In South Carolina, 479 



so we desire it may ever continue to be, both in Europe and America. 

 With this sentiment we conclude the subject, adding the corrobo- 

 rating language of your noble Missionary Society, by the revered 

 and lamented Watson, in their intructions to missionaries, published 

 in the report of 1833 as follows : As in the Colonies in which you 

 are called to labor a great proportion of the inhabitants are in a 

 state of slavery, the committee most strongly call to your remem- 

 brance what was so fully stated to you when you were accepted as a 

 missionary to the West Indies, that your only business is to promote 

 the moral and religious improvement of the slaves to whom you 

 may have access, without in the least degree, in public or private, 

 interfering with their civil condition. 



Iii the General Conference of 1844 the following 

 preamble and resolution were offered: 



Whereas the Discipline of our Church forbids the doing any thing 

 calculated to destroy our itinerant general superin tendency, and 

 whereas Bishop Andrew has become connected with slavery by 

 marriage and otherwise, and this act having drawn after it circum- 

 stances which in the estimation of the General Conference will 

 greatly embarrass the exercise of his office as an itinerant general 

 superintendent, if not in some places entirely prevent it; therefore, 



Resolved, That it is the sense of this General Conference that lie 

 desist from the exercise of this office so long as this impediment 

 remains. 



On this resolution Dr. Capers made the following 

 speech: 



Mr. President: At no previous General Conference have the con- 

 flicting opinions of the North and South in relation to slavery and 

 abolition been so fully and strongly set before us and the community 

 as at present. I wish it may prove for the better ; though I can 

 hardly hope it will not for the worse. In what I have now on my 

 mind to utter, I wish to call attention first to the unity of the 

 Church, as it seems to me it ought to affect this question, inde- 

 pendently of all sectional views in any quarter. 



Perhaps it has always been felt since the Church has been ex- 

 tended over the whole country, North and South, that brethren who 

 have occupied positions far North and South have been opposed to 

 each other in their views of this subject. Possibly they have been 



