The organization of African Methodism, independent of white control or association, in the North, was the most striking event previous to 1844, when the white Methodist hosts, North and South, were to be divided. In the South the chief event of interest, outside of faithful work of itinerants in preaching to the slave population in connection with regular pastorates, was the successful founding of plantation missions. Thus far the converts had been chiefly among the more favored or house-servant class. Beyond these were vast multitudes, probably four-fifths of the two million slaves of that day, where intellectual and moral paganism reigned. Philanthropists, both in and outside of the various churches, saw and recognized the necessity of some movement beyond the regular church work, to carry the blessings of Christian civilization into the gloom of this darker Africa in America. Methodists led in this important work.
The plan adopted was to send missionaries to the plantations, to be supported by the planters themselves, who were friendly to the work. Doctor (afterwards Bishop) Capers was the apostle of this forward movement. The importance of these efforts of this churchman are attested on a modest stone over the grave of the Bishop, at Columbia, South Carolina, by these words, "Founder of Missions to the Slaves." Under his guidance heroic itinerants were found to brave the dangers of disease and bodily discomfort, and go into the swamps and plantation cabins on a mission as holy as that which sent Cox to Africa and Carey to India. Not a few of them died as martyrs, but the places of those who fell were quickly filled. Volunteers would arise in the annual conferences and say to the Bishops, "Here are we, send us." This language is one of a sample of all: "We court no publicity; we seek no gain; we dread no sickness in going after the souls of these blacks for whom Christ died. If we may save some of them from going down to the pit, and succeed in pointing their steps to the heavenly city, all will be well."[8]
The greatest success was in South Carolina, where, in 1839, at the end of ten years, seventeen missionaries were employed. There were 97 appointments, embracing 234 plantations and 6,556 church members, to whom preaching and the sacraments were regularly given. They had also under regular catechetical instruction 25,025 Negro children.
In 1844, when the division of American Methodism became inevitable, these plantation missions were in the full tide of success. They were maintained and rejoiced in by the whole Methodist Episcopal Church. Their chief support, however, came from Methodists and other friends in the South. In the year mentioned there were 68 missions in nine of the Southern States, with 80 missionaries and 22,063 members. In that year, white southern conferences paid $22,379.25 to this work. It is estimated that the conferences in the South gave for this cause $200,000 during fifteen years, up to 1844.[9]
The "Brother in Black," however, brought the republic an irrepressible conflict, ending in frightful civil war. So, too, it must be said, that in Methodism, for nearly a century Negro slavery was the occasion of discussion and legislation, and at last of division, which Calhoun considered the beginning of the dismemberment of the Union. Methodism grew with the colonies, and at the close of the American Revolution had 84 preachers and 15,000 members in its societies. It was the first organized American church that officially gave its benediction, through Washington, to the young republic. Its spirit and itinerant system kept its organizations on the front wave of every movement of population. Its mission was salvation to rich and poor alike, regardless of race. Its only test of membership was "a sincere desire to flee from the wrath to come." Peoples of every station in life, bond and free, educated and illiterate, rich and poor, political friends and antagonists, were alike attracted by the impassioned appeals of her apostolic missionaries. Her form of government brought into annual and quadrennial conferences all questions of polity or principle involved in administration. Other churches might relegate important questions of discipline to individual societies; Methodism could not. Every important matter must be settled by a majority vote of representatives of the whole church.
On doctrines there were no divisions. Not so as to questions relating to African slavery. As to the abstract right and wrong of that institution, for many years there was but little division among Methodists. Later some in the South talked of the "divine institution," and occasionally a Northern man claimed that a Christian might buy and sell slaves without sin. The legislation of the church, however, was clear and explicit to this effect: "Slavery is contrary to the laws of God and man, and wrong and hurtful to society." All buying and selling of slaves, then, was forbidden.[10] Gradually the irrepressible conflict began in the church. The Northern section more and more taught that slavery was wrong, and could in no way be excused or tolerated by the church of Christ, without partaking of its sin. The South held that slavery was a civil institution, approved by the word of God, and that the church was not responsible for its existence or its abuses. The duty of the church in its relation to slavery was taught to be loyalty to civil government, as represented by national and State laws, and to give the gospel as far as possible to both master and slave.
For more than half a century the largest growth of the church had been in the Southern States, and Southern views as to slavery modified legislation in relation to that institution. On the other hand, with the development of the West and Northwest, the balance of legislative influence shifted northward until in the historic General Conference of 1844, Bishop Andrews of Georgia, having become related to slavery by marriage, was requested by a vote of 111 to 69 "to desist from the exercise of his episcopal office so long as this impediment remained."[11] Then followed the inevitable division, and the organization of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Only seventeen years later the Civil War began and Southern Methodist hosts gave their sympathies, prayers, votes, money and sons to the Army of Gray; while Methodists in the North, to quote the words of Lincoln, "sent more prayers to heaven and soldiers to the field" for the Army in Blue, than any other Christian church. Thus may people of God of like faith have diverse consciences and differ, first, in sentiment and policies, then in conviction and duty, and at last prayerfully face each other at the cannon's mouth in deadly combat.
The years from 1844 to 1846 were indeed momentous in the history of the American Methodism in its relation to the Negro. That little company of five in New York in seventy-eight years had in 1845 come to be a multitude of 1,139,583 communicants, whose presence and spiritual energy were felt in every community of the republic, North, South, East and West. Of that membership, 150,120 were Negroes, chiefly in the South, and mostly gathered from among the slave population. But now there was to be division, the North to be more and more anti-slavery and the South to be more and more pro-slavery.
Then followed three Methodist divisions as related to the Negro: First, the African organizations already mentioned, with their chief strength in the Eastern States; and second, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, with a total membership of 447,961 in 1846. Of these 118,904 were Negro slaves with few exceptions. This church occupied all the territory of the Southern States exclusively, except along the border. Methodists in Maryland, Virginia, Delaware and the District of Columbia, including the Baltimore and part of the Philadelphia Annual Conferences, and also many members along the border farther west, did not join in the Southern movement. In the third place, then, there remained in the Methodist Episcopal Church still (1846) a total membership of 644,558. Of these 30,516 were Negroes, of whom about 20,000 were slaves.