The Black River Conference also gave no uncertain sound when it declared: “The signs of the times give evidence that the hitherto dominant and domineering slave power is rapidly approaching its end, and even now we may witness its horrible death-throe. The time is rapidly approaching when the last fetter will be broken, and the last bondman be released.”
Of all the above and many more conferences that took action in support of the Union, none of them is more worthy of honor because of the action taken than the Central Ohio, which adopted resolutions as early as 1861 contemplating a proclamation of emancipation as the only conceivable solution of our national difficulties. The Christian Advocate of October following, reports the action taken by said conference at its session in Greenville, September 22, 1862:
“Resolved, That we believe that the time has fully come that, from a military necessity for the safety of the country, such a proclamation should be made; and we earnestly beseech the President of the United States to proclaim the emancipation of all slaves held in the United States, paying loyal men a reasonable compensation for their slaves.”
This was, by order of the conference, forwarded to the President of the United States. But before it reached him, as if verifying God’s promise, “Call, and while you are calling, I will answer,” the President issued September 22, 1862, the Proclamation, to take effect January 1, 1863. This Proclamation was not intended to free all the slaves, but only affected “all persons held as slaves within any State, or any designated part of a State, the people whereof shall be in rebellion against the United States on the first day of January, 1863.” Hence it only reached the States of Arkansas, Louisiana—leaving out some parishes—Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, and Virginia, in all of which States and parts of States all slaves were henceforth to be free. Other exceptions, such as parts of Virginia, Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee, Delaware, and Maryland were also included in the above, leaving the slaves in the non-designated parts in slavery.
CHAPTER VII
THE GENERAL CONFERENCE OF 1864.
Almost one year after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect by reason of the refusal on the part of the South to return to the Union, the nineteenth session of the General Conference met in the city of Philadelphia. That body was composed of two hundred and sixteen delegates. Just how any body of men, whether met for political or religious interests, could properly attend to affairs, even to the minutiæ, under the then existing circumstances of so exciting character as those that occurred from May 1, 1864, until the adjournment of that General Conference, is hard to conceive. And yet the proceedings of that body were characterized by patient, wise, and prudent action. Some of the delegates to that General Conference had their thoughts, however hard they strove to prevent it, on Church interests upset, as they took up the newspapers and found an account of the atrocious butchery of colored troops at Fort Pillow by that enemy of the human family, General Forrest. Before leaving the cars upon which they were traveling, they were startled by the cry of the newsboys at every station, as they announced the startling news that the governors of the Western States had offered the United States government eighty-five thousand men for one hundred days, and that the President had accepted the offer; again, that the victory was still in the scales. They had been in session but four days until the wires flashed the news that the irrepressible Grant had crossed the Rapidan in Virginia, and commenced operations in the Wilderness! The next day news came that the armies of the North and South had met in the Wilderness—the former under that invincible hero, and the latter under the intrepid Lee. Since our own Grant was pushing Lee before him nearly everywhere, and knowing how the Church had begun to love General Grant, and that her prayers and influence and sons were with him for the preservation of the Union, it is pretty hard to understand just how that General Conference found time and disposition to work as it did. Its session was during the crisis of the war. As they understood it, “God expects every man to do his best,” and they had then an opportunity to view the whole scene, knowing that God himself was interested, since
“Right forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the throne;
But that scaffold sways the future,