508 History of Methodism 



sons impelling to the separation, are equally potent against the re- 

 union of the Church. No possible advantages to be gained by a 

 jurisdictional union in one General Conference can compensate for 

 the evils that must necessarily result to the Southern Conferences 

 from the action of a Northern majority clothed with the extraor- 

 dinary powers still claimed for that body on questions in which the 

 vital interests of the Southern Church are still directly involved. 

 The spirit, moreover, that dictated the policy regularly pursued by 

 the Northern Church against the Methodist Episcopal Church, 

 South, since the period of separation, is not such as irresistibly to 

 invite the Southern Conferences to return to the arms of an eccle 

 siastical body with which, twenty years ago, they so anxiously strug- 

 gled to make terms, and from which they at length obtained, under 

 Providence, an honorable and happy release. When the struggle: 

 came, in 1844, the Southern delegates, as they had often done before, 

 manifested a most earnest desire, and did all in their power, to 

 maintain jurisdictional union with the North, without sacrificing 

 the interests of the South ; when this was found impracticable, a 

 connectional union was proposed, and the rejection of this by the 

 North led to the projection and adoption of the General Conference 

 plan of separation. Every overture of compromise, every plan of 

 reconciliation and adjustment regarded as at all eligible or likely to 

 succeed, was offered by the South, and rejected by the North. All 

 subsequent attempts at compromise failed in like manner, and when 

 thus compelled to take their position upon the ground assigned them 

 by the General Conference of 1844, as a distinct ecclesiastical con- 

 nection, the Annual Conferences in the South, in view of still ad- 

 justing the difficulties of this controversy upon terms and princi- 

 ples that might be safe and satisfactory to both parties, passed, in 

 convention, this parting resolution : 



Resolved, That while we cannot abandon or compromise the prin- 

 ciples of action upon which we proceed to a separate organization 

 in the South, nevertheless, cherishing a sincere desire to maintain 

 Christian union and fraternal intercourse with the Church, North, 

 Ave shall always be ready kindly and respectfully to entertain, and 

 duly and carefully consider, any proposition or plan having for its 

 object the union of the two great bodies in the North and South, 

 whether such proposed union be jurisdictional or connectional. 



This valedictory overture of adjustment was met by an abrogation 

 of the plan of separation, and writing us down in their books as 

 schismatics. This parting invitation to open up fraternal intercourse 



