L. M. Hagood

“ The Freedmen’s Aid Society, organized for the purpose of aiding in the education and elevation of the freedmen, is the unanswerable proof of our friendship to them in the hour of their need. Twenty-four institutions of learning—academies, seminaries, colleges, and theological schools—established and maintained among them at a cost of more than $1,250,000 for the benefit of the colored people, constitute a magnificent demonstration of our devotion, which requires no elaboration and admits of no denial. ”

“ Picture to yourselves for the moment those to whom our Church found an open door—the impoverished and almost churchless white people, and the colored people, who were not only without homes, but without the relations of the home; not only without earthly possessions, but impoverished in the best elements of their nature. It may be no marvel that societies were soon gathered and conferences soon organized among the whites, for with them it was chiefly a work of reorganization and edification. ”

“ Are we justified in thus figuratively taking to our arms a Church possessed of a spirit ‘worthy to be accursed of God’—a Church whose course is so radically incompetent and wrong that able missions from our own Church are demanded to counteract it? If somebody can, will he please point out the consistency in all this? If we are in the South to convert people to our view of the caste question, we are there for a laudable purpose perhaps, but one doomed to failure. ”

“ Now, why is it that in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and, for that matter, everywhere in this country except in the Southern States, the colored man has sought a colored organization? Why the segregation of the race in the North, where slavery never came? ”

“ Who does not now know that a bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church is considered the most influential minister in the State, county, city, village, and in the general Church? No other office is paramount. The fact that there is to be allowed no discrimination on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude within the Church, it is claimed, guarantees to them not only the right to ask, but to expect help in securing the same, since it will never be possible for it to be done by the race alone within the Church. ”

“ We declare that we are as much as ever convinced of the great evil of slavery. We believe that the buying, selling, or holding of 103human beings as chattels, is contrary to the laws of God and nature, inconsistent with the Golden Rule, and with that rule in our Discipline which requires all who desire to remain among us to ‘do no harm, and to avoid evil of every kind.’ We therefore affectionately admonish all our preachers and people to keep themselves pure from this great evil, and to seek its extirpation by all lawful and Christian means. ”

“ More than two centuries slavery continued, while the enlightened conscience of the nation protested against the system, against the traffic in human beings, against its demoralizing influences on the white, and its degrading influence on the black man. ”

“ For the present, however, we are anxious that the regular collections for the society shall be taken, so that its growing and glorious work may not be crippled. If the collections cease, the colored work will be destroyed. Our white people in the South can do something on educational lines for themselves, but our colored people can do little, if anything; and when the people of the North fail to send in the money, the schools for the colored people must inevitably close. Let no angry criticism of the society result in robbery of Christ’s poor. ”

“ If men, then they are our neighbors; if our neighbors, then we must love them as ourselves. If we love them as men—as ourselves—then slavery, as it exists here, is wrong. The enlightened conscience of the Methodists said, “Slavery is wrong;” and this conviction was soon embodied in the question, which found its way into the Church law, and held its place there till it received its formal, practical answer in emancipation, “What shall be done for the extirpation of the evil of slavery?” ”

“ We have learned with profound regret and unutterable emotion of the resolution adopted May 18th, which has inflicted, we fear, an irreparable injury upon eighty thousand souls for whom Christ died; souls which, by this act of your venerable body, have been stripped of the dignity of Christians, degraded in the scale of humanity, and treated as criminals, for no other reason than the color of their skin. ”

“ Politicians, Church or other, should not be allowed to decide. If we are in the South, as are other evangelical Churches, for the purpose of saving the souls of men, we deserve Godspeed. But if the only reason we can give for being there is to eradicate caste, social prejudice between races, the foundation for our errand will deservedly be alike unsubstantial with its completed results. ”

“ If we understand the heart of the Church—and we think we do, having been born naturally and supernaturally in her lap—she does not ask as much. In 1844 the Church, by dropping her interests in and work for the colored man, could very easily and knowingly have preserved her union, power, and influence, kept back the rebellion for a time, received the encomiums instead of the vituperation and obloquy of every slaveholding nation in the world, and brought to her support the strong slave oligarchy of the South. ”

“ In a word, it would magnify caste, race prejudice, and eventually lead to a war of races. The segregation of one million or more colored men in this country into one single organization would endanger the safety of our Republic in more ways than one. In the second place, a separation now from the Methodist Episcopal 316Church for anything less than a crime against the race would not only be suicidal, but foolhardy, paying kindness with contumely, and subjecting not only the members concerned, but the race to the scorn and laughter of the world. ”

“ May, the name of the beautiful month when General Conference meets, would make a good substitute for ‘shall’ and ‘sha’n’t’ in all far-reaching legislation for distant and future contingencies.
“Those who show no faith in posterity, or people differently surrounded from themselves, provide for embarrassment and often for revolution. ”

“ We do not believe it is right to yield the time-honored opinions and views of the Church as to the equality, brotherhood, and perfect freedom of man, nor that a line of action should be pursued by the society or Church to secure the favor or countenance of those whose life-teachings are inimical to the position of our Church, and who really have no objection whatever to the Negro, so that his relation to them is a servile one. ”

“ The gainsaying, slaveholding world stood aghast as it read and re-read the action taken by that General Conference on the 30question of human slavery. God pulled back, as it were, the curtains of the upper world, and blandly smiled approval. A general baptism of the Holy Ghost ratified the action in that such a revival of religion followed that again the world cried, as Methodist preachers began to preach Jesus and him crucified: “They that have turned the world upside down are come hither also.” ”

“ It can not be unknown to you that the question of slavery in these United States, by the constitutional compact which binds us together as a nation, is left to be regulated by the several State Legislatures themselves, and thereby is put beyond the control of the General Government, as well as that of all ecclesiastical bodies; it being manifest that in the slaveholding States themselves the entire responsibility of its existence or non-existence rests with those State Legislatures. ”

“ It would be a poor tribute to our work during the last quarter of a century if the introduction of a few colored students into our schools for whites should break the institutions down. Have we really made so little progress that six colored students at Chattanooga would drive out two hundred white students? We can hardly believe it. When three chase a hundred, the three must be very strong or the hundred very weak. We believe our white work will go on, and that this action of the board will strengthen the society and increase its success. ”

“ The spirit manifested by our Southern brethren in the discussion of this question within our Church smacks of officiousness. They are in no way to be affected whether it is or is not done. While they have a perfect right to take part in any and all discussions worthy of public attention, anything like an attempt to sow the seeds of dissension among the members of any other denomination is, in the eyes of an ignorant black man, reprehensible, not to say unchristian. It gives room for complaint from the world that Southern “Methodists are no better than other folks.” ”

“ It would be an incentive to Christians everywhere in general, and the three hundred thousand colored members, old and young, within the Church in particular, to live better lives and do better work. The older men who now hold positions of prominence in the Church would have more time in which to do their work, and would probably do it better, at any rate more hopefully. Instead of having to fight caste prejudice, and repel the insults heaped upon them hitherto by that hateful spirit, they would quietly prosecute their work. ”

“ However ignorant we may now be as to whether it will ever be done or not, we can easily imagine the result of such an election. It would no doubt be as the bursting forth of some pent-up fountain which sends forth streams in opposite directions. Doubtless if there remain any within the Church who fear man more than God, they would likely flow outward toward more congenial climes, where the nursing of wrath brings imaginary peace. It is impossible to turn a mighty stream all at once out of its channel without some commotion. ”

“ With this illustration before us of the general principle that a people may and must be instrumental in their own evangelization, let us study some of the results of our itinerant system among the freedmen—of our itinerancy and its auxiliary agencies. All understand our itinerancy to be the general superintendency and the pastorate; by auxiliary agencies I mean our sub-pastorate, in which the class-leaders stand, our Church literature, and our Sunday-schools. ”

“ His desire to segregate is only a self-defensive measure. The colored man in this country is desperately in earnest in his effort to remove every vestige of the prejudice against him arising from his previous condition of servitude. In the North he found that the white people knew him only as a slave or a freedman. If the former, then he was considered a mendicant—ignorant, superstitious, and immoral, as a natural result of slavery. ”

“ Colored men who aspired to leadership among the colored people, and were willing to stoop so low, when they knew better, saw that the support of colored men, politically, religiously, or morally, would at once bring them prestige, influence, and power with white men. To segregate the colored people would, as Rev. Richard Allen intimated, create “a necessity” for his services. If they remained associated with white people, there would soon come a time when it would be impossible for him to be of service to his people so as to benefit himself pecuniarily. ”

“ It is remarkable how much color and climate have to do with the question of caste. Social relations, morally clean, are not a fit subject for the missionary works of a great Church. The legitimacy of our errand in the South will depend much upon the question whether we find there territory unoccupied, or whether we are there as rivals merely, of a Church with whom we have long been at political swords’ points. ”

“ How did they curb their feelings enough to express their thoughts in such mild language? Why should not those burden-bound colored men and women protest against, while compelled to submit to, a decision that to them was humiliating in the extreme? ”

“ Poor, ignorant, and deluded men would naturally and rightfully conclude that in the hearts and bosoms of those men their dearest interests were planted, and hence the disposition to put a quietus upon them was equivalent to the non-recognition of the rights of the colored man within and without the Church to the bright anticipation of ever being allowed the enjoyment of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” ”

“ There is not a school under our Church-care in all the South but is liable to both horns of this dilemma of double decrees. No school in the North is so hampered.
“Let the next General Conference take out the Calvinism of the last action had, and adhere to that broad doctrine of human rights which allows not even the tyranny of any majority or minority, though it be of one headstrong person. Let us have freedom of election in both doctrine and polity, not to mention of delegates. ”

“ The school is not a necessity in the same sense that the Church is; and if people prefer to remain ignorant rather than obtain education under certain circumstances, let them take the responsibility. This means, we take it, that we shall not undertake to do anything towards the education of the whites in the South. And yet it is by education alone that this prejudice which we are asked to combat is to be removed. ”

“ A number of the above-mentioned classes soon concluded that they must be in a Church where there was a favorable chance for every member of an annual conference to be put forth before the world as a noted preacher, appointed presiding elder or a General Conference officer, or elected to the bishopric. It is difficult for any one, who understands in some sort the feelings of white men when they are ambitious for notoriety or office and fail, to say or appreciate the feelings of a disappointed colored man who has known nothing save ostracism. ”