Francis Asbury and the Methodists.
This foundation of a separate episcopacy west of the Atlantic was accompanied by the further separation of the Methodists as a distinct religious society. Although John Wesley regarded the notion of an apostolical succession as superstitious, he had made no attempt to separate his followers from the national church. He translated the titles of "bishop" and "priest" from Greek into Latin and English, calling them "superintendent" and "elder," but he did not deny the king's headship. Meanwhile during the long period of his preaching there had begun to grow up a Methodist church in America. George Whitefield had come over and preached in Georgia in 1737, and in Massachusetts in 1744, where he encountered much opposition on the part of the Puritan clergy. But the first Methodist church in America was founded in the city of New York in 1766. In 1772 Wesley sent over Francis Asbury, a man of shrewd sense and deep religious feeling, to act as his assistant and representative in this country. At that time there were not more than a thousand Methodists, with six preachers, and all these were in the middle and southern colonies; but within five years, largely owing to the zeal and eloquence of Asbury, these numbers had increased sevenfold. At the end of the war, seeing the American Methodists cut loose from the English establishment, Wesley in his own house at Bristol, with the aid of two presbyters, proceeded to ordain ministers enough to make a presbytery, and thereupon set apart Thomas Coke to be "superintendent" or bishop for America. On the same day of November, 1784, on which Seabury was consecrated by the non-jurors at Aberdeen, Coke began preaching and baptizing in Maryland, in rude chapels built of logs or under the shade of forest trees. On Christmas Eve a conference assembled at Baltimore, at which Asbury was chosen bishop by some sixty ministers present, and ordained by Coke, and the constitution of the Methodist church in America was organized. Among the poor white people of the southern states, and among the negroes, the new church rapidly obtained great sway; and at a somewhat later date it began to assume considerable proportions in the north.
Presbyterians; Roman Catholics.
Four years after this the Presbyterians, who were most numerous in the middle states, organized their government in a general assembly, which was also attended by Congregationalist delegates from New England in the capacity of simple advisers. The theological difference between these two sects was so slight that an alliance grew up between them, and in Connecticut some fifty years later their names were often inaccurately used as if synonymous. Such a difference seemed to vanish when confronted with the newer differences that began to spring up soon after the close of the Revolution. The revolt against the doctrine of eternal punishment was already beginning in New England, and among the learned and thoughtful clergy of Massachusetts the seeds of Unitarianism were germinating. The gloomy intolerance of an older time was beginning to yield to more enlightened views. In 1789 the first Roman Catholic church in New England was dedicated in Boston. So great had been the prejudice against this sect that in 1784 there were only 600 Catholics in all New England. In the four southernmost states, on the other hand, there were 2,500; in New York and New Jersey there were 1,700; in Delaware and Pennsylvania there were 7,700; in Maryland there were 20,000; while among the French settlements along the eastern bank of the Mississippi there were supposed to be nearly 12,000. In 1786 John Carroll, a cousin of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, was selected by the Pope as his apostolic vicar, and was afterward successively made bishop of Baltimore and archbishop of the United States. By 1789 all obstacles to the Catholic worship had been done away with in all the states.
Except in the instance of slavery, all these changes were favourable to union.
In this brief survey of the principal changes wrought in the several states by the separation from England, one cannot fail to be struck with their conservative character. Things proceeded just as they had done from time immemorial with the English race. Forms of government were modified just far enough to adapt them to the new situation and no farther. The abolition of entails, of primogeniture, and of such few manorial privileges as existed, were useful reforms of far less sweeping character than similar changes would have been in England; and they were accordingly effected with ease. Even the abolition of slavery in the northern states, where negroes were few in number and chiefly employed in domestic service, wrought nothing in the remotest degree resembling a social revolution. But nowhere was this constitutionally cautious and precedent-loving mode of proceeding more thoroughly exemplified than in the measures just related, whereby the Episcopal and Methodist churches were separated from the English establishment and placed upon an independent footing in the new world. From another point of view it may be observed that all these changes, except in the instance of slavery, tended to assimilate the states to one another in their political and social condition. So far as they went, these changes were favourable to union, and this was perhaps especially true in the case of the ecclesiastical bodies, which brought citizens of different states into coöperation in pursuit of specific ends in common.
At the same time this survey most forcibly reminds us how completely the legislation which immediately affected the daily domestic life of the citizen was the legislation of the single state in which he lived. In the various reforms just passed in review the United States government took no part, and could not from the nature of the case. Even to-day our national government has no power over such matters, and it is to be hoped it never will have. But at the present day our national government performs many important functions of common concern, which a century ago were scarcely performed at all. The organization of the single state was old in principle and well understood by everybody. It therefore worked easily, and such changes as those above described were brought about with little friction. On the other hand, the principles upon which the various relations of the states to each other were to be adjusted were not well understood. There was wide disagreement upon the subject, and the attempt to compromise between opposing views was not at first successful. Hence, in the management of affairs which concerned the United States as a nation, we shall not find the central machinery working smoothly or quietly. We are about to traverse a period of uncertainty and confusion, in which it required all the political sagacity and all the good temper of the people to save the half-built ship of state from going to pieces on the rocks of civil contention.