whose future manumission had been provided for, should be free; viz., every male at twenty-five, and every female at twentyone years of age. This, however, was not intended to be definite and final, for the subject was referred to "all the yearly conferences, to make whatever regulations they judge proper in this case respecting the admission of persons to official stations in the Church."

The undecided state of mind in that assembly still further appears in the final paragraph of the chapter above quoted; in which the preachers and members of society are "requested to consider the subject of Negro slavery with deep attention till the ensuing General Conference; and that they impart to the General Conference any important thoughts upon the subject. But no "important thoughts" were forthcoming at the ensuing General Conference, nor yet at that of 1804; hence in 1808 nearly all the additions to the section on slavery made in 1796 were stricken out, and the entire section ordered to be omitted from the special edition of the Discipline which was to be prepared for the use of the societies in South Carolina. (Sherman's "History of the Discipline," pp. 35 and 36.)

On this mixed business Jesse Lee has the following remarks:

"These rules were but short-lived, and were offensive to most of our southern friends. . . . They were never carried into full force. . . . The part retained in our Discipline only relates at present to our traveling preachers, and such other persons as are to be brought forward to official stations in our Church. I shall therefore take no further notice of the rules about slavery which were made at various times for twenty-four years; i. e., from the Christmas Conference in 1784 to the last General Conference held in 1808. For a long experience has taught us that the various rules that have been made on this business have not been attended with that success which was expected." ("Short History of the Methodists," page 102.)

The chapter on slavery to which Lee refers in the above quotation, and which, with few changes, remained in the Discipline from 1824 to 1860, was as follows:

OF SLAVERY.

"Ques. What shall be done for the extirpation of the evil of slavery?

"Ans. 1. We declare that we are as much as ever convinced

of the great evil of slavery; therefore, no slaveholder shall be eligible to any official station in our Church hereafter where the laws of the state in which he lives will admit of emancipation, and permit the liberated slave to enjoy freedom.

"Ans. 2. When any traveling preacher becomes the owner of a slave or slaves, by any means, he shall forfeit his ministerial character in our Church, unless he execute, if it be practicable, a legal emancipation of such slaves, conformably to the laws of the state in which he lives."

"Ans. 3. (Added in 1824.) All our preachers shall prudently enforce upon our members the necessity of teaching their slaves to read the Word of God, and to allow them to attend upon the public worship of God on our regular days of divine service."

"Ans. 4. Our colored preachers and official members shall have all the privileges which are usual to others in the district and quarterly conferences, where the usages of the country do not forbid it. And the presiding elder may hold for them a separate district conference where the number of colored local preachers will justify it."

"Ans. 5. The bishops may employ colored preachers to travel and preach when their services are judged necessary; provided, that no one shall be so employed without having been recommended by a quarterly conference."

That the anti-slavery sentiment was still alive appears from the fact that at the General Conference of 1832 a committee was appointed to look into the condition of the slaves, but when their report was presented it was promptly laid on the table, from which harmless position it never was taken up.

A

And now begins that period of conflict by which, as by a vast earthquake, Methodism in America was rent asunder. brief digression is here necessary in order to a full understanding of extracts from the Minutes of the General Conferences of 1836, 1840, and 1844. Perhaps the time has come when the actual state of affairs in the Colonies of America in respect to slavery can be plainly stated and calmly considered. That institution has perished, though many of its results remain. The awful war in which, as an incidental effect, it went down is now among things remote in this fast-rushing age, and the Church is now, by reason of its division on that line, better able to face the anterior and interior facts to which these pages relate.

First of all, it must be remembered that the slave-trade was in full operation at the time when the Methodists began to be known on this side of the Atlantic. For many years all the

Colonies along the western shore of that ocean owned and traded in slaves brought from Africa, the most of this traffic being carried on by the northern colonies, because they owned a large majority of all the colonial ships. There are persons now living who well remember the slaves in the households of their parents, and those of their neighbors in the state of Massachusetts; for it was not until 1808 that the provision in the Constitution of the United States came into effect, by which the slave-trade was made a crime.

The chief finanical profits of slavery in the north having been in the trade and not in the use of slaves, while in the south the reverse was true, the natural result followed. Slavery gradually moved southward. It was by no means on account of any conviction of conscience on the part of the people of New England that this transition came about. This appears from the fact that at the Constitutional Convention, composed of delegates from the thirteen states of the Union, which met at Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, the subject of slavery was referred to two committees in succession; the first being composed of three northern and two southern men, and the second having a majority from the south. The first of these committees reported, August 8, 1787, a recommendation that the slave-trade be legalized perpetually; the second that it should not be extended beyond the year 1800. In his note on this subject, at the foot of page 386, of his "History of Methodism," Bishop McTyeire says:

"The constitutional provisions on this head would never have prolonged this infamous traffic to the year 1808 if either Massachusetts or New Hampshire or Connecticut had stood by Delaware and Virginia in that crisis of the country, and, like them, voted against the extension."

In treating of the origin of the struggle over slavery in the Methodist Church, it has been customary to say that the conscience of the Church in the north was being awakened to the evil of the institution of slavery. But this is not strictly correct. Conscience has its legitimate action in relation to moral questions, and to the conduct of the person who possesses it. To speak of a conscience against the sins of others is a misuse

of the word. Perhaps the cheapest form of piety is that which consists in disapprobation of other people's sins. This form of conscience had been growing more and more intense in the north against the sins of the people of the south; and this was the kind of conscience, as the southern Methodist slaveholders understood it, which led to the agitation on that very sensitive topic, and which, in the month of December, 1833, led to the organization of the National Anti-slavery Society in the city of Philadelphia.

The northern leaders in the interest of "immediate emancipation," of whom the chief Methodist was a New England presiding elder named Orange Scott, had nothing to gain by the continuance of slavery, and nothing to lose by its destruction. In these respects their position was the reverse from that of their slaveholding brethren of the south. This gave a free hand to the one party; but was a question of financial life or death to the other. It does not appear that the New England abolitionists, who were so fond of referring to the extinction of slavery by Great Britain in the West Indies, ever hinted at the propriety of following her example in the manner of that great reform; viz., the partial compensation of the masters whose slaves were then set free.

One more important view of this unhappy subject, which must have had much weight with the southern Methodists, was the bitter denunciation of the Churches, especially the northern Churches, for their intense conservatism on the subject of this great national crime. William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Parker, and men of that stamp, were as violent in their attacks upon the Churches as they were upon slavery itself; while the religious education of the slaveholding Church members had given them to see that a Church in which both masters and slaves held communion together was quite according to the usage in apostolic times.

Now, in conclusion of this somewhat lengthy digression, let it be observed, without entering into the merits of that memorable debate which led to the great disruption, that all the above considerations must have held place in the very lifeblood of the Methodists of the south. It is only just to them. and to history, that these interior causes and reasons for their

action should be kept in mind. If both writer and reader of these pages shall be able to do this, the following brief record of the great Methodist ecclesiastical war will be of some substantial use.

At the opening of the General Conference of 1832 the Episcopal Address noted with pleasure the quieting of the agitation on the subject of slavery. But an event took place which was destined to be the means of renewing the strife; viz., the election of James O. Andrew, of Georgia, as one of the two new bishops. His colleague was John Emory, a native of Maryland, but at the date of his election a member of the Philadelphia Conference, and one of the Book Agents at New York.

That the agitation on the subject of slavery was partially "quieted" is evident from the election of these two bishops, both of whom were natives of slaveholding states, when out of the 202 members of the body 118 were of the non-slaveholding section of the Church. There was not even the regular Committee on Slavery.

But this was only the calm before the storm. In the New England delegation at the quiet General Conference of 1832 was a member whose name, during the few following years, came to be a firebrand. Orange Scott was a rising man in his conference. In 1834 he was made presiding elder of the Providence District (since erected into the Providence Conference), and served for two years with great success. It was during this time that the anti-slavery society, to which reference has already been made, was set on foot, and Mr. Scott shortly came to be one of its chief advocates, both by tongue and pen. Before the quadrennium rolled round he had made converts of a large majority of the members of his conference, and was elected to the General Conference of 1836, which was to meet in a border city, at the head of his delegation.

At that date the number of so-called "abolitionists" in the Methodist Church was small; but Scott traveled through New England and a part of New York, giving fiery lectures, organizing local clubs whose object was to agitate for "immediate emancipation" of all the slaves, and attending sessions of annual conferences in which he secured the establishment of conference anti-slavery societies.