It is pertinent to the case to state here that on the day the “committee of nine” was raised, and before it was formed or announced, the following resolution was passed, without debate:
“Resolved, That the committee appointed to take into consideration the communication of the delegates from the Southern Conferences be instructed—provided they can not, in their judgment, devise a plan for the amicable adjustment of the difficulties now existing in the Church on the subject of slavery—to devise, if possible, a constitutional plan for a mutual and friendly division of the Church.”
The adoption of this resolution, without debate, embodied and announced the decision of the General Conference upon the constitutional powers of the body to divide the Church.
An effort was made to strike the word “constitutional” from the resolution, but it failed, and the resolution as passed forms a part of the history of the division, bearing directly upon the constitutional prerogatives of the General Conference.
Dr. Charles Elliott, who subsequently made himself notorious by denouncing the Church, South, as a secession, and by making war upon the “Plan of Separation” and all that it accomplished, was the first man in the General Conference to move the adoption of the report of the committee of nine, and in a long speech he urged, with many arguments, the practicability, the propriety, the necessity and the expediency of a division of the Church, avowing distinctly that “were the present difficulty out of the way there would be good reason for passing the resolutions contained in the report. The body was too large to do business advantageously. The measure contemplated was not schism, but separation for their mutual convenience and prosperity.
After much debate and a full and free discussion of every possible point that could be raised by that able body of men, amongst whom were many of the best constitutional lawyers of the Church, the report was adopted; the vote on the several resolutions varying from 135 to 153 in the affirmative, and from 22 to 12 in the negative. These were certainly very large majorities, and show plainly the animus of the General Conference of 1844.
With implicit confidence in the sincerity and good faith of this action, the Southern Conferences proceeded to ascertain whether there existed a necessity in the Southern States for the separation thus provided for.
The Southern Conferences were to be the sole judges of the necessity for such action as would make this provisional separation a real one; and that in their judgment such necessity did exist, the history is in proof. However greatly the opinions and purposes of men may change, the facts of history that have gone to official record can not change. Upon such facts intelligent judgment alone can rest, and to such facts an honest public will always make a final appeal.
“The Annual Conferences in the slaveholding States” did “find it necessary to unite in a distinct ecclesiastical connection,” and for that purpose met in convention, in Louisville, Ky., in 1845, and reduced the possible contingency to fact. In the organization of a “distinct ecclesiastical connection” the Louisville convention adhered strictly to the plan adopted by the General Conference of 1844. The division of the church into two distinct co-ordinate branches, which was considered a contingency, and, as such, provided for in 1844, was, by the action of the “Annual Conferences in the slaveholding States” represented in the convention at Louisville, made an accomplished fact in 1845. After this convention erected the “Annual Conferences in the slaveholding States” into a “distinct ecclesiastical connection” the Bishops of the M. E. Church (North) met in New York, July, 1845, and passed, among others, the following resolution:
“Resolved, That the plan adopted in regard to a distinct ecclesiastical connection, should such a course be found necessary by the Annual Conferences of the slaveholding States, is regarded by us as of binding obligation in the premises, so far as our administration is concerned.”