William Smith and Others v. Leroy Swormstedt and Others

• Decision Date: 01 December 1853
• Citation: 57 U.S. 288,14 L.Ed. 942,16 How. 288
• Parties: WILLIAM A. SMITH AND OTHERS, v. LEROY SWORMSTEDT AND OTHERS
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

57 U.S. 288

16 How. 288

14 L.Ed. 942

WILLIAM A. SMITH AND OTHERS, v. LEROY SWORMSTEDT AND OTHERS.

December Term, 1853

THIS was an appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Ohio, which dismissed the bill.

The bill was originally filed in the names of Henry B. Bascom,

a citizen of Lexington, in the State of Kentucky; Alexander L. P. Green, a citizen of Nashville, in the State of Tennessee; Charles B. Parsons, a citizen of Louisville, in the State of Kentucky; John Kelly, a citizen of Wilson county, in the State of Tennessee; James W. Allen, a citizen of Limestone county, in the State of Alabama; and John Tevis, a citizen of Shelby county, in the State of Kentucky——

Against Leroy Swormstedt and John H. Power, agents of the 'Book Concern' at Cincinnati, and James B. Finley, all of whom are citizens of the State of Ohio; and George Peck and Nathan Bangs, who are citizens of the State of New York; who are made defendants to this bill.

Bascom, Green, and Parsons were commissioners appointed by the Methodist Episcopal Church South, to demand and sue for the proportion belonging to it of certain property, and especially of a fund called the 'Book Concern.' Bascom having died whilst the suit was pending, William A. Smith, a citizen of Virginia, was substituted in his place. The other plaintiffs were supernumerary and superannuated preachers, belonging to the travelling connection of the said church south; and all the plaintiffs were citizens of other States than Ohio, and sued not only for themselves but also in behalf of all the preachers in the travelling connection of the church south, amounting to about fifteen hundred.

The defendants were Swormstedt and Power, agents of the Book Concern at Cincinnati, and Findley, all travelling preachers of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and citizens of Ohio; and the Methodist Book Concern a body politic, incorporated by an act of the General Assembly of Ohio, and having its principal office at Cincinnati, in that State.

The nature of the dispute and the circumstances of the case are set forth in the opinion of the court.

It was argued by Mr. Stanberry, for the appellants, and by Mr. Badger and Mr. Ewing, for the appellees.

The following extract from the brief of Mr. Stanberry explains the points which he made.

We claim, in the first place, that the division of the church was a valid act, and thereby the original church was divided into two churches equally legitimate, and that the members and beneficiaries in each have equal rights to their distributive share of all the property and funds.

Secondly. That if there was no valid division of the original church, but only a separation of the southern portion from the original church, yet, under the circumstances in which it was made, the beneficiaries of this charity have not lost that characby adhering to the church south, because the separation was authorized by the highest official and legislative authority of the church, and the beneficiaries living in the south had no choice or alternative but adherence to that church or the total loss of all church membership and privileges.

We will discuss these propositions in the order in which they are stated, and as they are elaborated under the following points:

The plaintiffs' points. 1. Prior to 1844 the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States was one church in doctrine and organization. It was one in doctrine as a Methodist Church, and one in organization as the Methodist Church in the United States, with jurisdiction coextensive with the territorial limits of the United States.

2. At the present time there is no such church de facto as to unity of organization, as the Methodist Episcopal Church of 1844. There is no longer one Methodist Episcopal Church with territorial jurisdiction coextensive with the United States, but there are two churches instead, divided in territorial jurisdiction by a fixed line, each existing by an independent organization, exclusive of the other.

3. This dissolution of the unity of organization not only exists de facto but de jure; not by unauthorized secession of a part from the original body, but by a valid division of the original body into two parts equally legitimate, which division was authorized by competent authority, in the plan of 1844, and has since been consummated in accordance with its provisions.

4. The Book Concern is a charitable fund connected with the Methodist Episcopal Church, the capital being devoted to the publication and dissemination of religious books and papers, and the profits to the support of the travelling, supernumerary, superannuated, and deficient preachers of the church, and the wives, widows, children, and orphans of travelling preachers.

5. This fund was founded by the travelling preachers, and chiefly accumulated by their labor. It never belonged to the church in absolute right, but was simply intrusted to its management.

6. Before the division of the church the founders and the beneficiaries of this fund were scattered over its entire territory, as then constituted, and equally labored in its accumulation, and were equally entitled to its dividends, without reference to particular territorial location.

7. The lawful division of the church, territorially, into two distinct churches, did not destroy this charity or affect the right of the beneficiaries, but it necessarily required a change of management, which, before the devision, was by means of a General Conference, having jurisdiction over all classes of the beneficiaries, wherever located, through the agency of annual conferences within the jurisdiction and subject to the control of the General Conference.

8. After such division, in the due administration of this charity, and as near as may be to its original foundation, each of the churches becomes the proper manager of so much of the fund as is to be distributed to the beneficiaries within its exclusive jurisdiction, through the agency of its own annual conferences.

9. That the division to be made of the capital and profits of this fund to each church should be made on the basis of the number of travelling preachers in 1844, each church to have the same proportion of the entire fund as the number of travelling preachers within its bounds bore to the whole number then within the entire territory of the church prior to the division.

10. That the refusal of the annual conferences to agree to the amicable division of the fund, as proposed in the plan of 1844, and the continued refusal of the authorities of the northern church to recognize the church south, or the beneficiaries within its jurisdiction, as entitled to the management or any distributive share of the fund, make a case for the interposition of a court of equity.

11. If the division of the church was not a constitutional act, the beneficiaries within the jurisdiction of the church south, and who are now united to that church, have not forfeited their right to this charity.

12. The bill presents the proper parties and the proper case for the interference of this court, in order to the due administration of this charity, to meet the exigency arising out of the division of the church, whether the division was constitutional or not.

(Mr. Stanberry's argument, both in the opening and in the reply, was very elaborate upon all these points, and therefore cannot be reported for want of room. His view of the contingent nature of the resolutions of 1844, was as follows:)

I will here close the argument upon this question of the power of division, having shown its existence in every aspect having shown it upon the true character of all Methodist organization, upon the usage of the church through all its history, and, finally, upon the express provisions and limitations embodied in the written articles.

If this ground is maintained, the division of the common charitable fund is a necessary result. If the church organization is divided, the temporalities of the church must also be divided, for the right of each of the divisions stands upon the same ground—one claims it precisely in the same character with the other.

Various objections are stated in the answer, and in the resolutions of the conference of the church north, in 1848, to the present validity of the plan of division. They say, as it passed the General Conference, it was not absolute, but contingent in many particulars. That it was passed to meet the contingency of a future ascertained necessity for division, and that no such necessity was found to exist; that it was made to depend, in all its parts, upon the concurrence of all the annual conferences in the proposed change of the sixth restrictive rule, and no such concurrence was given; and, finally, that it depended upon the due observance by the church south, and all its societies and members, of the jurisdictional line of division, which line was afterwards, as they say, invaded and disregarded by some of the southern preachers and members.

None of these positions need be argued, except only the matter of the non-concurrence of the annual conferences in the proposed change of the sixth rule.

That part of the plan of separation which respects this matter has nothing to do with the other parts of the plan, or with the taking effect of the plan as a whole. The principal thing, the division, was not in any way referred to the northern annual conferences. That was a matter exclusively between the General Conference and the southern annual conferences, in which the northern conferences had no voice. In order to provide for the contingency of division—seeing that the division of the fund must follow—and to avoid any doubt, the General Conference asks the annual conferences for express authority, not merely to divide the fund according to the division of the church organization, but for general authority to dispose of the entire fund for such purposes in general, as two thirds of the...