Rev. E. M. Bounds was neither a fan of Southern slavery nor the “human sweat shops” of Northern industry. But he held an abiding belief in a state’s right to secede, and continued his clergy work in the Methodist Episcopal Church South at Brunswick Station, Missouri. He refused to take sides in the early days of the war, but then a series of Northern war crimes unfolded.

On May 10, 1861, Union troops fired into a crowd killing 28 non-combatants during the St. Louis massacre. Over the next several months Federals executed 55 civilians in the Brunswick area. They included 17-year-old John Lenard, accused of bushwhacking, whom the Yankees drowned in the frozen Grand River without trial. Bounds performed his funeral.

Then 10 innocent civilians were ordered to be hanged in the Palmyra Massacre. However, a young boy volunteered to take the place of a husband whose wife was begging for mercy. He asked only that his mother be told he died with honor. The grieving mother called upon Bounds to preach her son’s funeral. Next, in anguish of soul, Bounds watched while he and hundreds of other civilians were arrested and ordered to swear the oath of allegiance to the U. S. and pay a $500 bond for release.

Federal Prisoner
Most of these innocent civilians were members of Bounds’ congregation and they were arrested because the word “South” appeared in the name of their church. Rather than lose the respect of his congregation, Bounds refused the oath and was sent to a miserable, freezing St. Louis prison. The packed prisoners did not even have room to lie down at night to sleep. The women were assaulted and raped, often in front of their husbands. Frail and hungry, Bounds sang, prayed, and ministered to those around him. His request to hold a Christmas worship service was denied.

After a year-and-a-half imprisonment, Bounds was banished from Missouri until the end of the war. The Federals shipped him south, locking him in frigid, cramped quarters without food. He sang hymns which brought a salvo of questions from his guards. His joy mystified them, and he offered them Christ.

He continued his travels by barge, train, and foot. At one point he walked over 200 miles straight in the dead of winter. Eventually, he volunteered as a chaplain in the Missouri Third Infantry.

Chaplain
Bounds preached and ministered through a succession of the biggest battles in the Western theater of the war. Again and again, spiritual repentance and reformation swept the men whom Bounds served. He endured the siege of Vicksburg, where more than a third of his brigade fell. He aided his blood-drenched regiment at Kennesaw Mountain, and suffered in the trenches around Atlanta. When his men, whom he loved as his own blood brothers, charged through the “Valley of No Return” at Franklin, 68% did not return and Bounds was sabered in the head while trying to rescue General Alexander Cockrell.

Bounds remained to care for the 4,000 Confederate wounded, but was captured and imprisoned again until the end of the war.

Later years
He returned to Franklin where bitter hatred against the occupying Federals burgeoned in the hearts of the poverty-stricken natives. For years Bounds set an example of love and forbearance towards the invaders. He and others prayed for Christian regeneration which came when 150 converts stepped forward (including a boy named B. F. Haynes, who would one day become president of Asbury Methodist Seminary.)

Later Bounds ministered in Alabama—where he performed groundbreaking ministry for blacks— St. Louis, and Georgia. His lasting legacy, however, is his devotion to God through prayer. His book on prayer has sold innumerable copies and has likely never been out of print since first published.*