Arresting a Methodist Preacher

In 1819 a Methodist minister in Maryland was prosecuted for sedition because he preached against slavery at a camp meeting. At trial he was acquitted, thanks to his lawyer, ironically future Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, whose infamous 1857 “Dred Scott” ruling claimed blacks could never be U.S. citizens, helping to trigger the Civil War. The Methodist minister was defiant and offered no apologies for his anti-slavery stance. The trial evinces that religious liberty and free speech for all must always, in every age and place, be relentlessly defended.  And Christians must extol justice for all, no matter its unpopularity.