Greg Tucker, Murfreesboro Post, January 22, 2016
Courtesy of Cat Murphy/The Murfreesboro Post
For Methodists, the Civil War did not end with the Confederate surrender in 1865.
Several protestant denominations in the United States split into northern and southern factions in the decades before the war. At the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1844, disagreement on the political and moral issues of slavery resulted in a schism, creating the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and an organizationally separate northern counterpart.
The original structure used by Murfreesboro’s first Methodist congregation was built on what is now the northwest corner of the North Maple and West Lytle intersection. In 1843 the growing membership moved to a new structure on the northeast corner of the North Church and East College intersection. A year later the Murfreesboro church became a part of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.
The church continued to grow at this new location until Civil War activity forced suspension of services. In early 1862 the Confederate army removed the church pews and used the building as a hospital for sick and injured soldiers. During the first occupation of Murfreesboro, the federal army also used the church as a hospital, but after the Battle of Stones River the federal authorities left the structure available for religious services. This did not end the scavenging of the building, however, and all furniture and fixtures that could be used in the federal camps were stripped from the building. The rest was often left exposed, and damaged by looters and the weather.
As northern troops advanced into the South in 1863, the army leadership believed that captured assets, including church properties, were to be used for northern institutional purposes. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South was an early target because many in the north believed that church leaders had promoted secession. On Nov. 30, 1863, the U. S. Secretary of War, seeing few “loyal” southern Methodist ministers, ordered that all southern Methodist churches in occupied territory be transferred to the Methodist Episcopal Church, North.
Methodists in Murfreesboro petitioned the federal command for permission to resume public worship, which petition was granted. The petitioners were expecting to use their own building, despite the damage. “In this they were disappointed. It was taken charge of by a Yankee preacher named H. A. Patterson,” according Spence’s Annals of Rutherford County, Volume Two, (1873). He claimed to be a Methodist preacher from the north, and advised that the church property had been transferred to the northern Methodists because of the “disloyalty” of the local members. Undaunted, the local Methodist preacher, having taken the Union oath of loyalty as a condition of his being permitted to preach, met his southern congregation “at the Campbellite church.”
“Patterson went about opening and occupying the Methodist Church on Sundays, having moderate gatherings of soldiers, and about a dozen women, hospital nurses. In a short time, his meetings dwindled down, his own men having little confidence in his piety,” according to Spence.
The southern Methodists openly criticized the northern Methodists for mixing their religion with politics. “Union Christians…professing Loyalty…under the protection of the bayonet…forcing submission of the Rebel Churches. These so-called Methodists making their appearance, taking hold of things, not as Christians, but like soldiers taking spoils after capturing an enemy territory.” The northern preachers in Murfreesboro “boastingly spoke of the Northern Church wealth and power” and explained that their purpose “as missionaries to the southern people” was in part the “enlightenment of the colored race,” wrote Spence.
After the Confederate surrender, the southern Methodists sought to regain possession of their church building in Murfreesboro. As expected, the preacher and congregation in possession argued that the church was rightfully the property of the “loyal” northern Methodists. They had already appropriated a thousand dollars for repair and renovation of the war-torn structure. To the surprise of both sides, the Union military authority in 1866 ordered that all Methodist church property be returned to the pre-war owners. The property, according to Spence, was thereafter surrendered to its rightful owners “with sullen grace.”
The northern Methodists, defeated in their attempt to retain the existing church property, rented a room in the second story east side of the Murfreesboro public square. With a preacher and about thirty “loyalist” members, they opened for regular services. In the early years of Reconstruction, the northern church expanded. The 1870 census identifies 11 congregations sharing seven buildings with 1,550 members in Rutherford County. In the same period the southern Methodists in Rutherford County expanded to 14 congregations, each having its own church building, and total membership of 3,750.
Support for the northern church waned during the next two decades while the southern Methodists continued to grow and expand. In 1886 the southern congregation bought adjoining property and in 1888 completed construction of a new building replacing the structure that was in dispute during the Civil War and early Reconstruction. The cornerstone for the new structure boasted “M. E. Church South.”
In 1939 the northern and southern churches reunited. A subsequent merger in 1968 created today’s United Methodist Church. The descendants of Murfreesboro’s first Methodist congregation moved to the northern suburbs in 2003 and the fate of the historic downtown structure is now uncertain. On Jan. 7, 2016, the Murfreesboro City Council approved an offer of $1.55 million for the city to purchase the former Methodist Church property.
Rutherford County Historian Greg Tucker can be reached at [email protected].