3. ORGANIZING NORTHERN CHURCHES

IN THE SOUTH

Organizing a Northern Church in New Orleans

True Delta, March 28, 1864, in McPherson, Rebellion, p. 523. This so-called "government plan" was the one which Lincoln repudiated. See his Complete Works, index.

[1864]

IN accordance with the [U. S.] government plan concerning the churches of the South, the Board of Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church have sent the Rev. J. P. Newman, D. D., to New Orleans, to take charge of all the churches of that powerful denomination [M. E. Church, South] there..

On being introduced by the chairman, Dr. Newman said: There were three reasons for sending a minister from New York to New Orleans:

I. It was in harmony with the theory of labor as held by the Methodist Church. There is no such church as the Methodist Church North. Ours is the Methodist Episcopal Church. We are not sectional. We acknowledge no geographical limits less than the world itself. . . In the separation of 1844,1 our church relinquished no right to labor in the South. . . We reject the sentiment that we are encroaching upon the rights of others.

2. It is required by the present state of the country. Thousands of our citizens have followed in the track of our victorious armies, "to build the old wastes, and raise up the former desolations and repair the waste cities," and the church had been recreant to her trust had she not provided them with the ministry of the Word. We have too long trusted our Northern men who have taken up their residence South to the exclusive influence of Southern teaching;

This movement was justified by the present disorganized and destitute condition of the Southern churches. Their former ministers had either fled or been silenced, or imprisoned, or

1. In 1844 the Methodist Episcopal church divided into two bodies; a Northern and a Southern.

banished, and it had become the solemn duty of the Mother Church to send shepherds to these deserted and scattered flocks. A shepherd would never leave his flock though all of Uncle Sam's guns were turned against him. (Applause.)

But we find ourselves met on the threshold by two embarrassments, of which I have heard since my arrival in New Orleans:

1. The question of property confronts us. We are denounced as church robbers; are charged of having robbed the people of the South of their church property.

My answer is: The right of church property has never been disturbed, as far as we are concerned.

The General Government has seen fit to seize these churches, but it has not conveyed their title to us. There has been no passing of deeds. We do not own an inch either of this or of any other church in the South. 1 The Secretary of War wrote to the General commanding this Department to place at the disposal of Bishop Ames the Methodist Churches for the use of the loyal ministers. If there has been any robbery the accusation lies against the General Government. But the General Government has committed no robbery. It was aware that these churches were occupied. . by congregations united by disloyal sympathies and by teachers disposed to inculcate treason. It knew that if they were placed under the care of the Methodist Church they would be occupied by no ministers but would be loyal to the Government, and that they would be likely to gather around them loyal hearers. . . He did not want to hear another word about the robbery of church property while he was in New Orleans.

2. Another embarrassment is the charge that the Methodist Church is a political church, and, therefore, should not be tolerated in the South. . .

Does it mean that our church is loyal to the General Government? If this be the meaning, I shall admit the charge. We hold and teach that loyalty is a religious duty, as truly obliga

1. In 1848 the Northern Methodists repudiated as null and void the plan of separation and after that some of their leaders claimed the property of the Southern churches, but the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the claims of the Southern church. See Crooks, Life of Bishop Simpson, ch. 15.

tory as prayer itself. . . Nor is it optional with the minister whether he inculcates loyal sentiments or not, for how shall a man be saved unless he be loyal?

Does it mean that we are opposed to the doctrine of State sovereignty, Secession and Rebellion? I accept the definition. From the Sabbath-school scholar to the minister, from the exhorter to the bishop, our whole membership reprobate these doctrines. . .

I hate cowardice and approbate the outspoken truthfulness of the ministers of the North; . . With no war has the church been more identified than with the present. With this war no Church has been more identified than the Methodist Church, both North and South.

The Methodist Church South has given no reluctant adhesion to the rebellion; has, perhaps, been foremost, inter pares prima, in the mad race of disunion.

The Methodist Church [North] has not been less unanimous and zealous in the defence of the Union. Her bishops, her ministers and her laity have nobly responded to the call of their country in this the hour of her peril. . . All our church papers and periodicals have given us uncompromising, zealous, persistent support in the Government, and have thrown the whole weight of their influence, intelligent as it was potent, on the side of the Union. . .

Much had been said about equality. But he believed that all men were equal in religious privileges, and ought to be equal in law; and he admonished his audience that if the Caucasian should reject the Gospel and refuse to fill the churches, (casting his eyes toward the galleries, which were filled with faces of a darker hue,) we turn to the sons of Africa. (Applause.)

"Reconstruction of Church and State"

Caldwell, Reconstruction of Church and State in Georgia, (1885), (Pamphlet). Caldwell was a Southern Methodist minister until 1865. [1865-1870] THE re-establishment of our Church in Georgia was contemporaneous with the reconstruction of the civil government of that State, a period extending from 1865 to 1871. There could

have been no permanent re-establishment of the Church, after a separation of more than a score of years caused by the great schism of 1844, without a permanent re-establishment of the State government under the Reconstruction Acts of Congress, by means of which the rupture occasioned by Secession was healed. The two events constituted, therefore, a reconstruction, . . of Church and State. They were combined and close connected movements, the success of which alone, under God, could insure the peace and prosperity which the people of Georgia now enjoy.

The war of the rebellion,

had come to an end in 1865. On the 4th of June in that year, soon after the publication of the President's proclamation of amnesty, I had a strange but solemn exercise of mind. . . I received new light and life from above, and during that night of agony and penitence formed a resolution which has continued unchangeable for nearly thirty years that was, to speak plainly to the consciences of the people on a long forbidden topic - the evils of slavery. I accordingly, with great care and prayer to God for His assistance, prepared two sermons on Slavery and Southern Methodism, which I preached from my pulpit in Newman on the two following Sabbaths, June 11th and 18th. .

The sermons were published by the [Northern Methodist] Book Concern in New York, and scattered extensively among the people. You remember well what an uproar they caused. A torrent of abuse, detraction and even slander, descended upon

me.

In all my speeches I took the ground boldly, and with the earnestness of new-born conviction, that God had opened the gates of the South to the northern preacher and teacher to enter, in order to educate, elevate and save millions of ignorant and down-trodden human beings. The people seemed astonished to hear an ex-rebel thus speak, and regarded me as one just escaped from a fiery furnace - not dreaming that I could have spoken so and survived within the domain of the slave

power.

At the same time I wrote Bishop Janes requesting him

to come and organize us. He sent my letter to Bishop Clark, who had charge of the Southern work. In due time the latter wrote me, appointing a day when he would visit us in Atlanta. Seven brethren met him there at the time appointed, and he organized the "Georgia and Alabama Mission District," connected it with the Kentucky Annual Conference, and appointed as its superintendent, Rev. J. F. Chalfant, of Cincinnati.

The seven preachers who were thus organized were all Southern men, and all, but one, members of the M. E. Church, South. . .

Everywhere, in the newspapers and by individuals, they were opposed, and sometimes by combinations of restless men who were vexed, if not infuriated, at the movement. Their hostility was greater than it would have been but for a mistake which was made at the outset.

In my intercourse with Northern ministers and laymen I frequently heard of a proposition, made by a distinguished clergyman, 1 to the effect that when the M. E. Church entered the South one of the leading objects should be to "disintegrate and absorb" the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Alluding to it while I was addressing the New York Preacher's Meeting, several brethren — among them I think was Dr. (now Bishop) Foster questioned me closely concerning the probable effect of that policy. I answered that the M. E. Church, South, could not be disintegrated; that it would soon recover its former position and be as compact and strong as ever. I took the ground that the Northern Church was Providentially called to the South chiefly for the benefit of millions of poor people [negroes] who were in need of schools and churches for their enlightenment and salvation. . . From all that I could learn I thought that a general idea prevailed at the North that the Southern Church was so shattered and torn by the confusion and desolation of the war, that its membership would probably in a large measure be absorbed by the M. E. Church. I labored to correct this mistake, and think that in many places I succeeded... Wishing, therefore, to make a fair and open

1. Dr. Curry, editor of the New York Christian Advocate.