The Colored Man in the Methodist Episcopal Church

by L. M. Hagood

“The news of this startling event went through the country like a flame of fire. There had been some expectation of violence, but the actual shock came like a clap of thunder. The people of the towns poured into the streets, and the country folk flocked to the villages to gather the tidings and to comment on the coming conflict. Gray-haired men talked gravely of the deed that was done, and prophesied of its consequences. Public opinion, both in the North and the South, was rapidly consolidated. Three days after the fall of Fort Sumter, President Lincoln issued a call for seventy-five thousand volunteers to serve three months in the overthrow of the secession movement. On the 19th of April, when the first regiments of Massachusetts volunteers were passing through Baltimore on their way to Washington, they were fired upon by the citizens and three men killed.”

The sounds of preparation for war were heard in every direction. No less spirit was being manifested throughout the Methodist Episcopal Church. And yet, notwithstanding the fact that the Baltimore Annual Conference withdrew by resolution from the Methodist Episcopal Church, because the Church stood up for the poor slave, not a single compromise at that time was made by the Church with slavery. To get some idea of the condition of affairs at the time, or directly thereafter, when Bishop Levi Scott stood up in the face of the whole world and let his light so shine that men might see his good works and those of the Church he represented, when he declined to ordain the Rev. Mr. Hedrick in the presence of the Baltimore Conference, we quote the language of a man whom every colored man and most good white men love to honor—Gilbert Haven, D.D.—who says in his description of the “First War Sunday:”

“That Sabbath-day’s journey ought to be chronicled. We marched through saintly Boston in the gray twilight to the tune of ‘Yankee Doodle.’ All along the route cannons and bells, bands and flags and waving handkerchiefs, soldiers and crowds upon crowds, gave us a hearty hail and farewell. At Hartford we were told the women were all at home driving their sewing-machines, and the men busy making cartridges for their troops. All the town left their churches and gathered around the depot, where they had had preaching and singing while waiting for us. They had also provided refreshments enough for five thousand persons, and plied us with sweetmeats and benedictions. The force of the fever could go no farther.”

The colored man from one end of this country to the other had always recognized the Methodist Episcopal Church as a friend to him and his, a friend whose sympathies were worth a great deal. But whenever he was reminded that it was “The Abolition Church” and one of the prime causes of the war—which was usually taught him whenever the poor, deluded colored men imagined, as they would naturally at times, that the war imposed additional hardships and burdens—he sometimes shuddered. But when the Union forces went South, and any of the colored people were seen, they usually spoke kindly to them. If about religious matters, they usually found the colored man either a Baptist or a Methodist. If the latter, and the interlocutor, or any one of the company, was a Methodist, the poor colored man learned of the interest the Church was taking in his welfare and liberation. When colored men ran within the Federal lines, they never failed to find the chaplain or some one of the company a member of the Methodist Church, who deeply sympathized with him, and did all possible to make him comfortable. While all this was true, another aspect presented itself.

THE ATTITUDE OF THE CHURCH AS SEEN BY GENERAL CONFERENCE ACTION.

It was not enough that the General Conference had repeatedly stood forth the friend of the Union, but individual conferences gave no uncertain sound at that time. It is almost literally true that the hitherto unmistakable factional lines within the Church faded so much that the anti-slavery, conservative, and radical elements united in some sort, for the purpose of rallying to the national standard to find shelter beneath “the Star-spangled Banner.”

The New York East Conference in April, 1861, led by Rev. J. S. Inskip, unanimously declared its unqualified sympathy and support of the government in its defense of the Constitution. In June of the same year the New York Conference followed, led on by the manly report submitted through Rev. J. B. Wakeley, on the State of the Country. In that report was delineated, in unmistakable language, “the formation of the Southern Confederacy ... its seizure of the forts, mints, custom-houses, vessels, and arms of the United States, ... and unnatural war against the government.” And the report went on and patriotically declared: “No treasure is too costly, no sacrifice too great, no time too long, to put down treason and traitors, and to place our Union on a rock so solid that neither enemies abroad nor traitors at home can move it.” Indeed, so arrogant and flagrant had the unpunished crimes of the slave oligarchy become, that the East Baltimore Conference in March, 1862, by a vote of 132 yeas to 15 nays—led on by Revs. A. A. Reese and G. D. Chenoweth—not only expressed its “abhorrence of the rebellion,” but declared, “We approve and indorse the present wise and patriotic Administration, and in the inculcation of loyal principles and sentiments we recognize the pulpit and press as legitimate instrumentalities.” Not only so, but the Philadelphia Conference, in March of that same year, received and unanimously adopted the report of their Committee on the State of the Country as presented by the chairman, Rev. Charles Cook, which affirmed: “We do hereby express our utter abhorrence and opposition to the present rebellion, being the offspring of treason, ... and that we pledge our influence to encourage and assist the army and navy, to protect the honor of our flag, the integrity of the Constitution, and the maintenance of our glorious Union.” The New Jersey Conference followed with equally patriotic resolutions.

MEMORIALIZING CONGRESS.

As if afraid its influence would not be potent enough by its General and annual conference action on the question of slavery, several of the annual conferences sent up memorials to Congress and to President Lincoln. The New York East Conference—when the bill freeing “slaves used for insurrectionary purposes” was approved, August 6, 1861, and another forbidding the return of fugitive slaves by persons in the army, March 13, 1862, and the abolishment of slavery in the District of Columbia by Congress, April 16, 1862—adopted a report drawn up by James Floy, which declared “the system of American slavery is evidently, in the good providence of God, destined soon to come to an end; that the recent action of our national authorities, by which the nation has been unequivocally committed to the cause of freedom, meets with our entire approbation.” The same body, with the New York Conference, in 1864, memorialized Congress, praying the enactment of an amendment to the Constitution for the abolishment of slavery a year and a half or more before it was done. The New England Conference sent up the following, which, for historic accuracy, prophetic ken, and loyalty to the cause of human freedom, has rarely been surpassed, and will stand in the forefront of the reputation of that conference for level-headedness and right doing. We here reproduce it:

“After thirty years of exciting but healthful agitation on the subject of slavery, the present aspects of our cause furnish abundant motive for devout thanksgiving to God. The two antagonistic tendencies of public sentiment existing and increasing in the nation for so many years, have at length reached their legitimate crisis of mutual and final conflict, of which the issue can not be doubtful. By its own diabolical act [slavery] has been placed in a position where it can claim no constitutional protection, and where there is no prudential motive for its retention; and the voice of the people, which evidently coincides with the voice of God, says: ‘Let it perish!’ In the Church the progress of the anti-slavery sentiment has been equally gratifying. Instead of a continued and meager minority which regarded slavery as a sin, a great majority of the representative assemblies of the Church register their solemn verdict of its criminal character, and demand that it shall cease, not only in the ministry, but in the whole membership.”