian brother regarded the introduction of politics into the pulpit with holy horror; at all events he thought that his brethren in the ministry should refrain from discussing in the house of God disturbing political problems; nevertheless, he, in an elaborate discourse, on the Lord’s Day, set forth in his pulpit, “The Ultimatum of the South.” But our ministerial brother apparently failed to see that “wherein he judged another he condemned himself.” He not only preached a political sermon, but published it in pamphlet form, and did what he could to scatter copies of it all over the State. So he was not after all really opposed to preaching politics, but to preaching politics that antagonized his own cherished political views. Not his own, but his opponent’s politics degraded the pulpit. Since, however, it is my purpose to present in these pages not only my observations of others, but also my own experiences, I trust that it will not be regarded as egotistical and indelicate on my part, if I carefully portray some scenes in which I was called to be an actor. From 1858 to 1866 I was pastor of the Second Baptist Church of St. Louis and preached at the corner of Sixth and Locust Streets, in a plain, steepleless, brick meetinghouse, painted lead color. The membership of the church was five or six hundred, and for three years of my pastorate, the men outnumbered the women. The church contained an unusual number of able, aggressive young men. In the congregation the rich and the poor sat side by side. All walks and pursuits of life were there represented. In the pews were a goodly number of lawyers, some of them among the ablest advocates and counsellors in the State. One of them, James O. Broadhead, not a Baptist, a member of the Union Safety Committee, was a man of conspicuous ability. He was a native of Virginia, liberal-minded, conservative, clear-headed. He was an ardent patriot without fanaticism. While instinctively shrinking from all extreme positions on the vexed political questions of the hour, he was unswervingly loyal to the Union. In those dark tempestuous days, he stood like a granite rock amid the swirling waves of passion.