FOR orderly private work Seventh-day Adventists are fined, imprisoned, and driven in chain-gangs in Tennessee, because their example is said to be immoral and of pernicious effect. But iron furnaces, livery stables, railroad trains, and in short, almost anything not run by Adventists, except saloons, is permitted to do business on Sunday, while the State orders out and drills its militia on that day, as is witnessed by the following notice published in a Spring City paper, while eight Seventh-day Adventists were “doing time” there for “violating the sabbath“:—
COMPANY, ATTENTION!
HEADQUARTERS OF COMPANY “G.,” 2ND BATALLION,
N. G. S. T
Spring City, Tenn., August 5, 1895.
Orders No. 25.
All the members of this Company are hereby commanded to report at the Company Armory promptly at 2 o’clock on Sunday evening, August 18, 1895, for the purpose of starting on the march for the encampment at Crossville, Tenn., on the morning of the 19th. Each man will provide himself with one blanket, or heavy quilt; and at least two changes of underclothing, including one white shirt and white standing collars and cuffs. Each man will also see that he has a pair of clean white gloves in the pocket of his blouse. No excuses from this duty will be granted, except for the best of reasons.
All who fail to obey this order will be arrested promptly, and punished as the State Regulations direct.
By order of W. P. MCDONALD,
Captain Commanding. J. H. HILTON, First Sergeant.
The captain of this company is the editor of the Spring City Herald, a paper which has insisted upon the enforcement of the law; and yet by this order he violates the fundamental law of the State which provides that “no person shall in time of peace be required to perform any service to the public on any day set apart by his religion as a day of rest.”
To require a Sunday-keeper to drill on Sunday, as was done in Spring City, Tenn., August 18, is certainly a violation of this provision of the constitution of the State of Tennessee. But it is nevertheless a common practice in that State.
Sunday, June 30, just on the eve of the session of the court at which the Rhea County Adventists were convicted for Sunday work, one for lifting a wheelbarrow over a fence, the [292] writer of this note saw State Militia marching in the streets of Dayton, almost with the shadow of the courthouse in which the Adventists were sentenced three days later.
Such are some of the inconsistencies of the Tennessee Sunday “law” and its enforcement.