When the Committee on Slavery reported, there were submitted a “majority” and a “minority” report, a substitute for the majority report. The first resolution of the committee was:
“Resolved, by the delegates of the several annual conferences, in General Conference assembled, That we recommend the amendment of the General Rule on Slavery, so that it shall read: ‘The buying, selling, or holding of men, women, or children, with an intention to enslave them.’”
This motion was lost, since it required a two-thirds vote; and 138 voted for it, and 74 against it. The second resolution was:
“Resolved, That we recommend the suspension of the fourth Restrictive Rule, for the purpose set forth in the foregoing resolution.”
The first resolution having failed, this was laid on the table. The third was:
“Resolved, by the delegates of the several annual conferences, in General Conference assembled, That the following be, and hereby is, substituted in the place of the seventh chapter on Slavery: Question. What shall be done for the extirpation of slavery? Answer. We declare that we are as much as ever convinced of the great evil of slavery. We believe that the buying, selling, or holding of human beings as chattels, is contrary to the laws of God and nature, inconsistent with the Golden Rule, and with that rule in our Discipline which requires all who desire to remain among us to ‘do no harm, and to avoid evil of every kind.’ We therefore affectionately admonish all our preachers and people to keep themselves pure from this great evil, and to seek its extirpation by all lawful and Christian means.”
This was necessarily the last work of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church on behalf of the colored man before the terrible Civil War in this country, that began during the ensuing quadrennium.
CHAPTER V
THE RETROSPECT.
Who has not, ere this, declared slavery a vice? We have seen that the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1796 not only warned its members against the vice of holding their fellow-men, their brethren, as slaves, but required a guarantee from applicants for membership that, if owners of slaves, they would manumit them at the earliest possible moment; if not, that they would not engage in it while in the communion of the Church; that if “any among us do not wish to abide by this rule, they shall have the privilege quietly to withdraw.” Such a spirit was in keeping with the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. Not only this, but any member of the Methodist Episcopal Church who should sell a human being for any reason, was to be expelled. In cases where members of the Church bought colored people, even though done for the purpose of keeping husband and wife together, or from being separated, it was stipulated that such should only be held in servitude a sufficient time to pay back to the purchaser the price paid for him or her. This plan, in itself, was not only a wise business transaction for the liberation of slaves, but humane and just; creditable to the Church and honorable in the purchaser when done willingly, as well as elevating in its very nature, and calculated to put the slave under perpetual gratitude to his liberator. The plan was unique, and if it had been observed in every such case throughout the length and breadth of this fair land, our American civilization would have become the ideal of the world. If our government had but consented to adopt some such measure looking to the gradual liberation of the slaves, is it not rational to believe the late Civil War could have been averted, and many precious lives and much property been saved? But the American people apparently did not view it in that light. It came at last, as of old, the arbitrary Pharaoh rushed on pursuing his slaves, notwithstanding the terrible warnings given, until ingulfed in the boisterous waves of the mighty Red Sea. How true is it that “the wicked pass on, and are punished!” No more fearful punishment ever came upon any nation than came upon ours because of slavery. Although the above plan was adopted by the Church, it declared that if a Methodist person purchased a slave woman, all her children—whether her husband was a free man or not—were to be free from birth. Thus the Church sought at once to begin emancipation.