School Fund, 1868-1875
| 1868 | ||
| 1869 | $524,621.68[1798] | |
| 1870 | 500,409.18[1799] | |
| 1871 | 581,389.29[1800] | |
| 1872 | 604,978.50[1801] | |
| 1873 | 524,452.40[1802] | |
| 1874 | 474,346.52[1803] | |
| 1875 | 565.042.94[1804] |
CHAPTER XX
RECONSTRUCTION IN THE CHURCHES
Sec. 1. The “Disintegration and Absorption” Policy and its Failure
The close of the war found the southern church organizations in a more or less demoralized condition. Their property was destroyed, their buildings were burned or badly in need of repair, and the church treasuries were empty. It was doubtful whether some of them could survive the terrible exhaustion that followed the war. The northern churches, “coming down to divide the spoils,” acted upon the principle that the question of separate churches had been settled by the war along with that of state sovereignty, and that it was now the right and the duty of the northern churches to reconstruct the churches in the South. So preparations were made to “disintegrate and absorb” the “schismatical” southern religious bodies.[1805]
The Methodists
In 1864 the Northern Methodist Church declared the South a proper field for mission work, and made preparations to enter it. None were to be admitted to membership in the church who were slaveholders or who were “tainted with treason.”[1806] In 1865 the bishops of the northern organization resolved that “we will occupy so far as practicable those fields in the southern states which may be open to us ... for black and white alike.”[1807] The General Missionary Committee of the northern church divided the South into departments for missionary work, and Alabama was in the Middle Department. Bishop Clark of Ohio was sent (1886) to take charge of the Georgia and Alabama Mission District. The declared purpose of this mission work was to “disintegrate and absorb” the southern church, the organization of which was generally believed to have been destroyed by the war.[1808]