The activities of the Northern Methodists stimulated the Southern Methodists to a quick reorganization.The surviving bishops met in August 1865, and bound together their shaken church.In reply to suggestions of reunion they asserted that the Northern Methodists had become "incurably radical," were too much involved in politics, and, further, that they had, without right, seized and were still holding Southern church buildings.They objected also to the way the Northern church referred to the Southerners as "schismatics" and to the Southern church as one built on slavery and therefore, now that slavery was gone, to be reconstructed.The bishops warned their people against the missionary efforts of the Northern brethren and against the attempts to "disintegrate and absorb" Methodism in the South.Within five years after the war, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was greatly increased in numbers by the accession of conferences in Maryland, Kentucky, Virginia, Missouri, and even from above the Ohio, while the Northern Methodist Church was able to organize only a few white congregations outside of the stronger Unionist districts, but continued to labor in the South as a missionary field.**The church situation after the war was well described in 1866 by an editorial writer in the "Nation" who pointed out that the Northern churches thought the South determined to make the religious division permanent, though "slavery no longer furnishes a pretext for separation." "Too much pains were taken to bring about an ecclesiastical reunion, and irritating offers of reconciliation are made by the Northern churches, all based on the assumption that the South has not only sinned, but sinned knowingly, in slavery and in war.We expect them to be penitent and to gladly accept our offers of forgiveness.But the Southern people look upon a 'loyal' missionary as a political emissary, and 'loyal' men do not at present possess the necessary qualifications for evangelizing the Southerners or softening their hearts, and are sure not to succeed in doing so.We look upon their defeat as retribution and expect them to do the same.It will do no good if we tell the Southerner that 'we will forgive them if they will confess that they are criminals, offer to pray with them, preach with them, and labor with them over their hideous sins.'"But if the large Southern churches held their white membership and even gained in numbers and territory, they fought a losing fight to retain their black members.It was assumed by Northern ecclesiastics that whether a reunion of whites took place or not, the Negroes would receive spiritual guidance from the North.This was necessary, they said, because the Southern whites were ignorant and impoverished and because "the state of mind among even the best classes of Southern whites rendered them incapable...of doing justice to the people whom they had so long persistently wronged." Further, it was also necessary for political reasons to remove the Negroes from Southern religious control.
For obvious reasons, however, the Southern churches wanted to hold their Negro members.They declared themselves in favor of Negro education and of better organized religious work among the blacks, and made every sort of accommodation to hold them.The Baptists organized separate congregations, with white or black pastors as desired, and associations of black churches.In 1866 the Methodist General Conference authorized separate congregations, quarterly conferences, annual conferences, even a separate jurisdiction, with Negro preachers, presiding elders, and bishops--but all to no avail.Every, Northern political, religious, or military agency in the South worked for separation, and Negro preachers were not long in seeing the greater advantages which they would have in independent churches.
Much of the separate organization was accomplished in mutual good will, particularly in the Baptist ranks.The Reverend I.T.Tichenor, a prominent Baptist minister, has described the process as it took place in the First Baptist Church in Montgomery.The church had nine hundred members, of whom six hundred were black.The Negroes received a regular organization of their own under the supervision of the white pastors.When a separation of the two bodies was later deemed desirable, it was inaugurated by a conference of the Negroes which passed a resolution couched in the kindliest terms, suggesting the wisdom of the division, and asking the concurrence of the white church in such action.The white church cordially approved the movement, and the two bodies united in erecting a suitable house of worship for the Negroes.Until the new church was completed, both congregations continued to occupy jointly the old house of worship.The new house was paid for in large measure by the white members of the church and by individuals in the community.As soon as it was completed, the colored church moved into it with its pastor, board of deacons, committees of all sorts, and the whole machinery of church life went into action without a jar.Similar accommodations occurred in all the states of the South.
