The Methodists lost the greater part of their Negro membership to two organizations which came down from the North in 1865--the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Zion.Large numbers also went over to the Northern Methodist Church.After losing nearly three hundred thousand members, the Southern Methodists came to the conclusion that the remaining seventy-eight thousand Negroes would be more comfortable in a separate organization and therefore began in 1866 the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, with bishops, conferences, and all the accompaniments of the parent Methodist Church, which continued to give friendly aid but exercised no control.For many years the Colored Methodist Church was under fire from the other Negro denominations, who called it the "rebel," the "Democratic," the "old slavery" church.
The Negro members of the Cumberland Presbyterians were similarly set off into a small African organization.The Southern Presbyterians and the Episcopalians established separate congregations and missions under white supervision but sanctioned no independent Negro organization.Consequently the Negroes soon deserted these churches and went with their own kind.
Resentment at the methods employed by the Northern religious carpetbaggers was strong among the Southern whites."Emissaries of Christ and the radical party"they were called by one Alabama leader.Governor Lindsay of the same state asserted that the Northern missionaries caused race hatred by teaching the Negroes to regard the whites as their natural enemies, who, if possible, would put them back in slavery.Others were charged with teaching that to be on the safe side, the blacks should get into a Northern church, and that "Christ died for Negroes and Yankees, not for rebels."The scalawags, also, developed a dislike of the Northern church work among the Negroes, and it was impossible to organize mixed congregations.Of the Reverend A.S.Lakin, a well-known agent of the Northern Methodist Church in Alabama, Nicholas Davis, a North Alabama Unionist and scalawag, said to the Ku Klux Committee: "The character of his [Lakin's] speech was this: to teach the Negroes that every man that was born and raised in the Southern country was their enemy, that there was no use trusting them, no matter what they said--if they said they were for the Union or anything else.'No use talking, they are your enemies.' And he made a pretty good speech, too; awful; a hell of a one;...inflammatory and game, too....It was enough to provoke the devil.
Did all the mischief he could...I tell you, that old fellow is a hell of an old rascal."For a time the white churches were annoyed by intrusions of strange blacks set on by those who were bent on separating the races.Frequently there were feuds in white or black congregations over the question of joining some Northern body.Disputes over church property also arose and continued for years.Lakin, referred to above, was charged with "stealing" Negro congregations and uniting them with the Cincinnati Conference without their knowledge.The Negroes were urged to demand title to all buildings formerly used for Negro worship, and the Constitutional Convention of Alabama in 1867 directed that such property must be turned over to them when claimed.
The agents of the Northern churches were not greatly different from other carpetbaggers and adventurers taking advantage of the general confusion to seize a little power.Many were unscrupulous; others, sincere and honest but narrow, bigoted, and intolerant, filled with distrust of the Southern whites and with corresponding confidence in the blacks and in themselves.The missionary and church publications were quite as severe on the Southern people as any radical Congressman.The publications of the Freedmen's Aid Society furnish illustrations of the feelings and views of those engaged in the Southern work.They in turn were made to feel the effects of a merciless social proscription.For this some of them cared not at all, while others or their families felt it keenly.One woman missionary wrote that she was delighted when a Southern white would speak to her.A preacher in Virginia declared that "the females, those especially whose pride has been humbled, are more intense in their bitterness and endeavor to keep up a social ostracism against Union and Northern people." The Ku Klux raids were directed against preachers and congregations whose conduct was disagreeable to the whites.
Lakin asserted that while he was conducting a great revival meeting among the hills of northern Alabama, Governor Smith and other prominent and sinful scalawag politicians were there "under conviction" and about to become converted.But in came the Klan and the congregation scattered.
Smith and the others were so angry and frightened that their good feelings were dissipated, and the devil reentered them, so that Lakin said he was never able to "get a hold on them" again.For the souls lost that night he held the Klan responsible.Lakin told several marvelous stories of his hairbreadth escapes from death by assassination which, if true, would be enough to ruin the reputation of northern Alabama men for marksmanship.
The reconstruction ended with conditions in the churches similar to those in politics: the races were separated and unfriendly; Northern and Southern church organizations were divided; and between them, especially in the border and mountain districts, there existed factional quarrels of a political origin, for every Northern Methodist was a Republican and every Southern Methodist was a Democrat.
