Fast-forward to 1858. Maria C. and William A. Cowles were married in January 1839 in Massachusetts. Cowles was a drunk, "ill-natured and abusive," and Maria fled his household for Iowa after eleven years of marriage. In 1853, the Wayne County court granted Maria's appeal for divorce, and she promptly married the Presbyterian minister James H. Shields. Learning of their marriage, the New School Presbytery of Des Moines charged Shields with adultery, convicted him, removed him from the ministry, and excommunicated him. The Synod of Iowa reversed Presbytery; Presbytery appealed to the General Assembly. 

Since Maria proved neither that William had committed adultery, nor that he had deserted her, the Assembly upheld Presbytery, voting 106 to 52 to excommunicate Shields. "Lying, as the institution of marriage does, at the foundation of order, purity, and prosperity in the State and the Church, the Assembly cannot view without abhorrence any attempt to diminish its sanctity or to extend beyond the warrant of the Holy Scriptures the grounds of divorce." Adherence to the Westminster standards trumped compassion for abused women, in a decision the New York Times called "unwarrantably severe."