Braden’s “A Dream and its Fulfillment”, Pages 15 and 16

Posted on December 17, 2011 by jmk

There are a fair number of articles on Liberal that are floating around the internet which place all their trust and faith in a Revd. Clark Braden and what he had to write on Liberal in the 1880s. None give in full the pamphlet on Liberal that Braden published in 1886, “A Dream and its Fulfillment, An Expose of the Late Infidel Would-Be Paradise, Liberal, Barton County, Missouri”, nor also an earlier newspaper article for which Braden served as source. By a long shot, these are not complimentary writings, but I thought it would be good to hunt them down, transcribe them, and place them up here, so all may have available the full source rather than chosen bits.

J. P. Moore wrote on Braden’s pamphlet in his book, “This Strange Town–Liberal, Mo”, and the chapter and some of his opinion on Braden can be viewed at that link.

“Fifty Years of Freethought”, which was published in 1888, had a few things to say on Braden:

A debating Fundamentalist of the time, the Rev. Clark Braden, supposed to be a Campbellite, dogged Freethought lectures and defied them to meet him. He was a vituperative polecat, and Christians who engaged him to meet Underwood or Jamieson did not repeat the order. B.F. Underwood unveiled this honorless and characterless individual in The Truth Seeker of August 2, 1879.

And:

A meeting addressed by Putnam in Oakland in May, 1888, was interrupted by the intrusion of the Christian champion and rapscallion, Clark Braden, reinforced by a local preacher named Sweeney and one Bennett, local agent of the Comstock society, with a demand to be heard and a challenge to debate. Mr. A.H. Schou of Oakland, who was presiding, said he would leave it to the audience whether these persons should be allowed to take up the time of the meeting, since the character of Clark Braden was well known throughout the coast. The audience voted a loud and unanimous No. The minister Sweeney begged he might inquire what was Mr. Putnam’s objection to Clark Braden. Mr. Putnam replied: “I will tell you why I will not debate with him. I refuse to meet Clark Braden in public debate because he is a blackguard and a liar.”

There was curiosity to know how the Christian champion would take that. He shouted something at the speaker and then walked stiffly forth, followed by the Rev. Mr. Sweeney and Comstock’s young man. As they went, Mr. Schou sent after them the reminder that if a Freethinker had entered Mr. Sweeney’s church and created this sort of disturbance of the meeting, he would have been placed under arrest instead of being allowed peacefully to depart.

This man Braden, whose argument consisted in an attack on the good name of Freethinkers, usually did not return to serve the same Christian community twice. The religious people who employed Braden had a custom of meeting afterwards to pass resolutions repudiating him as too rank to be borne with. He professed to be a Campbellite, or “Disciple,” and when the churches of that denomination could be worked no longer, he went to the Methodists. A religious paper in Winfield, Kansas, The Nonconformist, gave him this piquant mention: “It is yet to he reported that Clark Braden was ever received in a community the second time, except in company of the officers, with jewelry on his wrists.” At one place, where he debated B.F. Underwood, the Christians who employed him told him he was injuring their cause, and he had to borrow $20 of Underwood to get out of town. In return he sent to Underwood a letter in which he told how the Rev. John Sweeney, Underwood’s next opponent, was to be defeated. There was absolutely no good in Braden. His backers in Oakland came to grief.

B. F. Underwood wrote a booklet of 26 pages titled “The Kind of Man Clark Braden Is”. How I would like to get my hands on that!

Now, on to Braden’s booklet, which I present a few pages at a time. The full booklet may be found via the tag, “a dream and its fulfillment”.

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Pg. 15

The next day the free lovers armed themselves and defied their assailants. Wednesday night about twenty men met in the lumber yard to renew that attack on the free lovers, but knowing that they had prepared themselves to resist, and that their assailants would be killed, they abandoned the attempt.

These facts are stated in the Liberal and in Equity, a little free love sheet started by Replogle and his affinity, June 5th, as the organ of free lovers. Moore united his philosophical leaflet with it as they were kindred efforts. In their criminations and recriminations these sheets–Liberal and Equity, fully exposed the rottenness of both factions. Walser says in Liberal, July 1st: polyandry, pimpism, debauchery and lust, under the sweet-scented name of free love.” In Liberal of July 15th he says that the free lovers defended seduction. Then in the Liberal of August 19th that they blew up the entrance to his mines.

Free lovers retorted saying he was no better than they were. That they had only done what he said, in a public speech, he founded Liberal to have practiced, only what he had advocated. What he practiced himself, and what he knew and approved, when it occurred.

It was disgusting to watch Walser’s course. After leading in and instituting such conduct, and approving of it, while it was transpiring, when the writer’s expose of his infamy turned public attention to Liberal, he made frantic hypocritical attempts to white wash his den and save his property. But none of his associates in infamy would consent to be made scape-goats, to save his property. They defended themselves by exposing him. Then he would truckle to them, as he did to Moore July 4th, four days after sending a mode to assassinate him, by shaking hands with him and calling him, “Brother Moore.” The result again proved that free love was in the ascendency in Liberal, and could not be made to act the scape-goat. Walser closed his paper, closed up residence, abandoned Liberal, and offers the rotten carcass for sale. Such is the condition of affairs in Liberal, this the last week in November, 1886. The Chaplain dreamed better than he knew in his “Dream of Ingersollville,” only his picture is scarcely a pencil outline of the dark picture painted on the fair prairies of southwest Missouri. Another lesson has been inscribed on the page of human experience, that infidelity, godlessness and hatred of restraint always end in crime, infamy and ruin. God is not mocked. As men sow they reap.

A large portion of the literature most read in Liberal is of the character put under ban by law. Young females read, without any attempt at concealment, “scientific” works on the “science of prevention.” Miss Stowe, a young female leader in Liberal society, was met in the street by a young man with such a work in her hand. She loaned it to him to read. The Replogle woman was carrying such a book on the street by a travelling man. Foeticide is the prevailing practice in Liberal. There have not been as many children born in Liberal, born of infidel parents, as it has been years in existence. Mrs. Rosenkrantz, the wife of a hotel keeper in Liberal, told Dr. Bouten [Bouton], when dying of foeticide, that it had been performed for her in Liberal sixteen times, and that the ground around the motel was full of murdered foetuses. Van Law, the marshal, dug up a half developed embryo in digging a drain for the hotel. This is not the only instance. Doctors say that a large portion of their practice with women is saving them from the consequences of foeticide. The Lyons woman, Mrs. Lide Elson, and Mrs. Weams [Weems] were most notorious, as those who practiced foeticide, but there were several who understood the “science.” It was commonly reported that since Mrs. Lyons and her associates in “prevention and foeticide” have left Liberal, that a number of young females have found themselves enciente, and that Walser’s daughter and Thayer’s daughter left Liberal in that condition. But enough of such disgusting details.

The infidels of Liberal made desperate efforts to refute the facts stated in the Post Dispatch and Globe Democrat. They impudently asserted that they had a public school house although not two weeks before Walser made such statement in the Liberal, he tried in a school meeting to sell the building to the district and it was rejected, because it was merely a residence, and not fit for a school house.

The pretended statement of Mrs. Burgess was written by Walser, and never authorized by her. The statements of pretended Christians living in Liberal, are frauds. The parties have never been in a religious meeting, since living in Liberal, and have been regular attendants in infidel meetings, and are regarded as Infidels by all parties. Poole the pretended Baptist preacher, is a notorious scoundrel, who escaped the penitentiary for stealing, it is believed by bribery. Dr. Clark lived in lewdness with his wife before marriage, until he was forced to marry her by her brother’s revolver. He escaped the penitentiary for forfeiting bail bonds.

Mr. Finley, ex-sheriff, Mr. Boston, deputy sheriff and other honorables of Barton county “certify” for Liberal. How will they reconcile such certificates with statements they have made to others, such as Finley’s statement to R. F. Holland, that the hotels were whore houses, and women had come to his room in them, and wanted wo sleep with him. Others who signed those statements, and editors who have lied for Liberal, in their papers, have made statements flatly contradicting their statements in behalf of Liberal.

Some have said it is a common thing for some men in Lamar to go to Liberal, to spend the night with prominent women there. Doubtless the reason that some of these parties “certified,” was that they feared, if they refused, such visits would be exposed by their “friends” in Liberal. Scores of statements of these certifiers can be proved, flatly contradicting these “certificates.” Scores of statements of Lamar editors can be proved flatly contradicting their lying whitewash of Liberal.

There is not a person of common sense in Barton county that does not know these facts. If there was not Infidel in Liberal, if the town was empty, the property of the northwest corner of Barton County would be worth more than it is now. That Infidelity has delayed the improvement of that part of the county, and depreciated property over a half a million dollars. If Liberal were settled by decent moral christians, the property of that part of the county would be worth that much more. Had Liberal been settled and managed by christian people, there would be to-day a town of 3,000 or 4,000 people and that part of the county would be worth a million dollars more than it is. If Liberal can be cleansed and not a trace of Infidelity left, that part of Barton county in ten years will be worth one million dollars more than it will be if infidelity is allowed to fester and infect the atmosphere, with its stench. The true policy for Barton county is for her papers, officials and people to cease lying and whitewashing this cancer. Denounce and expose it. Exert every influence to break it up, extirpate it. If the people of the surrounding country would utterly cease, every one of them, to go to Liberal for mail or trade, or to railroad depot, and go to Lamar, Nevada or Fort Scott, rather than patronize the den, in six months the cancer would be dead. Then fill the empty houses with

Page 16

decent people, obliterate the name of Liberal and its foul memories; and build up a decent city as can be done.

Bankers, grain dealers, merchants, business men, professional men, have visited Pedro, and were delighted with its prospects, except the cancer so near it. The would not bring their families there. They will not until that cancer is removed. The people of the northwest of Barton county have borne the cowardice and pandering to infidelity, practiced in Lamar, and by would be leaders, and by papers as long as they will. Such men must change their course, or look to their infidel friends, that they appreciate so highly for their patronage and support. Decent people have been betrayed for that den of infamy as long as they endure it, as those who have betrayed them will learn.

The reply to this expose of this den will doubtless be to open the floodgates of filth on the author. But abuse of the lawyer in a case, never impeaches his witnesses, nor sets to one side their evidence. Several persons heard the statements of Grayston and Bouton, as made to the writer. Curless has rehearsed what his committee unearthed, to dozens. The infidel papers of Liberal, in their criminations and recriminations, have stated nearly all of the facts stated in this pamphlet. There are scores of persons around Liberal who, from the statements of infidels, or personal knowledge, can verify, one by one, the statements of this pamphlet. The writer has only given a specimen fact, out of volumes left untold. Two facts will be the moral of our history. Walser hired one A. J. Fishback, a renegade preacher, now an infidel ranter, as is always the case with such scoundrels, to travel and lecture, and lie for his den, and persuade fools, infected with the itch of what they call “free thought,” to go to Liberal. As Fishback was turned out of the church for eloping with a female from Oskaloosa, Iowa, and leaving his family destitute on the charities of the people, and as he is a free love libertine, whose wife and daughter disown him, he was a fit representative of Liberal. He persuaded a blacksmith in Pike Co., Illinois, to move to Liberal. His father-in-law, a life-long spouting infidel, visited him in Liberal. After staying a few days, he gave money to his daughter and said, “Do you leave here as soon as you can get away. This is no place for your children. I would not, for the world, try to rear a child in such a place.” He remarked to Mr. Bumgarner, “An infidel surrounded by Christians may spout his infidelity and the community may be able to stand it. But it will never do to try to establish a society with infidelity as its basis.” Dr. J. S. Gish, who tried it, said to the writer, “All that is needed to cure an infidel of roseate ideas of infidelity is two weeks experience in Liberal. It will cure him of all love for, or pride in infidelity.”

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APPENDIX

Since the above was written, about Dec. 1st 1886, there have been several new developments in Liberal. The Opera House was burned one night in Feb. 1887. The largest stock of goods in Liberal–belonging to the Todds–was in the store below the opera hall, and was burned. The fact that all were heavily insured was a subject of universal comment. Walser’s residence–like his store in Paris, Illinois–was burned one night. He had some men arrested for setting it on fire. His witness was a woman that he had put into the house to take care of it. Under the cross-examination she broke down, and came very near exposing the fact that she had set the fire at Walser’s instigation, so clearly as to cause their arrest. All were satisfied that such was a fact.

During the past winter the “joints” in Liberal threw off the mask and sold liquor, and ran pool-rooms, until the people of the surrounding country began a crusade, that landed some of the keepers in jail and ran the rest out of the country.

To fulfil the Chaplain’s dream, Stewart and some infidels got some Christians to hold meetings in Liberal, and to start a Sunday School in the school-house. But as it was done to save the credit of the town, and was not “fruits meet for repentance;” after playing the hypocrite a few weeks, meetings and Sunday School were shut out and put down as usual.

Property cannot be sold at from one-third to one-half its cost. Liberal is not only dead, but like a corpse chained to a living man, it is impeding Pedro in its growth. Walser played out in Wichita, and has gone back to Liberal. He is bumming around Liberal, trying to eke a living out of the carcass of Liberal, until he can sell it.

The infidels in Liberal are too rotten–too thoroughly given over to reprobate mind, to repent. That part of the Chaplain’s dream was the result of the Chaplain’s goodness of heart. Infidels like those in Liberal, may suffer from their infidelity, but they never repent. They are like Milton’s Satan. They become more depraved, and seek to drag others down with them. Those who have fled from Liberal, and those who can not, will continue to fester in their rottenness, until they curse God and die.

No attempt has been made to refuse this pamphlet. The writer has the statements of Grayston, Bouton, Curless and other infidels in such a shape that they dare not deny them. He can confirm them by the evidence of scores of others. He had the files of the Liberal and the Equity, the Infidel papers of Liberal. In these papers Walser, Stewart, Replogle, Moore, Yoemans and others state the facts he narrates, and they can not repudiate their own statements. Even the Lamar papers and “honorables” have ceased to lie for Liberal. The writer submits this revised edition of his pamphlet to the American public, with the conscious satisfaction that its statements are “iron-clad” and “water-proof.”

CLARK BRADEN

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ADDENDA

The following facts are well known and will not be denied in Liberal and vicinity. There lives near Liberal a farmer named George Boulware. He is a sceptic, but a man whose word is good. He tells openly and boldly this story. His hired man attended Sunday evening entertainments in Liberal. He told Mr. Boulware, that while the dancing jamboree, that always follows the Sunday evening entertainment, was in progress, boys, young men and old men were allowed, after paying a dollar each, to go behind the scenery on the stage and commit fornication with a female who was there for that purpose. Mr. Boulware told this and denounced such orgies, and called the entertainments and the place where they were held “Walser’s Dog House.” Walser threatened to sue Boulware for slander. Boulware defied him, told him to “crack his whip and drive ahead.” Walser has never sued Boulware, who continues to tell the story, defies Walser and the Infidels, and says he can prove what he has said. The reader can draw his own conclusions.

The following statement of the officials of Barton County will tell how the suits that the infidels of Liberal brought against Clark Braden were disposed of:

STATE OF MISSOURI., BARTON COUNTY. SS,:

Clark Braden was tried before me, Justice of the Peace in and for Barton county, State of Missouri, on the 18th day of May, 1885, for criminal libel, in certain statements he was charged with having made to a reporter of the Post-Dispatch a paper published in St. Louis, Missouri, and which appeared in that paper of May 2d. 1885. After the prosecution presented all their evidence, the case was submitted to the jury without any rebutting evidence by the defence, and Clark Braden was acquitted by the jury.

A. HALL, Justice of the Peace.
Lamar Barton County, Missouri, Nov 25, 1885
W. L. MACK, Clerk of the Circuit Court, Barton County, Missouri.

LAMAR, MO, Dec. 19th, 1887

The suit of Solon C. Thayer vs. Clark Braden et al., was dismissed by demand of the plaintiff, and judgment was rendered against the plaintiff and security for all costs. The costs were paid by Thayer, through the sheriff, under an execution.

W. L. MACK, Clerk of Circuit Court.

This was a civil suit for $25,000 damages.

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NOTES: Well, Braden never quite got around to saying fire and brimstone ought to be rained down and the earth salted, but he intimated as much.

Braden, noted elsewhere, states that he got much of his information from William Grayston and Dr. Bouton in a double interview but he never is clear on what either told him. In a few days I plan to write a post on this.

Braden’s “A Dream and its Fulfillment”, Pages 13 and 14

Posted on December 16, 2011 by jmk

J. P. Moore wrote on Braden’s pamphlet in his book, “This Strange Town–Liberal, Mo”, and the chapter and some of his opinion on Braden can be viewed at that link.

“Fifty Years of Freethought”, which was published in 1888, had a few things to say on Braden:

A debating Fundamentalist of the time, the Rev. Clark Braden, supposed to be a Campbellite, dogged Freethought lectures and defied them to meet him. He was a vituperative polecat, and Christians who engaged him to meet Underwood or Jamieson did not repeat the order. B.F. Underwood unveiled this honorless and characterless individual in The Truth Seeker of August 2, 1879.

And:

A meeting addressed by Putnam in Oakland in May, 1888, was interrupted by the intrusion of the Christian champion and rapscallion, Clark Braden, reinforced by a local preacher named Sweeney and one Bennett, local agent of the Comstock society, with a demand to be heard and a challenge to debate. Mr. A.H. Schou of Oakland, who was presiding, said he would leave it to the audience whether these persons should be allowed to take up the time of the meeting, since the character of Clark Braden was well known throughout the coast. The audience voted a loud and unanimous No. The minister Sweeney begged he might inquire what was Mr. Putnam’s objection to Clark Braden. Mr. Putnam replied: “I will tell you why I will not debate with him. I refuse to meet Clark Braden in public debate because he is a blackguard and a liar.”

There was curiosity to know how the Christian champion would take that. He shouted something at the speaker and then walked stiffly forth, followed by the Rev. Mr. Sweeney and Comstock’s young man. As they went, Mr. Schou sent after them the reminder that if a Freethinker had entered Mr. Sweeney’s church and created this sort of disturbance of the meeting, he would have been placed under arrest instead of being allowed peacefully to depart.

This man Braden, whose argument consisted in an attack on the good name of Freethinkers, usually did not return to serve the same Christian community twice. The religious people who employed Braden had a custom of meeting afterwards to pass resolutions repudiating him as too rank to be borne with. He professed to be a Campbellite, or “Disciple,” and when the churches of that denomination could be worked no longer, he went to the Methodists. A religious paper in Winfield, Kansas, The Nonconformist, gave him this piquant mention: “It is yet to he reported that Clark Braden was ever received in a community the second time, except in company of the officers, with jewelry on his wrists.” At one place, where he debated B.F. Underwood, the Christians who employed him told him he was injuring their cause, and he had to borrow $20 of Underwood to get out of town. In return he sent to Underwood a letter in which he told how the Rev. John Sweeney, Underwood’s next opponent, was to be defeated. There was absolutely no good in Braden. His backers in Oakland came to grief.

B. F. Underwood wrote a booklet of 26 pages titled “The Kind of Man Clark Braden Is”. How I would like to get my hands on that!

Now, on to Braden’s booklet, which I present a few pages at a time. The full booklet may be found via the tag, “a dream and its fulfillment”.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Pg. 13

Belk and his wife who ran the postoffice, were leaders in Liberal. The mails of Christians was opened, delayed, lost, until they went to the train with mail, until the office at Pedro was established.

Profanity has ever been the commonest speech in Liberal. One of the oldest residents declared that he did not know an infidel, male or female that did not swear, and nearly all of them habitually. Mollie Replogle, one of the leading young females in Liberal, admitted to the Globe-Democrat reporter that she used to swear habitually, that her young female associates did, but said she had quit. The writer heard three young misses belonging to the ton of Liberal swear on the platform at the close of a session of his debate with Stewart. Mrs. Lyons, then President of the Sunday Evening Entertainment, the highest position in Liberal, Mrs. Belk, postmistress, and other female leaders in Liberal were heard cursing and swearing in the postoffice June 5th, 1885. They were abusing the writing behind his back. The names of dozens of females who are swearers can be given. The men and boys are as profane as pirates. Such is “the best of Liberal society” in Liberal. Lawlessness in public meetings and utter disregard of parents is, of course, the rule in such a society.

Infidelity in all ages and lands has been characterized by lewedness. Liberal has been an infamous illustration of this fact. There always have been more grasswidows and wodowers–more persons cohabiting, who have former associates in cohabitation living, than in any other town of then [sic] times its population in the United States. One often sees this sign “Misfit carpets.” A sign should be hung over Liberal: “Misfit couples, husbands and wives;” only they are not and were not husbands and wives but persons herding together in cohabitation. Only a few of the revolting details can be given. One Lyons has long been a leader in Liberal. So has the woman with whom he cohabits. They cohabited for months without the slightest pretense of marriage, with the knowledge of Walser and all Liberal. Learning that the grand jury were going to indict them, they said a few words to each other in Walser’s parlor Saturday evening, October 28, 1882. Walser, in an editorial in the Liberal of November 1stt, describes with approval, the farce, that was a mockery and violation of all law. This woman was a leader in Liberal, and with a full knowledge of these facts, was placed in the most honored position in Liberal. Replogle, who was editor of the paper, and the woman who had more to do with running it than any other pseron, cohabited for months without any ceremony. Learning that an enemy waas about to present them to the grand jury, they went through the same farce that Lyons and his woman enacted. Walser and Liberal, with full knowledge of these facts, kept these parties at the head of the paper and society in Liberal for years. There are other cases that are similar.

Replogle’s woman cohabited with Henry Yoemans in Liberal, after her association with Replogle. The fact was well known. In the spring of 1885 she went to Yeomans in Clarksville, Texas. Prof. Yoemans, father of Henry, a teacher of music, who was teaching classes in Texas–a leader in Liberal–passed her off as his wife in some places. Young Yoeman passed her off as his wife in others. Old Yoemans seduced a man’s wife in Paris, Texas, and was slain by the husband, and the Replogle woman attended the funeral as the wife of H. Yeomans. The people in Texas got an inkling of the facts and Replogle went to Texas and declared his woman was his sister, and the wife of H. Yeomans, to save them from the penitentiary. Walser states these facts in the Liberal of July 15, 1886. Replogle in Equity No. IV. states that his affinity was in Texas with the Yeomans, “with his knowledge and consent.” He taunts Walser with knowing all about the facts at the time, and finding no fault, until the articles in the Post-Dispatch and Globe Democrat led him to play the hypocrite in trying to whitewash Liberal. While Replogle’s affinity was cohabiting with H. Yeomans with Replogle’s “knowledge and consent,” Replogle was cohabiting with Yeoman’s twin sisters in Liberal. So notorious did it become that their brother in Liberal told them to stop it or leave home. They left home, and one went to where the Replogle woman was stopping, who had returned from Texas. Her brother broke into the house at night, overpowered both women, and after beating his sister compelled her to dress her [sic] and go home with him. Replogle describes the whole affair in the Equity Supplement.

In February, 1885, a station agent in Liberal was discharged by the company, because he and others had made the depot building a house of assignation with Replogle’s affinity, Georgia Replogle (so-called); Molly Replogle, Replogle’s sister–with Replogle’s knowledge and consent; and the three Replogle’s were running the paper with Walser’s full knowledge of these facts, as Replogle and his friends have proved.

It was a notorious fact that the Lyons woman, so-called, was seen in lewdness with H. Yeoman’s at Mr. Bumgarner’s millet stacks one Sunday afternoon in broad daylight. With full knowledge of this fact, that was scandalously notorious, she was elected President of the Sunday Evening Entertainment. In Equity No. VII, Morre charged Walser with repeated attempts to seduce a Mrs. Hastings into lewdnesss. When his wife left him he used to go to the office of a female physician, Mrs. Allen, and the people in the next room, separated from their office by a thin board partition, had repeated audible evidence of their adultery. The woman had four affinities living when she took up with Walser. These facts are but the legitimate results of the sentiments of Walser and his crew.

In a speech in U. M. L. Hall in April, 1884, Walser declared, before a crowded audience, that “he was a free lover, and that he established Liberal to make it a free love town.” The Lyons woman, President of the Sunday Evening Entertainment, declared in Mr. Cumming’s meat shop she was a free lover in belief and practice. Mrs. Belk, postmistress, the Replogle woman, the Yeomans girls, and others have made such statements repeatedly. Yale, the leading gas bag of Liberal, declared to Mr. Pitts, then editing the paper: “I believe in free love; I believe my daughter should be free to cohabit with any man and as many men as she pleases; and to have children by any man or as many men as she pleases, and be honored for it, and not despised as she would be now.” Mr. Guffy, once postmaster in Liberal, says the last degree in Walser’s “Sacred Brotherhood” is a free love degree. C. W. Stewart, another champion in Liberal, confirms this in the Liberal of June 1st, 1885. He says:

“But when we realize that certain reformers (?) not only advocate Free Love, but travel over the country preaching and practicing it, and even organize secret societies, with the usual grips, signs, pass-words and other paraphernalia, and pour into the ears of innocent girls their libidinous trash; and initiate them into the beauties of illicit intercourse; and when there is opposition to their infamous course they begin to talk, “shoo” it is time to speak out on the subject. I speak by the card, for I played detective long enough to get the whole plan from one of its teachers. I am not afraid of being Morganized either, for none but paltroons will engage in the work of pimps and procuresses.”

What Stewart alludes is this: when the exposures of the Post Dispatch and Globe Democrat let the light in on the rottenness of Liberal, Walser made a hypocritical

Page 14

attempt to whitewash Liberal by making scape goats of a few. He sent Replogle and his woman away, though as Replogle says, he knew and approved of all he had ever done in the matters for which he said he discharged him–they they were transpiring. He had meetings in his parlor. It was full, and as Mark Walser said “they almost stomped the floor through” in their approval of the effort to purify Liberal. The intended scape goats heard of it and reminded Walser’s echoes of what could be proved in regard to themselves. This cooled their zeal, and they dropped out, through fear, until in the third meeting but three were present, the committee that had been appointed to learn the facts, and call a meeting and report. Mr. Curless, the chairman, was in earnest, and sincere in his desire to purify Liberal. The rest of the committee, through conscious guilt and fear backed out.

Curless called a meeting which met Monday afternoon, June 15. He reported such facts as these:

Lyons, a leader in Liberal, and his affinity, the president of the Sunday Evening Entertainment; Replogle so long editor of the paper, and his affinity, who was at the head of it in reality, had been in the practice of showing vile pictures to young boys and girls. They would invite them to their houses. The women would take liberties with the boys and “initiate them into the beauties of free love, illicit intercourse.” The women would invite the girls into their rooms show [sic] them obscene pictures. The men would attempt indecent liberties with them. If they submitted, the procuress would leave the room, or stand by while the men “initiated young girls into the beauties of illicit intercourse.” Curless reported the confession of a dozen girls who had been debauched, and who said that others had been. In the Liberal of July 29, 1886, Walser charges two women–Mrs. Lyon and Mrs. Replogle–with “showing obscene pictures to young boys and girls, and procuring young girls for free love purposes” and defies a denial of the charge. In Equity No. 4 Replogle admits that Lyons and wife, himself and wife had shown nude pictures to boys and girls. These damning infamies cannot now be denied. This is but a portion of what was revealed. Lyons did not attempt any denial of the charges. He coolly told the committee and others they could not make a scape goat of him and two or three more. They must treat all alike. If they did not drop it, he would expose them. He would tell what he knew of their conduct, and of their sons and daughters. They could not tell on him without exposing their daughters, that he had debauched.

Walser was told of his free love speech, a little over one year before, and that he said he established Liberal to be a free love town. His attempts on Mrs. Hastings, his conduct with Mrs. Dr. Allen, and other escapades were thrown up. He was reminded that his son was the worst libertine in Liberal. That his daughter was one of the initiated, and that he had to lock her up to keep her from free love orgies.

He was reminded that he had known all of these things, and approved of them, and took part in them, when they were occurring, and that his “Sacred Brotherhood” was in its last degree, free love. Lyons reminded him that he and Replogle had lived as free lovers, with Walser’s knowledge, and with his approval had lived with their affinities without any legal ceremony, after a farce he sanctioned. It was avowed that “all true Liberals were free lovers,” as Walser himself had declared. The language of Walser and his opponents to each other, cannot be repeated. Walser was scared out of his hypocritical attempt to whitewash Liberal, by making scape goats out of a few. Free Lovers were for [sic] the most numerous, and triumphed. All parties turned on Mr. Curless. Thayer, whose daughter was one of the “initiated,” told him “that he would have to look a long way up, to look up to where Mr. and Mrs. Lyons stood.” Lyons stood higher than ever in Liberal. Mrs. Lyons retained her position as President of the Sunday Evening Entertainment, and held her head higher than ever. Replogle and his affinity came back and went into the printing office, and Walser’s great moral reform, was accomplished.

Walser observing that Spiritists were the most numerous in Liberal began to investigate Spiritism. Dr. Bouton had wonderful manifestations in his house. Walser and Steward, those clear headed sceptics, that can not be humbugged with Christianity, went to the Doctors. Each got a communication from St. Bennett, who spent a portion of the last years of his life in a penitentiary for peddling vile literature. Walser declared he would not take $500 for his slate writing. He had it photographed and framed in a costly frame, to ornament his parlor. Stewart in a rhapsody, said his slate “was worth half his life,” and had it framed and hung up. Both Walser and Stewart showed their treasures to all visitors. Glowing accounts of the wonderful manifestations in Liberal were published in Spiritist papers, and the Spiritists flocked to Liberal in crowds. The unbelieving world was taunted and defied. Infidels were convinced and converted. Liberal was to receive a new birth through Spiritism, and astonish the world. But alas! a fire broke out in the Doctor’s house, and the whole fraud was exposed. Bouton says that Walser knew the fraud and was working with him to resuscitate Liberal by means of it. Replogle so states in Equity No. 5.

The old feud between Spiritists and materialists became more bitter than ever. It needed but a spark to cause an explosion. There was an old crank by the name of Moore, who issued semi-occasionally a little leaflet, in Liberal called, “The Principles of Life;” and who peddled books on sexual topics, and as Walser ways “vomited his filth and called it philosophy.“. To have something to show to outsiders the council of Liberal perpetrated the farce of passing an ordinance against prostitution. In a meeting in the opera house, Sunday night, June 27, 1886, Moore arose, Walser says with no shirt on except a very dirty under shirt, and denounced the council for passing such an ordinance. Stewart followed Moore in a scathing denunciation of free love, saying the seducer should be disposed of with shot gun. Walser saw, he thought, a chance to attempt another job at hypocritical whitewashing, and he followed in a similar speech. Moore attempted to reply, but was bulldozed down by Walser. When a vote on the subject was taken, Moore, Thayer, Owram, and Henry Yeomans arose and avowed themselves free lovers, and said that the term seduction only expressed the whims of certain persons in regard to acts that were perfectly natural and proper.

When Yeoman’s mother saw him rise she frantically called on him to recall such an act. She reminded him of the Christian teaching she had imparted to him before her family went into infidelity, and protested that she had always believed in Christianity, and had been a Christian woman, and implored him to recall his vile avowal, and not disgrace her. The meeting broke up in great excitement.

Yeomans and those who voted for free love were warned to leave. Walser sent McRae to Yeomans house to warn him to leave. Tuesday night the free lovers had a consultation in Moore’s house. About two o’clock a company of men called at the door for Yeomans, ordered him to leave, and when he refused they riddled the house with bullets, and pelted it with stones. Yeomans returned the fire, and free lovers say wounded young Bigelow, one of the assailants, in the shoulder, and the assailants fled, leaving a mask and dirk behind.

–to be continued–

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

NOTES: A grain of salt should be taken with each of Braden’ words. He mentions here prostitution several times, and vile literature. But his froth about “St. Bennett”, or the freethoughter D. M. Bennett, serving in prison for publishing “vile literature” gives a solid opportunity to reflect on what Braden considered to be vile.

Bennett, interestingly, had attracted ire not only for his freethought values but for publishing what he called “black collar crimes”, or crinimal acts of the clergy. Eventually, he published a compilation titled, “Sinful Saints and Sensual Shepherds”. Some of those targeted were supporters of Anthony Comstock who gave 19th century America the anti-obscenity “Comstock Laws”.

D. M. Bennett was charged with violating these laws by distributing the pamphlet Ezra Heywood’s “Cupid’s Yokes” in the mail. He was found guilty. 200,000 people petitioned President Rutherford B. Hayes for a pardon. Hayes later wrote that he didn’t consider “Cupid’s Yokes” to be obscene, but he refused the petition.

The full title of “Cupid’s Yokes” was “Cupid’s Yokes: or The Binding Forces of Conjugal Life. An Essay to Consider some Moral and Physiological Phases of Love and Marriage, Wherein is Asserted the Natural Right and Necessity of Sexual Self-Government”.

Here is a portion of “Cupid’s Yokes”, which was considered so vile:

The thread of philosophy with which people connect scattered facts of their social experience, is religiously used to entangle so-called “fallen women,” in hopeless depression. But, if each “common” woman entertains an average number of five men as her customers, for every woman who “sells her virtue” there must be five “fallen” men who buy it. How came they to have money to buy it? How came she to be so dependent that she consents to sell the use of her person for food and clothing? Wine, women, and wealth are three prominent objects of men’s desire; to be able to control the first two, they monopolize the third; having, through property in land, interest on money, rent, and profits, subjected labor to capital, recipients of speculative increase keep working men poor; and, by excluding woman from industrial pursuits and poisoning her mind with superstitious notions of natural weakness, delicacy, and dependence, capitalists have kept her wages down to very much less than men get for the same work. Thus, men become buyers, and women sellers, of “virtue.” But many women, not in immediate need of money, engage in “the social evil;” for, allied with this financial fraud is the great social fraud, marriage, by which the sexes are put in unnatural antagonism, and forbidden natural intercourse; social pleasure, being an object of common desire, becomes a marketable commodity, sold by her who receives a buyer for the night, and by her who, marrying for a home, becomes a “prostitute” for life. The usury system enables capitalists to control and consume property which they never earned, laborers being defrauded to an equal extent; this injustice creates intemperate and reckless desires in both classes; but when power to accumulate property without work is abolished, the habits of industry, which both men and women must acquire, will promote sexual Temperance. In marriage, usury, and the exceptionally low wages of women, then, I find the main sources of “prostitution.” Luckily the profit-system will go down with its twin-relic of barbarism, the marriage-system; in life united, in death they will not be divided.

SEXUAL RIGHTS.

In telling the woman of Samaria, who had just said to him “I have no husband,” “Thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband,” Jesus quietly recognized, without reproof, her natural right to live with men as she chose; and when a woman “taken in adultery, in the very act,” was brought to him for criticism and sentence, he sent her accusers home to their own hearts and lives by the emphatic rebuke, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” By the Mosaic Law she should hnse been stoned to death, and the lascivious ignorance of religio-“cultured” Massachusetts would imprison her; but wiser Love points her to the upward path of social and industrial liberty. Impersonal and spiritual, Love has also its material and special revelations, which make it a sacredly private and personal affair. Why should the right of private judgment, which is conceded in politics and religion, be denied to domestic life? If Government cannot justly determine what ticket we shall vote, what church we shall attend, or what books we shall read, by what authority does it watch at key-holes and burst open bed-chamber doors to drag Lovers from sacred seclusion? Why should priests and magistrates supervise the Sexual Organs of citizens any more than the brain and stomach? If we are incapable of sexual self-government, is the matter helped by appointing to “protect” us, “ministers of the Gospel,” whose incontinent lives fill the world with “scandals?” If unwedded lovers, who cohabit are lewd, will paying a marriage fee to a minister make them “virtuous?“ Sexual organs are not less sacredly the property of individual citizens than other bodily organs; this being undeniable, Who but the individual owners can rightly determine When, Where, How and for What purpose they shall be used? The belief that our Sexual Relations can be better governed by statute, than by Personal Choice, is a rude species of conventional impertinence, as barbarious and shocking as it is senseless. Personal Liberty and the Rights of Conscience in Love, now savagely invaded by Church, State, and “wise” Freethinkers, should be unflinchingly asserted. Lovers cannot innocently enact the perjury of marriage; to even voluntarily become slaves to each other is deadly sin against themselves, their children, and society; hence marriage vows and laws, and statutes against adultery and fornication, are unreasonable, unconstitutional, unnatural and void.

For this, D. M. Bennett, in his sixties, was sentenced to 13 months of hard labor. Weakened, he died not long after his release from prison.

Notice what one of these paragraphs addresses. Prostitution. I have my very serious doubts that freethoughters who proposed sexual self-government and free love, viewing prostitution as described above, considering their loathing of the harsh inequities of capitalism, are going to be running around pimping and engaging in prostitution.

What we have here are freelovers, a subset of freethoughters, clashing so wildly with current values, going to Liberal with the thought that here they would be unmolested and accepted. They were for a time, but Walser was, ultimately, a capitalist, and he ended in not standing by them and forcing them out.

What is most interesting to me in the above are the few words that sneak almost inconspicuously by as to the question of whether Walser was a cohort in Bouton’s hoax. For profit.

I’ve written already, in my comments on Bouton’s pamphlet the serious profit the community stood to make from the hoax.

Did Bouton and his cohorts make any money off the deception? He doesn’t mention receiving any silver, but considering the time invested and the alterations to his home, I find it difficult to imagine there would not have been an attractive financial side to the whole affair. And when one thinks about it, Bouton’s deceptions would have increased the economy of Liberal during those years. Visitors coming in from out of town needed places to sleep and eat and would have essentials they would need to purchase. Liberal later became, indeed, a veritable center for Spiritualism with a Spiritualist camp meeting held once a year that attracted people nationwide.

I do think it’s reasonable to consider that Walser may have been a party to the hoax, or became a party to it after its initiation.

Braden’s “A Dream and its Fulfillment”, Pages 11 and 12

Posted on December 15, 2011 by jmk

J. P. Moore wrote on Braden’s pamphlet in his book, “This Strange Town–Liberal, Mo”, and the chapter and some of his opinion on Braden can be viewed at that link.

“Fifty Years of Freethought”, which was published in 1888, had a few things to say on Braden:

A debating Fundamentalist of the time, the Rev. Clark Braden, supposed to be a Campbellite, dogged Freethought lectures and defied them to meet him. He was a vituperative polecat, and Christians who engaged him to meet Underwood or Jamieson did not repeat the order. B.F. Underwood unveiled this honorless and characterless individual in The Truth Seeker of August 2, 1879.

And:

A meeting addressed by Putnam in Oakland in May, 1888, was interrupted by the intrusion of the Christian champion and rapscallion, Clark Braden, reinforced by a local preacher named Sweeney and one Bennett, local agent of the Comstock society, with a demand to be heard and a challenge to debate. Mr. A.H. Schou of Oakland, who was presiding, said he would leave it to the audience whether these persons should be allowed to take up the time of the meeting, since the character of Clark Braden was well known throughout the coast. The audience voted a loud and unanimous No. The minister Sweeney begged he might inquire what was Mr. Putnam’s objection to Clark Braden. Mr. Putnam replied: “I will tell you why I will not debate with him. I refuse to meet Clark Braden in public debate because he is a blackguard and a liar.”

There was curiosity to know how the Christian champion would take that. He shouted something at the speaker and then walked stiffly forth, followed by the Rev. Mr. Sweeney and Comstock’s young man. As they went, Mr. Schou sent after them the reminder that if a Freethinker had entered Mr. Sweeney’s church and created this sort of disturbance of the meeting, he would have been placed under arrest instead of being allowed peacefully to depart.

This man Braden, whose argument consisted in an attack on the good name of Freethinkers, usually did not return to serve the same Christian community twice. The religious people who employed Braden had a custom of meeting afterwards to pass resolutions repudiating him as too rank to be borne with. He professed to be a Campbellite, or “Disciple,” and when the churches of that denomination could be worked no longer, he went to the Methodists. A religious paper in Winfield, Kansas, The Nonconformist, gave him this piquant mention: “It is yet to he reported that Clark Braden was ever received in a community the second time, except in company of the officers, with jewelry on his wrists.” At one place, where he debated B.F. Underwood, the Christians who employed him told him he was injuring their cause, and he had to borrow $20 of Underwood to get out of town. In return he sent to Underwood a letter in which he told how the Rev. John Sweeney, Underwood’s next opponent, was to be defeated. There was absolutely no good in Braden. His backers in Oakland came to grief.

B. F. Underwood wrote a booklet of 26 pages titled “The Kind of Man Clark Braden Is”. How I would like to get my hands on that!

Now, on to Braden’s booklet, which I present a few pages at a time. The full booklet may be found via the tag, “a dream and its fulfillment”.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Pg. 11

They are agreed in but one thing, the vilest abuse of religion and in hatred of all restraint. Mrs. Lyons, for a long time President of the Sunday Evening Entertainment, answered the question, “What is Freethought?” from her presidential chair. “It is to think just what you please, talk just as you please, do just as your please, and it’s nobody’s business, but your own.” That has been the rule, and the state of society among a lot of cranks and outcasts, living such an idea, can not be imagined.

Having by his Jeremy Diddler trickery, in regard to his lots, made serfs of his dupes, Walser was able for years to gratify his intolerance and hatred of Christianity, in trying to keep believers of the Bible out of Liberal. He organized a secret society, like the Mormon “Danites,” which he called “The Sacred Brotherhood. A committee, like the “Whittling Deacons” so famous in Mormonism, was appointed to interview all strangers. Dr. Bouton, Thayer Pitts and others acted on this committee. Walser’s orders were: “If you conclude that strangers are believers of the Bible; lie on them; bull-doze them; do anything to drive them away.” When some persons who would not submit to infidel bulldozing, began to settle on lots that Walser did not own, outside of his town plot, the infidels of Liberal actually undertook to build a wire fence around Liberal, across public highways, so as to prevent Christians entering the town, even to go to the depot. One Monday morning, all Liberal could be seen at work, digging holes, carrying posts and wire, and putting up this evidence of infidel toleration and liberality; Walser’s wife and other female infidels pounding down stakes as ostentatiously as possible. The railroad authorities telegraphed that they would remove the depot, if the lunacy was not abandoned, and that freak of the infidel lunacy was abandoned.

The Liberals of this Liberal town delight in surrounding Christians, who come into town on business, and abusing Christianity and Christians, in the vilest manner. They will flock around them in stores, on the street, in the post office, and depot. One reason why a post office was established in Pedro, within sixty rods of the office in Liberal, was that Christians could not go for mail or send their children without such insults. Walser placarded the walls of the depot and post office with insults to Christians. Infidels will flock into the business places of Christians, and even go to their houses, to engage in such work. Guests in the hotels, and in their houses are not spared. The most intolerant and abusive persons in the world are these self-styled Liberals. The worst of social ostracism was practiced. Particular pains were taken to insult and bull-dose Christians. Walser entered the store of W. H. Simpson, a Christian who had paid for his lot, and owned all on it, and insolently told him “he could entertain his notions if he kept them to himself; but he must not talk them, or have any religious meetings or exercises on his premises, or he would have to leave.” Walser was promptly and properly ordered to leave the store. He then sent a ruffian into Mr. Simpson’s store to abuse him, who was driven out with a pitchfork. Deliberate and persistent attempts were made to ruin Christians in character and business, and to drive them off. Scores of instances can be given. The rival town, Pedro, was started by persons who would not submit to such bull-dozing intolerance. For years no place could be obtained, in this Liberal town, to hold religious meetings, unless ministers and Christians would permit infidels to get up when they pleased and occupy as much time as they pleased, in ribald abuse of religion. Mr. Ashbaugh, a Methodist minister, held the first meeting in an unfinished elevator. The infidels in their paper assailed him and all preachers and Christians with the coarsest slander and abuse. As infidels persisted in interrupting and breaking up meetings, a small meeting house was erected; Christians hoping to be let alone in their own house. But the hope was a vain one.

Infidels, by force of numbers, tried to vote religious literature out of the Sunday school, and vote in infidel literature instead. They flocked into the school and church, talked their abuse, interrupted the exercises with their stuff.

In a ribald blasphemous editorial in the Liberal of July 14, 1882, Walser avows that he arose in a religious meeting, in the meeting house, Sunday, June 13, and interrupted the preacher, and in a lengthy harangue stated that, because he had a pretended claim to ownership of one-twentieth of the property (obtained by trickery for this very purpose) he would exercise the privilege of speaking when and as long as he pleased, and would inflict on an audience, met for religious worship, his ribald abuse of religion, whether they objected or not, and at his own will as to time of interruption and the length of time he would occupy. He and his crew raised a riot and broke up the meeting, and all attempt to hold religious meetings in Liberal had to be abandoned.

For the purpose of getting an opportunity to insult Christians and abuse preachers, the Infidels in Liberal have offered their halls to preachers and have urged Christians to hold meetings in them. Two ministers were invited to hold a meeting in the hall, and the most positive pledges were made that they should not be interrupted, or interfered with in any way. At the close of the sermon there was a short prayer meeting. The infidels had one of their number, Weiler, kneel down and offer a most blasphemous mockery of prayer, in which the Saviour was addressed: “You G–d d–d dirty little bastard.” The preachers and Christians left the house in horror and disgust, amid the laugh and jeers of the infidels.

An aged minister, Mr. Tidings, was urged by the infidels to speak in their hall. He consented to do so, if they would pledge themselves not to say a work, or interfere in any way, for, as he said, he was too old and feeble to engage in controversy. Such pledge was given. At the close, Yale, one of the ranters of Liberal, who had aided in inviting him, and in making the pledge that nothing should be said by infidels, arose and began a ribald abusive harangue, driving Christians from the house in disgust. It was their avowed purpose to allow no religious meetings in Liberal, except when they could, by interruption and abuse, and insult, turn them into an infidel tirade against religion, and gratify their hatred of religion, in abusing and insulting preachers and Christians.

The meetings of the writer were the first ever held in Liberal that were not broken up in that way. The infidels had been using the Opera House for their jamborees for years, and had not paid the owner, Mrs. Burgess, even the merely nominal rent she charged them. She had turned them out, and was indignant at their treatment of her. The writer rented the Opera House, with the assurance that the owner would back him with all her means, in enforcing order. There were plots to raise a row, break up the lectures, mob the lecturer, but when infidels learned that not only would the law be enforced, but that violence would be met in such a way as to end it and the perpetrators also, their courage, like that of Bob Acres, “oozed out at their fingers’ ends.” The writer said what he pleased, and compelled infidel ruffians to keep still.

The liberality of Infidelity in giving money to sus-

Pg. 12

tain “free thought” has been strikingly illustrated in Liberal. At the end of six years they had no public school building, owned by the district. Schools had been held in the little U. M. L. Hall, or in houses erected for residences. Now they have the skeleton of a building, buried in debt and locked up under a mechanic’s lien. The only public building is a small frame that can be erected for $600. Remember this is the only public building in this infidel paradise at the expiration of seven years. Contrast it with the school buildings and churches of Christian towns of seven years’ growth. As there has always been an excess of cranks, who were full to the bursting with abuse of religion, the infidels of Liberal have paid but little for the gas that has been set free in their meetings. The infidels in Liberal have not in seven years expended, directly and indirectly, $3,000 for the support of their “free thought” There is not a Christian town of the same age, and opportunities for growth, that has not contributed in the same time, from fifty to one hundred times as much for Christianity.

The religious intellectual and moral exercises most popular in Liberal are shows, dances, Sunday fishing, and dancing picnics. It is a standing remark in Barton County, “Everything in Liberal must be a dance, a spree, or end in one.” It is a lesson of history, that people addicted to dances and shows have been conspicuous for their intellectual and moral status!! Their sprees, dances and jamborees are corrupting the youth of the surrounding country, and even sceptical parents are anxious to move away, or have the den broken up. A few facts will show the character of the culture afforded by the Sunday Evening Entertainment. One of the decorations of the “Universal Mental Liberty Hall” is a horrid caricature–a hideous picture, blasphemously labeled–“A picture of God.” The Deity is usually spoken of as “Old God.” Walser’s first wife, the model and leader in Liberal, used such language before large audiences. Miss Yeomans, one of the teachers and leaders in Liberal, read to a session of the Sunday Evening Entertainment, in May, 1885, an obscene essay, describing the plans, she attributed to the Prophet Jonah and his wife, in regard to the number of children they tried to have. Male and female infidels leered and roared over it lasciviously and vociferously. Under the name of “scientific talks and discussions” language was constantly uttered in these meetings, that Walser, in an editorial in the Liberal says should only be heard in lectures to medical students. He speaks of it in another editorial as “forcing filth, in the name of philosophy, on the audiences,” as “vomiting filth.” These Sunday Evening Entertainments generally closed y clearing the U. M. L. Hall of seats, and dancing till towards daylight. There was no lack of free love men and women to accompany the dances and sprees with the free practice of their creed. Said one infidel to the writer, “If you could be around one of their dances and jamborees, and see what is going on, you would think you were in Sodom.” It is this that causes the lewd of Lamar and surrounding towns and country to flock to Liberal on Sundays and to its jamborees.

The infidels take special pains to work on Sunday, in violation of the law of the State. They take pains to drive through Pedro on Sunday, with their bands playing, when going out to Sunday picnics. Last Fourth of July was celebrated in Liberal, on Sunday, with base ball, shooting and all sorts of noisy displays and games and sports, and closed with a dancing jamboree. The processing took special pains to parade as noisily as possible through Pedro. The boast about the sobriety of Liberal is a shameless falsehood. More liquor has been sent to Liberal, from the beginning of the place, than to any other place of the same size on the Kansas & Memphis Railroad. There has never been a time when there were not from three to six places where liquor could be obtained, and almost without concealment. One grocer kept a large oil take full in his grocery, as publicly as oil, and disposed of it almost as freely. But few of the infidels are total abstainers, and many are habitual topers. Drunkenness and drunken rows are as frequent in Liberal as in any town of its size in Missouri. More drunken infidels can be seen in Liberal in one year than drunken church members among a thousand times as many church members, during the same time.

The town has been notorious for its rows and scrapes. We have mentioned the brutal assault of the Walsers on Grayston. Walser tried to swindle Gilmore, the man who opened his mines. In a suit Gilmore’s evidence was believed, instead of both the Walsers’, and Gilmore obtained a judgment. The cowardly Walser ruffians followed him into a store, and while old Walser stood before him abused him, the cowardly ruffian, Mark Walser, sneaked up behind him and knocked him down with a weight. Then the two ruffians stamped and kicked their helpless victim, splitting his ear, his lip, fracturing his jaw, old Walser tauntingly yelling at him, “G–d d–n you, why don’t you lie still?” Replogle taunts Walser with this brutality in “Equity” No. VI.

Walsers were fined for this brutality. They had Gilmore arrested for perjury. The court took his evidence instead of the Walsers, and he was discharged. In “Equity No. VII” Replogle tells how Walser attacked him with a chair in the post office, shouting, “You G–d d–n s–n of a b–h,” although Replogle refused to say a word in reply to his abuse. These are but a few out of many similar affairs.

Liberal has been famous for its lawsuits. If an infidel got mad at another, he rushed before a magistrate or to Lamar, and charged his enemy with some crime, or misdemeanor. There was no trouble to find charges. It was a common remark in Lamar, that Liberal had more suits in court than ten times its population in any other part of the county, and that Walser and his crew could always prove anything they wanted to establish, with an excess of witnesses. There was no trouble to get men and women to swear what was wanted. It was useless for an outsider to go to law with an infidel. As one man remarked to the writer “they could swear his eye-teeth out of his head.” An infidel stole over $400 from W. A. Delissa, a merchant in Liberal not an infidel. Walser was always in law, and his serfs were always ready to prove anything he wanted.

In no town was backbiting and slander so prevalent. If what infidels said of each other was true, so far from having “no hell or devil” in Liberal, all Liberal was a hell, and its infidels were the devils.

When Walser’s wife sued for a divorce, to prevent her obtaining alimony, Walser hired Yale one of the leaders and lecturers in Liberal, to produce in court, letters he said Mrs. Walser had written to him. In settlement Walser signed an acknowledgement that he forged the letters and hired Yale to commit perjury in swearing to them. Such is Walser and his principal lieutenant, Yale. The mails were repeatedly rifled of registered letters in the postoffice. Six cases of stealing occurred in April 1885.

–to be continued–

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The Ashbaugh mentioned is likely the Methodist minister Orren M. Ashbaugh.

I’m having no luck, thus far finding Thayer Pitts, and I’ve got a couple of different possibles for Gilmore, don’t know which one is the right one. Weiler? A last name. Have no idea. Same with Mr. Tidings. W. H. Simpson was a Liberal personality, mentioned by Harmon, written of by Moore, who eventually left his family in Liberal and took off for parts unknown.

Braden’s “A Dream and its FulFillment”, pages 9 and 10

Posted on December 14, 2011 by jmk

J. P. Moore wrote on Braden’s pamphlet in his book, “This Strange Town–Liberal, Mo”, and the chapter and some of his opinion on Braden can be viewed at that link.

“Fifty Years of Freethought”, which was published in 1888, had a few things to say on Braden:

A debating Fundamentalist of the time, the Rev. Clark Braden, supposed to be a Campbellite, dogged Freethought lectures and defied them to meet him. He was a vituperative polecat, and Christians who engaged him to meet Underwood or Jamieson did not repeat the order. B.F. Underwood unveiled this honorless and characterless individual in The Truth Seeker of August 2, 1879.

And:

A meeting addressed by Putnam in Oakland in May, 1888, was interrupted by the intrusion of the Christian champion and rapscallion, Clark Braden, reinforced by a local preacher named Sweeney and one Bennett, local agent of the Comstock society, with a demand to be heard and a challenge to debate. Mr. A.H. Schou of Oakland, who was presiding, said he would leave it to the audience whether these persons should be allowed to take up the time of the meeting, since the character of Clark Braden was well known throughout the coast. The audience voted a loud and unanimous No. The minister Sweeney begged he might inquire what was Mr. Putnam’s objection to Clark Braden. Mr. Putnam replied: “I will tell you why I will not debate with him. I refuse to meet Clark Braden in public debate because he is a blackguard and a liar.”

There was curiosity to know how the Christian champion would take that. He shouted something at the speaker and then walked stiffly forth, followed by the Rev. Mr. Sweeney and Comstock’s young man. As they went, Mr. Schou sent after them the reminder that if a Freethinker had entered Mr. Sweeney’s church and created this sort of disturbance of the meeting, he would have been placed under arrest instead of being allowed peacefully to depart.

This man Braden, whose argument consisted in an attack on the good name of Freethinkers, usually did not return to serve the same Christian community twice. The religious people who employed Braden had a custom of meeting afterwards to pass resolutions repudiating him as too rank to be borne with. He professed to be a Campbellite, or “Disciple,” and when the churches of that denomination could be worked no longer, he went to the Methodists. A religious paper in Winfield, Kansas, The Nonconformist, gave him this piquant mention: “It is yet to he reported that Clark Braden was ever received in a community the second time, except in company of the officers, with jewelry on his wrists.” At one place, where he debated B.F. Underwood, the Christians who employed him told him he was injuring their cause, and he had to borrow $20 of Underwood to get out of town. In return he sent to Underwood a letter in which he told how the Rev. John Sweeney, Underwood’s next opponent, was to be defeated. There was absolutely no good in Braden. His backers in Oakland came to grief.

B. F. Underwood wrote a booklet of 26 pages titled “The Kind of Man Clark Braden Is”. How I would like to get my hands on that!

Now, on to Braden’s booklet, which I present a few pages at a time. The full booklet may be found via the tag, “a dream and its fulfillment”.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Pg. 9

In May, 1884, a number of persons who would not submit to infidel insolence and bulldozing; moved fifteen of the best buildings in Liberal on to a plot west of Liberal and started the rival town of Denison, now called Pedro. This town is now the crossing of the Kansas City and Memphis railroad, and the main line of the Missouri Pacific, over which the traffic between Kansas City, St. Louis and Texas passes. When the writer returned to Liberal in April, 1885, he engineered movements that resulted in separating Pedro from Liberal as a school district; and that gave to Pedro a postoffice. The depot in Liberal will be abandoned. The infidel fiasco will collapse, and when the few infidels left in Liberal have, like the Arabs, silently folded their tents and stolen away, Pedro will be one of the most promising business towns in the southwest. There are two meeting houses and two churches in Pedro. The writer preached in Pedro, and had one house finished and dedicated. The other has since been finished. Pedro will be one of the best towns in southwest Missouri, and will be a monument to the difference between Christian liberality and toleration, and Infidel intolerance, and bigotry, as Liberal will be of infidel folly and vice, until it disappears in Pedro. Another small imitation of building the tower of Babel.

One would suppose to read the statements in the paper published in Liberal, and infidel papers, that Liberal rivaled Boston in its literary and benevolent enterprises, societies and work. A great Liberal Orphans’ Home was chartered, with a wonderful flourish of trumpets, and much has been written with regard to it, and loud calls have been made for money. It has existed only in the gas evaporated in the charter, infidel papers and in the gab in Liberal. The Great Liberal Normal and Business Educational Institute–there let us stop and take breath–“in which all Liberal could have their children educated in all departments of knowledge and literature”–Oxford and Cambridge would hardly presume to make such an announcement–was one of the wonders of the age, a stupendous marvel, beyond human knowledge, a universal university beyond the grasp of human powers. To give some shadow of reality to the Great Liberal Orphans’ Home, Walser put up with money duped out of parties, for the Home, a two story dwelling house about thirty by fifty, cheaply constructed, ostensibly as a start for the Home. He rented this to the school district. Into it were put Grayston and his wife. As none but infidels would send to the school, and not all of them, about half of the pupils of the district school attended this great Liberal Normal Business and Educational Institute. There never were more than one hundred pupils in attendance, not twenty outside of Liberal and not half a dozen lived over two miles from the cheap building in which the school was taught.

The “all departments of knowledge and literature” taught in it were not equal to the grammar department in an ordinary graded school. There were a score of public schools in Barton county that excelled it. The whole sham was maintained by violating the law in using public funds to run a most intolerant sectarian school of the infidel stripe of sectarianism. All reading lessons of a religious character were skipped, and if a religious sentiment happened to be met with, in spite of all this bigoted care, the teachers were careful to instruct the pupils that no person of sense believed such stuff. Pupils were carefully taught to spell the name of the Deity with a small “g.” Such was the elevating and liberal spirit of this Great Liberal Normal and Business Educational Institute. The morals of this marvel can be appreciated when it is known that the disgusting, ruffianly practice of cursing and profane swearing was the habitual speech of nearly every pupil, old and young, male and female one the playground, and in the schoolroom, in the presence of the teachers, unrebuked. There never was a class in the school beyond what were in neighboring country district schools. There was not a normal or business pupil in the school. To read the advertisements of the sham, the glowing puffs of it in the paper in Liberal, and in infidel papers, and in letters written from Liberal, and in the talk of infidels about it, one would have supposed that the great universities of the Old World were primary schools in comparison with it.

When the public money was exhausted, the Chancellor of this universal university, Grayston, went to Walser, the Regent of the Board of Trustees, and wanted his pay. The Regent told the Chancellor that the Great Liberal Normal Business and Educational Institute had no funds, and that the August Board were in no way responsible for the Chancellor’s pay. The Chancellor and the Regent of this universal university had a row, and Mark Walser, noble son of an illustrious sire, acting as his father’s ruffianly bully, sneaked up behind Grayston and knocked him down; and the Chancellor of this universal university, went around for weeks, with his eyes in mourning for the departed glories of the Great Liberal Normal and Business Educational Institute, composed of two teachers in a cheap building, not erected for school purposes, with less than one hundred primary pupils of a district school–a universal university in which “all Liberals”–what a host there must have been of them–“could have their children educated in all departments of education and knowledge”–what a curriculum infidel literature and knowledge must have–“and have them in the best of Liberal society,” where profanity is the prevailing speech, and free love the prevailing sentiment and practice, “and have them enjoy the advantages of Sunday Instruction Schools and Entertainments,” offered by swearing female free lovers and procuresses with exercises made up of obscenity and blasphemy.

The miraculous effort needed to keep up this great Liberal Normal and Business Educational Institute for six months, on public money perverted from its lawful use, exhausted even the infidels of Liberal, and a year

Pg. 10

elapsed before another effort was made. The Great Liberal Orphan’s Home and the Great Liberal Normal and Business Educational Institute were consolidated–it is a wonder how two such colossal concerns could be united–their charters amended and consolidated, and the new wonder was called “Free Thought University.” Flaming announcements of this wonderful legal achievement were made in the Liberal paper. profound articles were published in the paper by Chancellor Leahy. Circulars were sent all over the land, and announcements were made that sons and daughters of Liberals were coming to this new wondrous university in crowds. Portentous announcements of the opening of the Free Thought University were made. The morning came and “twelve pupils, all from Liberal, and nearly all young girls”–I quote from a paper published in Liberal–met in the little U.M.L. Hall, a building without a school desk or one particle of school furniture. Parturiunt montes, ridiculus mus nascitur. The mountains labor, a contemptible mouse is brought forth.

The school has never had more than fifteen pupils, young girls of Liberal, and about once a month a dance or jamboree of some kind has been held to wheedle out of the folly of fools some thing to eke out the board bill of the faculty of the Great Free Thought University of Liberal. The millennium of universal mental liberty, according to infidel gospel is fully established, and such glimpse as human vision can stand can be seen, in the Great Free Thought University, of a dozen young girls in the little U.M. L. Hall in Liberal. Bah! Humbug!

The “live paper” was a little four-column sheet, printed one page at a time on a ramshackling old job press, that looked ancient enough to have been co-temporaneous with the invention of printing. The type had been rejected, as worn-out type, when Walser got possession of it, and the paper was about as legible as if it had been printed on a currycomb. It was edited most of the time by Replogle Chaapelle and other free lovers, was set up by free lovers, and its matter was low filthy attacks on religion and all that was good and decent. As an editor remarked to the writer: “The vile little thing is a disgrace to the press of the United States.” This sheet, with a circulation of less than 300, was a fair index of the public spirit, liberality, moral and intellectual status of this Infidel Paradise, during its seven years of so-called “Free Thought and Liberalism.” About six months before he left Liberal, Walser got a new press and some type, and enlarged the paper. He had the assurance to announce that he was going to make an illustrated paper of it, and called for five dollar contributions for that end. The assurance of this Infidel Peter Funk, and the intelligence of his dupes can be measured by the fact that he had the cheek to make such an announcement, and there were fools who gave their money to him, for he published a list of names. The paper ran a few months and collapsed, and the outfit is now for sale. The “live paper” is dead beyond hope of resurrection.

The innumerable enterprises of which so much was said in the paper, in letters from Liberal, in accounts of it, and in meetings in Liberal, and in the gassing done on its streets, were even less real than the University, the Home, the live paper. Public meetings have been held, and enough enterprises have been gassed about, to cover Barton County with buildings. The wind work of countless projects were done, for gas is abundant in Liberal. To-day there is not a factory in Liberal, not a public school building, only a skeleton locked up under a mechanic’s lien. Its hotels are dens of infamy, its stores the cheapest, and they are moving away. Its bonds are fifteen cents on a dollar, and no purchasers, and its people, who can get away, are fleeing from it like vermin from a sinking ship.

When persons went to Walser to purchase lots, with wonderful apparent generosity, he told them that he did not want pay down for the lots. He would give them a bond for a deed at the end of ten years. They could use their own means in erecting buildings, and starting their business. By such a course Walser secured the erection of more and better buildings on his lots than would have been erected on lots owned by the builders. The dupes soon learned that they could neither rent nor sell, except as Walser dictated, and that he was devouring their money by his ten per cent interest. A more abject set of serfs than most of the people of this Infidel land of freedom were never seen. Replogle and Moore, in editorials in “Equity,” the anti-Walser paper, published in Liberal, taunt the tools of Walser with these facts and with having his collar on their necks. They taunt Walser with his frauds and his extortions. Walser and his crew no longer deny the facts stated to the writer, by Grayston and Bouton, and stated by him in the Post Dispatch. They have been bandied back and forth in the rival papers, in rows, called meetings in Liberal, and on its streets, until no one will be fool enough to deny them.

Liberal, ever since it was projected, has been, to the crack brains and cranks, who howl about what they call the free thought, meaning free lust, what the cave of Adullam was to outlaws in David’s day, a refuge. It has been a slop-tub, to catch the filth of all follies and abominations. Its leaders have been, like Fishback and Yale, renegade preachers and their followers, renegade church members, kicked out of the church for crime and vile conduct and character. It has always been full of all sorts of cranks, howling all sorts of abominations and lunacies. Yet in no place on earth have intolerance and bigotry been so rampant, as among the disciples of free thought in this Liberal town of Liberal. Spiritists abuse Materialists, and Materialists insult and ridicule Spirits, and each crank is like Ishmael, “his hand is against all others, and their hand is against him;” and a Killkenny cat fight has been constantly going on, and each crank in Liberal was a howling, clawing cat.

–to be continued–

Braden’s “A Dream and its FulFillment”, pages 7 and 8

Posted on December 13, 2011 by jmk

J. P. Moore wrote on Braden’s pamphlet in his book, “This Strange Town–Liberal, Mo”, and the chapter and some of his opinion on Braden can be viewed at that link.

“Fifty Years of Freethought”, which was published in 1888, had a few things to say on Braden:

A debating Fundamentalist of the time, the Rev. Clark Braden, supposed to be a Campbellite, dogged Freethought lectures and defied them to meet him. He was a vituperative polecat, and Christians who engaged him to meet Underwood or Jamieson did not repeat the order. B.F. Underwood unveiled this honorless and characterless individual in The Truth Seeker of August 2, 1879.

And:

A meeting addressed by Putnam in Oakland in May, 1888, was interrupted by the intrusion of the Christian champion and rapscallion, Clark Braden, reinforced by a local preacher named Sweeney and one Bennett, local agent of the Comstock society, with a demand to be heard and a challenge to debate. Mr. A.H. Schou of Oakland, who was presiding, said he would leave it to the audience whether these persons should be allowed to take up the time of the meeting, since the character of Clark Braden was well known throughout the coast. The audience voted a loud and unanimous No. The minister Sweeney begged he might inquire what was Mr. Putnam’s objection to Clark Braden. Mr. Putnam replied: “I will tell you why I will not debate with him. I refuse to meet Clark Braden in public debate because he is a blackguard and a liar.”

There was curiosity to know how the Christian champion would take that. He shouted something at the speaker and then walked stiffly forth, followed by the Rev. Mr. Sweeney and Comstock’s young man. As they went, Mr. Schou sent after them the reminder that if a Freethinker had entered Mr. Sweeney’s church and created this sort of disturbance of the meeting, he would have been placed under arrest instead of being allowed peacefully to depart.

This man Braden, whose argument consisted in an attack on the good name of Freethinkers, usually did not return to serve the same Christian community twice. The religious people who employed Braden had a custom of meeting afterwards to pass resolutions repudiating him as too rank to be borne with. He professed to be a Campbellite, or “Disciple,” and when the churches of that denomination could be worked no longer, he went to the Methodists. A religious paper in Winfield, Kansas, The Nonconformist, gave him this piquant mention: “It is yet to he reported that Clark Braden was ever received in a community the second time, except in company of the officers, with jewelry on his wrists.” At one place, where he debated B.F. Underwood, the Christians who employed him told him he was injuring their cause, and he had to borrow $20 of Underwood to get out of town. In return he sent to Underwood a letter in which he told how the Rev. John Sweeney, Underwood’s next opponent, was to be defeated. There was absolutely no good in Braden. His backers in Oakland came to grief.

B. F. Underwood wrote a booklet of 26 pages titled “The Kind of Man Clark Braden Is”. How I would like to get my hands on that!

Now, on to Braden’s booklet, which I present a few pages at a time. The full booklet may be found via the tag, “a dream and its fulfillment”.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Pg. 7

When the “Post Dispatch” and the “Globe Democrat” turned the calcium light of the press on Liberal, Walser acted as slovenly housewives often act when they see a neighbor approaching. They frantically seize a broom and begin to stir up the dust and stench, and only succeed in making them more apparent and offensive. Walser had meetings held nightly in his residence, and had an investigating committee appointed; as an Infidel bluntly said: “to decide whether Liberal should remain a whore house, as it had been so far; or they could undertake the hopeless task of trying to make a decent town of it.” The result was that they only stirred up the filth and stench of Liberal, and made it, if possible more apparent and offensive. It started quarrels that have culminated in bursting up this Infidel den. The criminations and recriminations of the factions in Liberal, have unearthed and proved tenfold more and worse, than appeared in the “Post Dispatch” and “Globe Democrat”.

As Liberal is the first attempt made in the United States, to establish a community on so intolerantly an Infidel basis, the results are important, and should be generally known. They are of vital importance to both Infidels and Christians, for they go far towards deciding the mooted question: “Can Society be established permanently and successfully, on an anti-religious basis?” The experiment has been tried in Liberal, under unusually favorable circumstances. Walser who originated and controlled the movement, was a man of large means, and when he began the enterprise, had almost unlimited sway in Barton county. Infidels of United States laud him as one of their leaders. Infidels have invariably asserted that the Infidels in Liberal have been “the best of Liberal society.” The location and surroundings of Liberal have been unusually favorable. The advertisement given to the town by Infidel papers, the eclat of such an unusual enterprise, the notoriety given to it by the press of the United States and Canada, have given to Liberal such a “boom,” in puffing at least, as few towns have had. Infidelity has had absolute control of Liberal for seven years, and almost complete sway in the surrounding country. We are justified then in saying that, if a system ever had an opportunity, and full freedom to display what it can do, Infidelity has had the in Liberal. We will now summarize the facts learned.

G. H. Walser the founder and proprietor of Liberal, first “achieved greatness,” in Paris, Edgar county, Illinois, where he was running a store, on which he secured an insurance far beyond its value. It mysteriously got a fire, and was saved several times. The last time Walser was found in bed sound asleep, and hard to awake, though the wick of the candle in his room, was still smoking. He was watched, caught in the act of setting fire to the building; and spent three years in jail, part of the time in irons, for an attempt to break jail; and escaped the penitentiary, by the chicanery of D. W. Voorhees, his attorney. He was dismissed from the army in disgrace for crime and misconduct, and although he has made desperate efforts to be restored, he has failed. It is a disgrace to the G.A.R. and the Post in Lamar, that the name of this army renegade pollutes their rolls. While living in Carthage, Mo., he concocted a railroad bond fraud. By hiring villains to hold a pretended bond election in thinly settled towns, by perjury, forgery and fraud, he loaded towns with fraudulent bonds, sold them, and escaped the penitentiary, by compounding his villainy. He next took part in a gigantic land steal, in which the United States government was defrauded out of tens of thousands of acres of the best land in Southwest Missouri, at a few cents per acre, as worthless, because “Swamp lands.” He has swindled scores, in disposing of the land he stole from the government. A common piece of villainy was to show a purchase, an excellent piece of land, giving as its number, that of a worthless piece. The purchaser soon found that he had paid the price of good land for worthless land, and without remedy, for Walser was careful that there be no witnesses. But time would fail us to tell all of the noble deeds of this benefactor of humanity, this leader in reform, G. H. Walser, founder of the latest Infidel Paradise, Liberal. Some of them will come out in the other portions of our narrative. But only a fragment can be told.

Mark Walser, his hopeful son and lieutenant, reared under the instruction and example of his illustrious sire, spent a part of his promising youth, in a house of refuge, for crime. In Lamar, he ran in debt, wheedled friends into going his security, and ran off in the night with his goods, and left them to pay $4,000 for him. He forged the names of two friends, as securities to notes, on which he borrowed money in bank, and his illustrious sire had to buy him off, to save him from the penitentiary. His last exploit, as far as heard from, was to draw out of bank in Fort Scott, between five and six thousand dollars, as his father’s clerk, and use it–overdrawing his father’s account, and embezzling the money. He is a ruffian and scoundrel of the blackest dye. Life father, like son; like leader, like people.

Liberal was laid out on a portion of the land Walser stole as “swamp land,” or from the United States. Such is the founder of Liberal. Such is the land on which it stands.

There must be a town at or near where Liberal stands. The nearest town, Lamar, is 17 miles distant, Fort Scott, Nevada, and other towns are over 25 miles distant. The surrounding country cannot be excelled in fertility and beauty, and is underlaid by one of the best coal beds in the west. The people of the surrounding country are unusually thrifty and intelligent. With right management, Liberal would today, be a town of 5,000 people, and with one hundred fold the wealth in it, that there is in Liberal. Scores of towns, with less advantages, have reached such figures. Glowing announcements of this infidel paradise, were made in all infidel papers, and all infidels were exhorted to flock to this infidel land of promise

Pg. 8

flowing with the milk and honey of what is called “free thought.” After seven years of most persistent and unceasing gassing, blowing and puffing advertising and writing up, gratuitous and otherwise–with agents traveling, lecturing and canvassing for the town–with all the notoriety and eclat such an enterprise would give to the town, among those who call themselves “Liberals,” and who boast that they monopolize the brains, talent, money, intelligence and business sense of the age; there are not now within one mile of the depot in Liberal, more than 500 people; and of these more than half are in the rival Christian town, Pedro. It would be an easy matter to find, in United States and Canada, hundreds of towns that have, in less time, and with less advantages, reached ten times the population of Liberal, and fifty times its wealth.

There are not more than two buildings in Liberal that cost $3,000, not half a dozen cost over $1,500, and a great majority cost less than $1,000. There never has been, in Liberal, a stock of goods that cost $10,000–but few cost $3,000. The hotels have been low dens of the cheapest character–have changed hands frequently, and have stood vacant much of the time. Commercial travellers have stopped at Lamar, and paid the railroad fare of merchants from Liberal and back, rather than endure the hotels in Liberal. Their accommodations are not their worst feature. They have been notorious as dens of infamy, under a thin guise of hotels. Mrs. Miner, one proprietor, used to ask male guests to sleep with her. Mr. Finley, former sheriff of Barton county, told R. F. Holland, that women came to the door of his room, more than once and offered to sleep with him. Scores could give similar testimony. Mr. Burgess told Mr. Holland that abundance of evidence could be furnished, to prove that Thayer’s hotel was a brothel; and Walser and Thayer withdrew the suit against the writer and others, because they learned that defendants would prove that Thayer’s hotel was a den of infamy.

With all its boasting of “science,” “education,” “free thought,” “liberalism,” for seven years, Liberal had no public school house. All schools were held in dwelling houses or in the only public building in the place, a small building that did not cost over $600, loaded down with the stupendous title, “Universal Mental Liberty Hall. This is the only building, erected for public purposes, in Liberal, during its seven years’ existence. It would be hard to find a town, under the control of Christians, with the age and advantages of Liberal, where there are not from five to ten public buildings, that cost, each, from five to ten times as much as this one building in Liberal. A school house was started last spring, is only partially finished, is loaded with debt for money borrowed to erect it, and was locked by the builders, under a builder’s lien, and stood in that condition the last week of November, 1886.

Five times as many of those who have been duped into coming to Liberal prospecting, by the lying puffs sent out broadcast, have left without settling, as have remained. If the “transaction at the land office” is not forced on the prospector by a ring that surround him day and night and stuff him during the first twenty-four hours, it never occurs. Those who have sense enough to look around for a week, leave, declaring that they could not be hired to live in such a place. Three times as many of those who have been cajoled and hoodwinked into settling have afterwards let, and generally after losing all they have, as now remain. S. C. Thayer left after selling for $200, property that cost him over $1,200. Others have abandoning (sic) their property. There were more than twenty vacant houses in this small town the last week of November, 1886. The Burgesses had left, leaving behind the most valuable property in Liberal. Sparks and Ivey, merchants, had left. The Todds, who had the only respectable stock of dry goods ever in the place were trying to get away. The Yeomans, the Allens, the Belks, the Lyons, the Boutons, the Replogles, etc., had left. Walser had abandoned the place and gone into business in Wichita, Kansas. His property is advertised for sale. So anxious is he to sell, that he offers $2,000 to any one to find a purchase. Nine-tenths of those left behind would leave if they could get half what they invested. Half would leave, anyhow, if they had the means to get away.

Mr. Carpenter, a miller from Montague, Texas, was duped into coming to Liberal, by lying, advertisements and puffs, and wheedled into putting all he had into the little old steam grist mill. After losing $1,600 and having scarcely enough left to purchase a ticket, he left for Texas. The sharks in Liberal had his money, and he had a dearly bought experience of the glories of this infidel paradise. The case of a farmer from Canada, of mechanics and scores of similar cases can be given. Walser has fleeced all he can by his lying agents, circulars, advertisements and letters, and now wants to sell. The bonds of the town and its warrants are offered at fifteen cents on the dollar and without purchasers. The marshal in November, 1886, sued the town for the eighty-five cents he lost on each dollar of its warrants issued to pay him. The coal mines, of which so much was said in the paper in Liberal, have not averaged a car of coal per day during the time they were worked. The miners were idle three-fourths of the time, and Walser is preparing to close them. The paper has suspended and the office material is for sale. The public school has no building to meet in, the partly finished school house is locked up; and loaded with debt, business men are removing their goods, people are leaving, and those that are left, look like mourners awaiting a funeral, or criminals awaiting the penalty. So Liberal stands December 1886.

–to be continued–

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

NOTES: Much of what Braden says here, I can’t begin to address, which is one reason I’ve preceded these posts with excerpts of what others had to say of Braden’s character. I wish I had the materials that were written about him in order to counter-balance.

The Burgesses definitely did not leave. The Belks did not leave. The Boutons did not leave, despite the controversy aroused by J. B. Bouton’s hoax seances. I had read Bouton had left in connection with that but his family remained and it seems he did and was buried there. O. E. Harmon listed in his book on liberal that John G. Todd and John H. Todd were among the surviving pioneer residents of Liberal, being there for forty years. Walser did not leave, at least not for many years, and J. P. Moore addresses some of this in his chapter on Braden in “This Strange Town–Liberal, Mo”. The Replogles did leave due an ideological falling out, and Braden has some unflattering things to say about them later, as they were free lovers.

I don’t have anything on Sparks & Ivey and wish they could be identified, as with the Lyons and the Miners. I’m unable to identify them as well at this point.

Braden’s “A Dream and its Fulfillment”, pages 5 and 6

Posted on December 7, 2011 by jmk

J. P. Moore wrote on Braden’s pamphlet in his book, “This Strange Town–Liberal, Mo”, and the chapter and some of his opinion on Braden can be viewed at that link.

“Fifty Years of Freethought”, which was published in 1888, had a few things to say on Braden:

A debating Fundamentalist of the time, the Rev. Clark Braden, supposed to be a Campbellite, dogged Freethought lectures and defied them to meet him. He was a vituperative polecat, and Christians who engaged him to meet Underwood or Jamieson did not repeat the order. B.F. Underwood unveiled this honorless and characterless individual in The Truth Seeker of August 2, 1879.

And:

A meeting addressed by Putnam in Oakland in May, 1888, was interrupted by the intrusion of the Christian champion and rapscallion, Clark Braden, reinforced by a local preacher named Sweeney and one Bennett, local agent of the Comstock society, with a demand to be heard and a challenge to debate. Mr. A.H. Schou of Oakland, who was presiding, said he would leave it to the audience whether these persons should be allowed to take up the time of the meeting, since the character of Clark Braden was well known throughout the coast. The audience voted a loud and unanimous No. The minister Sweeney begged he might inquire what was Mr. Putnam’s objection to Clark Braden. Mr. Putnam replied: “I will tell you why I will not debate with him. I refuse to meet Clark Braden in public debate because he is a blackguard and a liar.”

There was curiosity to know how the Christian champion would take that. He shouted something at the speaker and then walked stiffly forth, followed by the Rev. Mr. Sweeney and Comstock’s young man. As they went, Mr. Schou sent after them the reminder that if a Freethinker had entered Mr. Sweeney’s church and created this sort of disturbance of the meeting, he would have been placed under arrest instead of being allowed peacefully to depart.

This man Braden, whose argument consisted in an attack on the good name of Freethinkers, usually did not return to serve the same Christian community twice. The religious people who employed Braden had a custom of meeting afterwards to pass resolutions repudiating him as too rank to be borne with. He professed to be a Campbellite, or “Disciple,” and when the churches of that denomination could be worked no longer, he went to the Methodists. A religious paper in Winfield, Kansas, The Nonconformist, gave him this piquant mention: “It is yet to he reported that Clark Braden was ever received in a community the second time, except in company of the officers, with jewelry on his wrists.” At one place, where he debated B.F. Underwood, the Christians who employed him told him he was injuring their cause, and he had to borrow $20 of Underwood to get out of town. In return he sent to Underwood a letter in which he told how the Rev. John Sweeney, Underwood’s next opponent, was to be defeated. There was absolutely no good in Braden. His backers in Oakland came to grief.

B. F. Underwood wrote a booklet of 26 pages titled “The Kind of Man Clark Braden Is”. How I would like to get my hands on that!

Now, on to Braden’s booklet, which I present a few pages at a time. The full booklet may be found via the tag, “a dream and its fulfillment”.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Pg. 5

THE FULFILLMENT OF THE DREAM

About ten years ago, G. H. Walser, then a prominent lawyer and politician of Lamar, the county seat of Barton county, Missouri, made a desperate effort to make an infidel community of that city. Finding that the religious sentiment of the town was too strong for him, he laid off a town, which he called LIBERAL, on a tract of land that he owned, on the Kansas City and Memphis railroad, in the northwest part of Barton county. The avowed object in building up Liberal was to organize a community, in which no one believing in Christianity would be allowed to settle, or live. The writer was written to, in January 1884, by parties living in Liberal, requesting him to come to Liberal and deliver a series of lectures in defence of Christianity; and against Infidelity. In February 1885, he visited Liberal, and delivered the lectures, beginning Feb. 5th. He had circulars scattered all over the place inviting the Infidels to present, in writing, all queries and objections they desired. A decent Christian community would have attended, listened courteously, and presented their objections, in writing, in an orderly manner, as requested. Before the writer had been in Liberal twenty-four hours the Infidels were busily at work, practicing the warfare of Mephitis Americanus, befouling the writer with abuse and filth. S. C. Thayer, a leader in Liberal, was busy, Feb. 3 and 4, showing to every one, a pamphlet concocted by B. F. Underwood, to lie out of meeting the writer in fair debate, in which the writer was slandered in the most infamous manner. All others were busy, and the air was thick with the most infamous fabrications.

One thousand copies of this pamphlet, as an extra of the Infidel paper, were scattered as widely as possible. The air of Liberal was thick and black with slander.

The writer delivered ten lectures. Having invited the Infidels to present, in writing, all the objections they could, he warned them he would not allow them to interrupt him or abuse him without restraint, and break up the lectures in a row; as they always had hitherto done. He challenged them to select and endorse a representative to meet him in orderly debate. Plots were concocted to interrupt him, break up his lectures in a row, to mob him; and parties staying at Liberal then, have assured the writer since, that his person and life were freely threatened and would have been assailed, if the Infidels had not been afraid to attempt violence; as they knew the writer and his friends were ready to meet such attempts in such a manner, as to put an end to them and the cowardly ruffians who perpetrated them. Walser was selected to accept the writer’s challenge, and backed out. Fishback, the champion of Spiritism, was selected, and backed out. At last C. W. Stewart met the writer in debate, ten sessions. The writer delivered twelve lectures and made twenty speeches in debate. In none of these did he utter one word of personal attack, on any one in Liberal, or connected with it. A large audience, by a unanimous standing vote, Feb. 15, requested the Infidel paper to publish, as a reply to Underwood’s lying pamphlet, that it had circulated so widely, the address and resolutions adopted by a mass meeting of all citizens of Meaford, Canada, in regard to this lying pamphlet of Underwood. This reasonable request was flatly refused by this Liberal organ of the Liberals of Liberal, that has the effrontery to style itself “The Liberal.” Press, tongue, pen and telegraph were kept busy slandering the writer.

The writer was in Nebraska from Feb. 20 to April 23. Walser and his crew were busy, through mails, press and telegraph; slandering the writer as widely as they could. Thayer read to all who would listen, a letter from one L. L. Luse, that he knew was a clerical imposter and scoundrel, who had been kicked out of the Methodist church, for lying, swindling, fraud, perjury and adultery; who was trying, by perjury to rob the writer of $765. In this letter the writer was slandered in the most infamous manner. For three months, infidel mouths, pens, press, and the mails and telegraph, teemed with slanders of the writer.

Saturday, Feb. 7, Prof. Grayston, Principal of the Great Liberal Normal and Business Educational Institute in Liberal, and leader of the Sunday Instruction School and Sunday Evening Entertainment; and Dr. Bouton, one of the pioneers and leaders in Liberal, came to the writers’ room in the residence of R. F. Holland; and in a long interview, in the

Pg. 6

presence of several persons, made a thorough expose of Walser, the founder of Liberal; the people of Liberal, the various enterprises of Liberal, and its real condition. They urged the writer to publish their statements, and offered to furnish him, for that purpose, all the facts they could. The writer learned from other sources, that their statements were true; and learned other facts. He had the facts to make a most damaging expose of Walser, Liberal, its people, and everything connected with it. Notwithstanding the torrent of abuse that the writer endured for three months, he never gave publicity to the facts he had in his possession, although urged, by two leader in Liberal, to do so. In his thirty-two speeches, he never uttered one word reflecting on a person in or connected with Liberal. Nor did he in any other manner. These facts are stated, that it may be thoroughly understood, that not only did the writer not begin the campaign of slander and abuse; but that he endured, in silence, for three months, a torrent of vilification, although he had the means of making a crashing retort, and was urged to do so, by two leaders of Liberal.

The writer was interviewed, in Lexington, Missouri, April 22, by Sam Keller, a correspondent of the Globe Democrat of St. Louis. The interview was published in the Globe Dispatch of St. Louis, of May 2. The Globe Democrat sent a reporter to Liberal, who published, in the Globe Democrat of May 3, a most damaging report of affairs in Liberal. The writer returned to Liberal April 23, and delivered six lectures in Liberal. In these lectures he ventilated Walser, Fishback, Yale and the parties who had been covering him with defamation, for months. He was arrested for criminal libel, in his statements, published in the Post Dispatch and was tried before Judge Hall, in Lamar, May 18. After the prosecution had presented their evidence, the case was submitted to the jury, without any rebutting evidence by the defence, and the jury speedily brought in a verdict of “No cause of action.” Then the Post Dispatch, R. F. Holland, and the writer were sued for twenty-five thousand dollars damages, in a civil suit. Learning that the defence were thoroughly prepared to prove that Liberal was a den of infamy, and its hotels brothels, the prosecution asked to have the suit dismissed at their own costs. Infidels are lying, claiming that the writer signed a libel. It is a lie made out of whole cloth. The writer defies the infidels to face him in any courts in the United States.

For more than two years, Walser and the infidels of Liberal, have been following the writer, and assailing him, wherever they could learn his whereabouts, with all the malignity of fiends, and the filth of a skunk. Having been treated in this way for more than two years, the writer now proposes to ventilate Liberal, its infamous founder, and vile crew, in such a manner as to render their slanders harmless. He would be recreant to a duty that every man owes to his own reputation, if he did not do so. There are other reasons, any one of which, would, alone, fully justify his course. For years there have appeared in the infidel papers of the United States and Canada, in real estate journals, and in nearly all kinds of papers, glowing puffs of this latest infidel would-be Paradise. Puffs have been scattered broadcast in circulars. Great notoriety and eclat have been given to this infidel land of promise, by press notices, descriptions and comments.

No doubt there are infidels, all over the United States and Canada, who long for a sight of this infidel land of Canaan, and its new Jerusalem, as devout Mohammedans long for a sight of Mecca, and for the same reason, they have never seen it. Hundreds have been duped into making a pilgrimage to this Infidel Utopia, only to waste time and money in the journey; or to be worse swindled, in being duped into settling and losing all they invested. The facts stated in this pamphlet, it is hoped will prevent any one being duped hereafter, by the following lying puff, that has been published in papers, scattered in circulars; and has stood for years, in the columns of the little infidel sheet, published in Liberal, although every one in Liberal knew every statement was a lie.

“Liberal is a thriving town of about five hundred people, all of whom are sober, trustworthy and industrious. It is the only town of its size in the United States, without a Priest, Preacher, Church, Saloon, God, Jesus, Hell or Devil. We have now and have maintained, from the first, Sunday Evening Entertainments, which have grown to be of such interest, that none of our people will miss a single evening, if they can help it. We have also a Sunday Instruction School which is the center of attraction–a place where old and young meet and discuss any subject that can be suggested. To once attend this school, will insure an interest that will bring each one back forever after. Last, but not least, we have established a Normal School, in which Liberals, all over the land, can educate their children in every department of literature and education, and at the same time, have them in the best of Liberal society, with the advantages of our Sunday Instruction School, and our Sunday Evening Entertainments. All that is needed to insure a new citizen, is for some Liberal to come and stay with us over Sunday, and it is sure to bring about a transaction at the land office. This fact speaks for itself too plainly to need much comment. We have a live little paper, called ‘The Liberal’ published at one dollar and a half per year. All desiring information concerning this new departure of a town, can address ‘THE LIBERAL’ at Liberal, Barton Co., Missouri.”

The writer has had the best of opportunities to learn the facts in regard to Liberal. He has conversed, in regard to the matter, with persons who lived where Liberal now stand, before such a town was dreamed of, and in and near it ever since; with the first settler in Liberal; with persons of every variety of belief; and with leaders in Liberal who know its “true inwardness,” from the beginning.

–to be continued–

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

NOTES:

Some information on names given above that I’ve not encountered before, and some additional info on individuals of whom I’ve written before.

R. F. Holland. Who was R. F. Holland with whom Clark Braden stayed? R. F. Holland is likely to be Robert Franklin Holland, born 1842 in TN, who was married to a Julia A. and Electa Bumgarner. He moved to Missouri in the early 1880s and died at Leroy in Barton County in 1920. Whatever brought him to that area of the country, I don’t know, and have no idea if he was an early Liberal settler who may have turned sour, or if he was a Christian incensed with freethought policies of the town and determined to introduce biblical philosophy. Electa’s family had moved to Barton County in 1871 and so predated Walser and the freethought community.

It’s difficult to tell from the above if the spiritualist Rev. A. J. Fishback was living in Liberal or not, but it sounds like he may have been.

L. L. Luce would be Levi L. Luce, found in the Fairbuy, Jefferson County, Nebraska census in 1880. He was an editor, born 1842 in PA, married to Olive R. Their sons then were Willie B., Newton, Arther L. and Henry, all given as born in Pennsylvania. He was a Methodist minister and Rowell’s American Newspaper Directory, published 1879, shows him as the editor, when in PA, of “American Citizen”, established 1878, published by H. M. Wolcott & Co. His grievances against Braden, whatever they were, were published in “Braden Unmasked, a Scathing and Fearless Expose of his Character”, a 35 page book written in 1885, and perhaps we would find something in them in “State of Nebraska vs. L. L. Luse” from 1885 and “The Braden-Luse Affair”, also from 1885, a letter concerning the suit signed by C. T. Phillips, B. F. White, F. L. Littleton and W. T. Totten.

Like Underwood’s book on Braden, Luce’s is another one I would like to lay my hands on.

I’m surprised to see Grayston listed here as going to visit Braden with Bouton in order to lodge complaints with him. I will get to Grayston in another post, but from what I’ve read of him it seems peculiar to me that Grayston would have put any trust in Braden. Also, it’s disorienting that he went to Braden in company with J. B. Bouton who in early 1885 would begin the several years’ long spiritualist hoax on the people of Liberal. Knowing how Bouton lied to so many of his friends, it’s to be wondered what he said to Braden, but his hoax makes suspect whatever his testimony may have been. Grayston, putting his trust in both these men, seems to display here a lack in good judgment of character. Either that, or Braden is misrepresenting Grayston’s visit.

Braden’s “A Dream and its Fulfillment”, Pages 1 – 4

Posted on December 6, 2011 by jmk

J. P. Moore wrote on Braden’s pamphlet in his book, “This Strange Town–Liberal, Mo”, and the chapter and some of his opinion on Braden can be viewed at that link.

“Fifty Years of Freethought”, which was published in 1888, had a few things to say on Braden:

A debating Fundamentalist of the time, the Rev. Clark Braden, supposed to be a Campbellite, dogged Freethought lectures and defied them to meet him. He was a vituperative polecat, and Christians who engaged him to meet Underwood or Jamieson did not repeat the order. B.F. Underwood unveiled this honorless and characterless individual in The Truth Seeker of August 2, 1879.

And:

A meeting addressed by Putnam in Oakland in May, 1888, was interrupted by the intrusion of the Christian champion and rapscallion, Clark Braden, reinforced by a local preacher named Sweeney and one Bennett, local agent of the Comstock society, with a demand to be heard and a challenge to debate. Mr. A.H. Schou of Oakland, who was presiding, said he would leave it to the audience whether these persons should be allowed to take up the time of the meeting, since the character of Clark Braden was well known throughout the coast. The audience voted a loud and unanimous No. The minister Sweeney begged he might inquire what was Mr. Putnam’s objection to Clark Braden. Mr. Putnam replied: “I will tell you why I will not debate with him. I refuse to meet Clark Braden in public debate because he is a blackguard and a liar.”

There was curiosity to know how the Christian champion would take that. He shouted something at the speaker and then walked stiffly forth, followed by the Rev. Mr. Sweeney and Comstock’s young man. As they went, Mr. Schou sent after them the reminder that if a Freethinker had entered Mr. Sweeney’s church and created this sort of disturbance of the meeting, he would have been placed under arrest instead of being allowed peacefully to depart.

This man Braden, whose argument consisted in an attack on the good name of Freethinkers, usually did not return to serve the same Christian community twice. The religious people who employed Braden had a custom of meeting afterwards to pass resolutions repudiating him as too rank to be borne with. He professed to be a Campbellite, or “Disciple,” and when the churches of that denomination could be worked no longer, he went to the Methodists. A religious paper in Winfield, Kansas, The Nonconformist, gave him this piquant mention: “It is yet to he reported that Clark Braden was ever received in a community the second time, except in company of the officers, with jewelry on his wrists.” At one place, where he debated B.F. Underwood, the Christians who employed him told him he was injuring their cause, and he had to borrow $20 of Underwood to get out of town. In return he sent to Underwood a letter in which he told how the Rev. John Sweeney, Underwood’s next opponent, was to be defeated. There was absolutely no good in Braden. His backers in Oakland came to grief.

B. F. Underwood wrote a booklet of 26 pages titled “The Kind of Man Clark Braden Is”. How I would like to get my hands on that!

Now, on to Braden’s booklet, which I will present a few pages at a time.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

P. 2

A DREAM AND ITS FULFILLMENT

AN EXPOSE

of the

Late Infidel Would-Be Paradise,

LIBERAL, BARTON COUNTY, MISSOURI.

BY

CLARK BRADEN

PRICE, 10 CENTS.

Pg. 3

CHAPLAIN McCABE’S DREAM OF INGERSOLLVILLE

“I had a dream which was not all a dream.” I thought I was on a long journey through a beautiful country, when suddenly I came to a great city with walls fifteen feet high. At the gate stood a sentinel, whose shining armor reflected back the rays of the morning sun. As I was a bout ot salute him and pass into the city, he stopped me and said:–

“Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ?”

I answered, “Yes, with all my heart.”

“Then,” said he, “you cannot enter here. No man or woman who acknowledges that name can pass in here. Stand aside!” said he, “they are coming.”

I looked down the road, and saw a vast multitude approaching. It was led by a military officer.

“Who is that?” I asked of the sentinel.

“That,” he said, “is the great Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, the founder of the City of Ingersollville.”

“Who is he?” I ventured to inquire.

“He is a great and might warrior, who fought in many bloody battles for the Union during the great war.”

I felt ashamed of my ignorance of history, and stood silently watching the procession. I had heard of a Colonel Ingersoll who resigned in presence of the enemy, but, of course, this could not be the man.

The procession came near enough for me to recognize some of the faces. I noted two infidel editors of national celebrity, followed by great wagons containing steam presses. There were also five members of Congress.

All the noted infidels and scoffers of the country seemed to be there. Most of them passed in unchallenged by the sentinel, but at last a meek-looking individual with a white neck-tie approached, and he was stopped. I saw at a glance it was a well-known “liberal” preacher of New York.

“Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ?” said the sentinel.

“Not much!” said the doctor.

Everybody laughed, and he was allowed to pass in.

There were artists there, with glorious pictures; singers, with ravishing voices; tragedians and comedians, whose names have a world-wide fame.

Then came another division of the infidel host–saloon-keepers by thousands, proprietors of gambling hells, brothels, and theaters.

Still another division swept by: burglars, thieves, thugs, incendiaries, highwaymen, murderers–all–all marching in. My vision grew keener. I beheld, and, lo! Satan himself brought up the rear.

High afloat above the mass was a banner on which was inscribed, “What has Christianity done for the country?” and another, on which was inscribed, “Down with Churches! Away with Christianity–it interferes with our happiness!” And then came a murmur of voices, that grew louder and louder until a shout went up like the roar of Niagra: “Away with him! Crucify him, crucify him!” I felt no desire now to enter Ingersollville.

As the last of the procession entered, a few men and women with broad-brimmed hats and plain bonnets made their appearance, and wanted to go in as missionaries, but they were turned rudely away. A zealous young Methodist exhorter, with a Bible under his arm, asked permission to enter, but the sentinel swore at him awfully. Then I thought I saw Brother Moody applying for admission, but he was refused. I could not help smiling to hear Moody say, as he turned sadly away:

“Well! They let me live and work in Chicago. It is very strange they wont let me into Ingersollville.”

The sentinel went through the gate and shut it with a bang; and I thought, as soon as it was closed, a mighty angel came down with a great iron bar, and barred the gate on the outside, and wrote upon it in letters of fire, “Doomed to live together six months.”

Pg. 4

Then he went away, and all was silent, except the noise of the revelry and shouting that came within the city walls.

I went away, and as I journeyed through the land I could not believe my eyes. Peace and plenty smiled every where. The jails were all empty, the penitentiaries were without occupants. The police of great cities were idle. Judges sat in court rooms with nothing to do. Business was brisk. Many great buildings, formerly crowded with criminals, were turned into manufacturing establishments. Just about this time the President of the United States called for a Day of Thanksgiving. I attended services in a Presbyterian Church. The preacher dwelt upon the changed conditions of affairs. As he went on, and depicted the great prosperity that had come to the country, and gave reasons for devout thanksgiving, I saw one old deacon clap his handkerchief over his mouth to keep from shouting right out. An ancient spinster, who never did like the “noisy” Methodists–a regular old blue-stocking Presbyterian–couldn’t hold in. She expressed the thought of every heart by shouting with all her might, “Glory to God for Ingersollville!” A young theological student lifted up his hand and devoutly added, “Esto perpetua.” Every body smiled. The country was almost delirious with joy. Great processions of children swept along the highways, singing,

“We’ll not give up the Bible.
God’s blessed word of truth.”

Vast assemblies of reformed inebriates, with their wives and children, gathered in open air. No building would hold them. I thought I was in one meeting where Bishop Simpson made an address, and as he closed it a mighty shout went up till the earth rang again. O, it was wonderful! and then we all stood up and sang with tears of joy,

“All hail the power of Jesus name!
Let angels prostrate fall;
Bring forth the royal diadem,
And crown him Lord of all.”

The six months had well-nigh gone. I made my way back again to the gate of Ingersollville. A dreadful silence reigned over the city, broken only by the sharp crack of a revolver now and then. I saw a busy man trying to get in at the gate, and I said to him, “My friend where are you from?”

“I live in Chicago,” said he, “and they’ve taxed us to death there; and I’ve heard of this city, and I want to go in to buy some real estate in this new and growing place.”

He failed utterly to remove the bar, but by some means he got a ladder about twelve feet long, and with its aid, he climbed up upon the wall. With an eye to business, he shouted to the first person he saw:

“Hallo, there!–what’s the price of real estate in Ingersollville?”

“Nothing,” shouted a voice; “you can have all you want if you’ll just take it and pay the taxes.”

“What made your taxes so high?” said the Chicago man. I noted the answer carefully; I shall never forget it.

“We’ve had to build forty new jails and fourteen penitentiaries–a lunatic asylum and orphan asylum in every ward. We’ve had to disband the public schools, and it takes all the revenue of the city to keep up the police force.”

“Where’s my old friend, Col. Ingersoll?” said the Chicago man.

“O, he is about today with a subscription paper to build a church. They hae gotten up a petition to send out for a lot of preachers to come and hold revival services. If we can only get them over the wall, we hope there’s a future for Ingersollville yet.”

The six months ended. Instead of opening the door, however, a tunnel was dug under the all big enough for one person to crawl through at a time. First came two bankrupt editors, followed by Col. Ingersoll himself; and then the whole population crawled through. Then I thought, somehow great crowds of Christians surrounded the city. There was Moody and Hammond, and Earle, and hundreds of Methodist preachers and exhorters, and they all struck up, singing together.

“Come, ye sinners, poor and needy.”

A needier crowd never was seen on earth before.

I conversed with some of the inhabitants of the abandoned city, and asked a few of them this question.

“Do you believe in hell?”

I cannot record the answers; they were terribly orthodox.

One old man said, “I’ve been there on probation for six months, and I don’t want to join.”

I knew by that he was an old Methodist backslider. The sequel of it all was a great revival. There was gathered a mighty harvest from the ruined city of Ingersollville.

–to be continued–

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

NOTES:

Born in 1831, Braden had his good points, in as much as he came from abolitionist stock and was himself an abolitionist. He served at 35 churches (one has to wonder why so many) and made a career of giving lectures, a reported over 6000 in total though I’ve seen Braden admit to 3000. The famous freethinker, Robert G. Ingersoll, refused to debate him, saying, “I’m am not such a fool as to debate, he would wear me out,” which is often taken as proving Braden’s powers, but I instead think witnesses a lack of respect for his technique.

Braden quoted Ingersoll a bit differently in October 1909 at the Disciples of Christ Centennial Convention.

Here is Braden’s history in his own words:

I will endeavor, ladies and gentlemen, brethren and sisters, to answer so many questions that have been asked me by every one that I meet in the time that is allotted to me, and I give it to you in this form. Clark Braden was born Aug. 8, 1831, in Gustavus, Trumbull Co., O. He was immersed by Calvin Smith, Feb. 28, 1855, in Rome, Ashtabula Co., O. He has been preaching nearly fifty-five years. He has been what is called “pastor” for twenty-five congregations, and has been regular preacher for as many more. He has taught school sixty-nine terms of three months. He has been president of Elgin College, Abingdon College, Southern Illinois College and Southern Illinois Christian College. He edited a Christian paper, the Herald of Truth. He is author of the “Braden-Hughey Debate,” the “Braden-Kelly Debate,” the “Problem of Problems,” “Ingersoll Unmasked,” “Errors in Regard to the Trial and Crucifixion of Christ.”

He has delivered more than three thousand lectures in nearly every State in the United States and Provinces of Canada. He can give time, place, proposition and opponent of more than 130 regular debates that had moderators and two written debates. He has held more debates than any other member of the churches of Christ. J. S. Sweeney comes next with 113 debates. He has held forty debates with champions of both wings of infidelity, materialism and spiritism—more debates than any other man living or that has lived. He has met in debate B. F. Underwood, the American champion; Charles Watts, the British champion of materialism, and Moses Hull, the champion of spiritism. He has debated the action, subjects and design of baptism, the work of the Holy Spirit, human creeds, justification by faith only, church organization, soul-sleeping, klngdom-come-ism, Seventh-day-ism, and Universalism. He has held eighteen debates with Mormons. He was challenged three times to debate with Ingersoll. Ingersoll was challenged three times to debate with Clark Braden. And six times Ingersoll backed out. He gave as his reason, and I beg your pardon for saying this, “I’ll be G___ d___ if Bob don’t know what he’s doing. I am not such a G___ d___ fool as to place myself on the platform for six nights of debate with that fellow. Why, d___ it, he would wear me out.” When S. P. Putnam, president of the Infidel Leagues of America, refused to debate with Clark Braden, Clark Braden chased him and replied to him until infidels, disgusted with Putnam’s cowardice, forced him to quit the field. Charles Watts backed out of defiant challenges and left the Maritime Provinces of Canada when Clark Braden was selected to meet him. The Infidel Leagues of Canada backed out of challenges when Braden was selected to meet them. In 1889, in the last of eleven debates with Clark Braden, B. F. Underwood backed out in the middle of the debate, and took the first train next morning. Infidels withdrew their indorsement of Jamieson and closed the last debate with Jamieson. Last August, Elbert Hubbard, whom infidels regard as the successor of Ingersoll, and their champion, in the most cowardly and disgraceful manner backed out of a positive agreement, when he learned that he would have to meet Clark Braden.

During the last twenty years, every prominent champion of infidelity has backed out of debating with Clark Braden. So have champions of Mormon ism, soul-sleeping, Seventh-day-ism, spiritism and kingdom-come-ism. The speaker does not make these statements in a spirit of personal vainglory, but simply to demonstrate the invincibility of the truth in fair contest with error.

And now let me say to you, brethren and sisters, that I do rather avoid giving a challenge, but 1 have been selected by brethren; they have called upon me and I have responded and done my best in discussion. And another thing, when you get so very good and so very refined and cultured that you are unwilling to debate, you will know more than God Almighty, you are better than Jesus Christ, purer than the Holy Spirit. The last six weeks of the Saviour’s life was one stormy debate, and he did some pretty plain talking, too. [Applause.] I want to say to you this, that just so long as there is error in the world, just so long as truth has to be defended, there will be discussion. Every reform was born in debate, rocked in the cradle of discussion, and grew strong in the battle for that which is right; and when you become so cultured that you won’t debate anything any time, you will be a saint among saints, and then leave the result of it to God. I have the divine example of the Son of God for pursuing the course I have. I feel I am doing that which is right. It is said that the apostle John in his old age was carried in a chair into the church at Ephesus and placed upon the platform, and at the close of the services they turned to the old patriarch and he would stretch out his trembling hands and say, “Little children, love one another.” And after this long, stormy, strenuous life, I sum it all up in this, that the supreme work of the followers of Christ is to learn the Christ teaching, live the Christ life, and grow in the Christ character in this life and in the eternal life, where we shall be like him. where we shall see him as he is. [Applause]

In 1908, “The Philistine” published their opinion of Braden by way of a little story, which went as follows:

Not long ago a gentleman calling himself the Reverend Clark Braden arrived in East Aurora. He was sincere, serious, highly educated and wore long patriarchal whiskers.

He announced that he had come to engage with me in a six-days’ debate as to the truths of Revealed Religion. He plainly stated that he considered me an arch-infidel, and his purpose was either to convert me, or else to humiliate me in my own town, in the presence of my neighbors. If we didn’t get thru the debate in six days, he was willing to stay a month. When would we begin?

I tried to excuse myself on the plea of work, other engagements, etc. He demanded that I should cancel all other engagements; and if I was a sincere lover of truth as I professed to be I would now stand by my colors. In fact, this I must do, or he would brand me before the whole village as a coddling coward and a Number Six agnostic jackanapes. I then took a little hand myself at questioning. And it seems that, altho I had never had
any communications with this reverend gentleman—which fact he acknowledged—he came as the representative of another man, and he flashed up a lengthy letter from an unknown, fully authorizing me to argufy with Brother
Braden six nights and days together, or else come off my psychic perch.

In the meantime Braden had gone up to the “Blizzard” office, and had gotten out five hundred handbills, scattering them all over town, denouncing me as this, that and the other.

About this time there came to me a bright idea, thus: If Braden could act as the substitute for another to orate with me in a theological gabfest, then I, too, could appoint a substitute, and the two could have it out.
Accordingly, I appointed Ali Baba to reason with my friend with the lilacs.

I ran Ali up against the adversary, and they got at it quick, with no preliminaries. In five minutes they were calling each other all the names in the Billingsgate Calendar. And in ten minutes, by the stop-watch, Ali had the reverend one by the scruff, pushing him toward the front gate, both talking loudly and fast. Their conversation was heard for half a mile.

The last I saw of the zealous one, he was going down the road, stopping now and then to shake his fist at the Seat of Infidelity, and uttering remarks in italic.

God must dearly love the fools, otherwise He would not have made so many of us.

Evermore Genealogy

With special emphasis on the Irish McKenna/McKenney family of Guernsey, Harrison, Monroe Counties of Ohio, most of the known members of the family moving west in the mid 1800s, and the Kearns family of Mobile, Alabama who immigrated from Ireland during one of the great potato famines.

Tag Archives: a dream and its fulfillment

Braden’s “A Dream and its Fulfillment”, Pages 15 and 16

Braden’s “A Dream and its Fulfillment”, Pages 13 and 14

Braden’s “A Dream and its Fulfillment”, Pages 11 and 12

Braden’s “A Dream and its FulFillment”, pages 9 and 10

Braden’s “A Dream and its FulFillment”, pages 7 and 8

Braden’s “A Dream and its Fulfillment”, pages 5 and 6

THE FULFILLMENT OF THE DREAM

Braden’s “A Dream and its Fulfillment”, Pages 1 – 4

A DREAM AND ITS FULFILLMENT

AN EXPOSE

of the

Late Infidel Would-Be Paradise,

LIBERAL, BARTON COUNTY, MISSOURI.

BY

CLARK BRADEN

THE FULFILLMENT OF THE DREAM

A DREAM AND ITS FULFILLMENT AN EXPOSE of the Late Infidel Would-Be Paradise, LIBERAL, BARTON COUNTY, MISSOURI. BY CLARK BRADEN

A DREAM AND ITS FULFILLMENT

AN EXPOSE

of the

Late Infidel Would-Be Paradise,

LIBERAL, BARTON COUNTY, MISSOURI.

BY

CLARK BRADEN