It was not the three cents a pound upon tea that caused the American revolution of 1776, but the right to tax tea to that amount involved the right to make every man in the British colonies a slave; and the right to depose Bishop Andrew implied the right to depose every man from the ministry who differed from the numerical majority upon any political question whatever.
To all sober, unbiased, right-thinking, candid men this position will be undeniable—unanswerable. To others it will be like “casting pearls before swine.”
2. The plan of division provided a remedy for the cause of division. The one stands in the light of the other. When the action in the case of Bishop Andrew was taken in the General Conference of 1844 the delegates from thirteen Annual Conferences, making fifty-one in all, drew up a declaration in which they set forth the fact that in the slaveholding States the objects and purposes of the ministry would be defeated by it. Upon this protest the General Conference raised a committee of nine, six from the Northern Conferences and three from the Southern Conferences, to whom the declaration was referred. After deliberation they submitted what is known in history and in law as the “Plan of Separation.”
It begins thus:
“Whereas, A declaration has been presented to this Conference, with the signatures of fifty-one delegates of the body from thirteen Annual Conferences in the slaveholding States, representing that, for various reasons enumerated, the objects and purposes of the Christian ministry and church organizations can not be successfully accomplished by them under the jurisdiction of the General Conference as now constituted; and,
“Whereas, In the event of a separation, a contingency to which the declaration asks attention as not improbable, we esteem it the duty of this General Conference to meet the contingency with Christian kindness and the strictest equity; therefore,
“Resolved 1, Provided that should the Annual Conferences in the slaveholding States find it necessary to unite in a distinct ecclesiastical connection, all the societies, stations and Conferences bordering on the line of division, adhering by vote of a majority of the members of the society, station or Conference to either the Church in the South or the M. E. Church, shall remain under the unmolested pastoral care of the church to which they do adhere.”
The rule was not to apply to interior charges, which shall, in all cases, be left to the care of that church within whose territory they are situated.
It should be observed that the Plan of Separation was thus agreed upon by the General Conference: “Should the Annual Conferences in the slaveholding States find it necessary to unite in a distinct ecclesiastical connection.” They were to be the sole judges of the necessity of such “distinct ecclesiastical connection.” The “plan” also provided for “ministers of every grade and office” adhering either North or South, “without blame,” and for a change of the sixth restrictive rule by a constitutional vote of all the Annual Conferences, so that in the event of separation an equitable pro rata division of the Book Concerns at New York and Cincinnati, and the Chartered Fund at Philadelphia, could be made. It provided, also, for the division of the property by a joint commission, in which N. Bangs, S. Peck and J. B. Finly were to represent the Church North; and the ninth resolution was as follows:
“Resolved 9, That all the property of the Methodist Episcopal Church in meeting-houses, parsonages, colleges, schools, conference funds, cemeteries, and of every kind within the limits of the Southern organization, shall be forever free from any claim set up on the part of the Methodist Episcopal Church, so far as this resolution can be of force in the premises.”