And as the Plan of Separation provides that the conferences bordering on the geographical lines of separation shall decide their relation by the votes of the majority ... and also that ministers of every grade shall make their election North or South without censure—therefore,
1. Resolved, That we now proceed to determine the question of our ecclesiastical relation by the vote of the conference.
2. That we, the members of the Holston Annual Conference, claiming all the rights, powers, and privileges of an Annual Conference of the Methodist Church in the United States, do hereby make an election with, and adhere to, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.
3. That while we thus declare our adherence to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, we repudiate the idea of secession in any schismatic or offensive sense of the phrase, as we neither give up nor surrender anything which we have received as constituting any part of Methodism, and adhere to the Southern ecclesiastical organization. Plan of Separation, adopted by the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church at its session in New York in May, 1844.
4. That we are satisfied with our Book of Discipline as it is on the subject of slavery, as recorded in that book; and that we will not tolerate any change whatever, except such verbal and unimportant alterations as may, in the judgment of the General Conference, facilitate the work in which we are engaged, and promote uniformity and harmony in our administration.
5. That the journals of our present session, as well as all our official business, be henceforth conformed in style and title to our ecclesiastical relation.
6. That it is our desire to cultivate and maintain fraternal relations with our brethren of the North. And we do most sincerely deprecate the continuance of paper warfare either by editors or correspondents, in our official church papers, and devoutly pray for the speedy return of peace and harmony in the Church, both North and South.
7. That the Holston Annual Conference most heartily commend the course of our beloved Bishops, Saule and Andrew, during the recent agitations which have resulted in the territorial and jurisdictional separation of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and that we tender them our thanks for their steady adherence to principle and the best interests of the slave population.”—Bedford, pp. 500-503.
[74] Harrison, 302.
[75] Ibid., 318.