New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1867-05-01
FROM OUR PIrTsBURG CORRESPONDENT

PIrTsBURG, April 81, 1867.
Editor Republican;
This is a beautiful Sabbath afternoon.
have just returned from hearing sermon
by a minister of the Old Scottish Covenanter
Church. The history of this church is
curiously interviewer with that Of civil and
religious liberty. They were the strictest
branch of the Scottish rcformers, who,
under the leadership of John Knox, revolu.
tionized that kingdom under Mary Stuart,
and from that time until the Stuarts were
finally dethroned, in England, they were to
that kingdom what the Huguenots were to
France. Fined, imprisoned, their estates
confiscated, they themselves hunted like
partridges, or Southern Unionists, in the
mountains, shot, hanged, beheaded and
quartcred, until at one time not one Cove
nanter preacher was left alive in Scotland.
The sect survived, and grew, and held fast
by their principles.
No STAKEHOLDER has since been admitted
into their communion even unto this day.
At an early day, many OF them emigrated to
this coantry, like other sects, prosecuted in
the mother country in search of freedom to
worship God. Most of these settled in the
Carolinas in 1774 they met in convention,
in North Carolina, adopted declaration of
independence similar to that adopted at
Philadelphia, July 4th, 1T76. They took
very active part in the Revolution, but
when the Constitution was passed and sub
mitted, they opposed it tstrenuously, because
IN obedience to the spirit then prevalent in
France, the name and all acknowledgment
of the existence and authority of God were
stricken out of that instrument, and because
it recognized protected slavery.
For these reasons they never take an oath
to support the Constitution and never hold
any Office under it, even to sitting on jury.
In 1900, congregation in South Carolina
called Rev. DR.. Mcleod, the father of DR..
Mcleod, who is now pastor of one of their
largest churches in New York. He rejected
the call on the ground that some of the
members of the congregation held slaves.
/ The case was laid before the Presbytery,
who decided that slaveholding and Chris
tianity are Incompatible Two commission
ers we're appointed to visit all the churches
and see the rule enforced. Those church mem
bers who declined to enancipate their
slaves were expelled from the church.
This and other branches of the Scotch
Presbyterian element, entered largely into
the original settlement of Pittsburg; and all
of them were, more or less anti-slavery,
from religious conviction. In the straightest
sect of this anti-slavery Presbyterianism,
the Covenanters. your correspondent was
born and brought up; and from infancy has
been taught to regard slaveholding and
Christianity as Incompatible; and to believe
that slavery was much more injurious to the
master than the slave, because 1t placed him
in the catalogue of enemies to God and man,
and in imminent danger of death eternal
This religious conviction, in the hearts OF
Thousands, was the fulcrun, on which the
anti-slayery agitation rested its lever In up
heaving the system; but ali the sgitation
could not have done more than keep alive a
sect, If 1t were not that whom the gods
would destroy they first make mad Wher
slavery showed itself aggressive, when il
demanded new territory, first an equal di
vide, with freedom, then all; and talked o
calling the roll of plantation slaves at tht
foot of Bunker Hill Monument, II over
/ reached itself; aud gave irresistible force Il
the teachings Of its tireless enemies. When
Mt an infinite cost of labor and sacrifice
which the Southern people can never esti
mate, a majority Of the Northern peopl
|. were brought to the stand Of refusing