I've come across a fairly good example of Baker in action during September of 1878, a non-presidential election season in which candidates from three parties --- Republican, Democrat and Greenback --- were contending for office.
The trouble started in Dan's Leader of Sept. 14 when he published a letter signed "Citizen" that began by asking, "Is the Methodist church of Chariton run in the especial interest of the Republican party?" and going on to accuse its pastor, the Rev. Thomas McKendree Stuart (1843-1911), of devoting more time to politics than to his clerical calling.
It's not that harsh a letter in and of itself, but Dan could not contain himself and added the following to it: "Precisely our sentiments, and it is getting high time for the decent religious people of that church ... to insist that in future that the pulpit be filled by a christian in place of a curb-stone street politician and ultra political shyster whose zeal in behalf of the temporal welfare of his political friends has always been stronger than his zeal for the salvation of his flock. 'Citizen' only expressed a faint idea of the general disgust felt over his partisan, political zeal."
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That combination of letter and editorial comment reportedly provoked a strong reaction from the Rev. Mr. Stuart, expressed from the pulpit on the evening of Sunday, Sept. 15, and in the columns of The Patriot, Chariton's Republican newspaper, on Sept. 18. Sadly, that edition of The Patriot no longer exists, so we don't know exactly what he wrote. But it was enough to provoke the following response from Dan in his Leader of Sept. 21:
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Last Sunday night, Bro. T. McK Stuart, the pastor of the M.E. Church of this city, for the first time in a three years residence here, preached a sermon that interested his audience. His text was the Chariton Leader and other lesser publications such as the Chicago Times, Police News, &c.
It is said that he classified the three together as the great journals of civilizations, but didn't approve of their civilizing methods. In fact, it is said that our reverend brother didn't appear to be in the best of good humor towards the Leader, all because last week we had occasion to speak of his unfortunate faculty of meddling more with politics that he did with religion, and casually alluding to him in a pleasant and facetious manner as a cheap political mountebank and third-rate curb-stone political shyster, all of which is very true.
And hence our surprise that the saintly modern Ignatius Loyola should denounce us so bitterly because we happened once in our journalistic career to stumble upon the naked truth. But our reverend brother in iniquity was not fully satisfied with his sermon on the Leader, and probably felt that language would hardly do the subject justice, so he elaborated a half column article in The Patriot on the subject, and said some real naughty things about us, which we, like a liberal christian, cheerfully forgive, although were it not for the fact that he said he is going to leave us soon, we might discuss the question he raised.
The grossest injustice he does us is to intimate that we had meditated an attack on him long before. We positively and candidly assure him that nothing is farther from the truth, and for years we have absolutely prohibited his name from appearing in our columns as far as possible.
No, Bro. McK, we never want to attack any of your stamp as long as we can find better foemen more worthy of our steel in the shape of chronic political ranters and fanatics who infest society and disturb the happiness of intelligent people. Your class is too thinly diffused over civilization to hardly excite our disgust, let alone our fears. But for political and religious intolerance, illiberal fanaticism, remorseless hate towards an honest opposition, and cold blooded zeal in your futile efforts to send your neighbors to hell because they take more reason and less fire from their religion, you certainly stand without a rival and without a peer, while as a religious tyrant, bigot, and dogmatist, you can safely challenge the comparison with the Jesuitic priesthood of the 17the century.
We harbor no malace toward you, Bro. McK, but you have many faults unworthy of your calling, we urge you kindly for the sake of your own soul to correct them ere it is too late, so to speak.
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The Rev. Mr. Stuart did indeed leave the Chariton Methodist pulpit in 1879, but only upon being named presiding elder of the Indianola-Chariton District of the Methodist Episcopal Church. And he was back in Chariton during 1892-1897 as presiding elder of the Chariton District, covering much of southwest Iowa.
Dan retired from The Leader in 1881 and moved to California during 1883, where he re-established himself as a crusading newspaperman.
And time and circumstance have resolved the political issues that led to their confrontation during the fall of 1878.
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