Columbia, and East Virginia. 2. The Missouri Conference, West Kentucky, Missouri, West Tennessee, and Kansas. 3. Louisiana Conference includes Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama, Texas, and Florida. 4. The South Carolina Conference includes North and South Carolina, and Georgia. This last conference has been organized since the sitting of our last General Conference, which accounts for its not appearing in our new Discipline.

THE OBJECT OF THEIR MISSION.

The object of our mission to this General Conference is, to respectfully and fraternally solicit your sacred body, if it may please you, to make provision, by law or resolutions, for the transfer of any and all those colored congregations, and their Church property, who may at any time in the future voluntarily desire to connect themselves with the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States of America, and who at present hold their connection with the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. And also, for the transfer to colored trustees of the deeds of those congregations which have already united with the African Methodist Episcopal Church, but have not yet obtained title deeds for their property. A number of congregations in various localities in the South have united with said African Methodist Episcopal Church, and in every instance have left their Church property behind them. The white trustees who hold their deeds, as it is very prudent in them, not to transfer the deeds to colored trustees till this General Conference shall authorize them to do so.

Two things are natural to the colored Christians belonging to the Church, South:

1. It is very natural that they, having been converted to the faith of the Gospel and brought into the Christian Church by the ministry and agency of the preachers and people South, nurtured up in the knowledge of Christ and his word, their property bought, and secured to them by the same agency referred to, should have, many of them, a strange desire to remain in connection with the Church, South.

2. It is also equally natural that they, having a knowledge of the existence of a colored denomination, with its colored bishops, preachers, conferences annual and general, schools, colleges, a book concern, and religious papers, edited and published by colored men, books made and printed, and possessing intelligence enough to conduct a great Church government fifty years and more, should desire to connect themselves with such a body of their own race.

3. But, negatively, it is not natural that the colored Christians South, in view of the circumstances referred to above, should desire to unite themselves with the Church, North, the main body of which is in the northern states, while they themselves were born and raised in the South, and especially so when THE NORTH CHURCH SEEKS THEM ONLY, TO INCREASE THEIR OWN NUMBERS AND TO ADD TO THEIR FINANCIAL INTERESTS. This seems unnatural.

We would say in conclusion, that as our own labors here, in the South, will be on the same territory, in the same towns and cities, we pray that we may not "fall out by the way," but cultivate at all times and in all places that fraternal feeling which will bring glory to God and good to his Church and his people. Then the Church in this section of the country shall blossom as the rose, and the hill-tops and the valleys shall resound with the praises of our common Lord and Master.

JOHN TURNER, CHARLES BURCH, M. M. CLARK, M. D., Delegates.

The final COMPLIMENTS to the Southern Church and THEIR FREE OPINION OF THE NORTHERN CHURCH:

WHEREAS We, the delegates in attendance at the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, deem it of vital importance to express to the said General Conference, in behalf of our bishops, ministers, and people, our sincere thanks and gratitude to the bishops and clergymen of the General Con. ference for the very warm and Christian reception we have met with in said conference; therefore,

1. Resolved, That we do most cordially reciprocate the feelings expressed to us by the bishops and brethren of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.

2. Resolved, That it shall ever be our most earnest endeavor to perpetuate that reciprocity of Christian and fraternal feeling here begun.

3. Resolved, That we believe it is the manifest design of the agents of the Methodist Episcopal Church, North, to absorb the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States of America, the colored Churches under the jurisdiction of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and ultimately to annihilate the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, as to its distinctive organization.

4. Resolved, That it is vitally important that we unite in an unbroken phalanx to oppose, by all Christian and prudent means, the aggressions now being made upon us both by the accredited agents of the Methodist Episcopal Church, North.

JOHN TURNER, CHARLES BURCH, M. M. CLARK, M. D., Delegates.

The "net result" of all the above may be thus stated: 1. With all our eloquent philanthropy toward the colored race, by the testimony of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, our only object is the "disintegration" of others and the increase of our own wealth and power by "numbers." Our advocacy of negro equality and promiscuous association is held to be a "trap" wherewith to catch Afric-America. On the other hand, by the same testimony, the Church, South, is a venerable body whom they approach with heartfelt rev

erence, and under whose protection they safely confide without need of a "Civil Rights Bill," unless it be to protect them them from the Church, North. Christian candor obliges us to say that this gives a very encouraging view, on the very best testimony, so far as it goes, of the non-necessity of any special guardianship of Southern negro rights. These negro brethren look south rather than north for protection. It is a peculiar and somewhat unexpected certificate in behalf of the humanity and trustworthiness of Southern white Methodism.

2. We are furnished with a very unique testimony, that just so far as the colored race advances in education, self-respect, and independence, it asks for a friendly distance between itself and the white race! Our negro brother then turns up what nose he has at the declamations about caste, and turns his back upon the declaimers, and his face toward his brother ebons. He claims that his negro brethren, when sufficiently numerous and powerful, should be allowed to develop themselves, and to act out of the presence, and independent of the control or co-operation, of the superior race; and he asks what, in our opinion, may be often rightest and best. He says it is "natural ;" and we think he is correct, if we hold "natural" to signify that æsthetic taste superinduced upon our primitive nature by the physiological variations of race. Beyond all reasonable question there is in each race, we will not say "antipathy" to the other, but a spontaneous preference for its own color, which is a rightful basis not for slavery or inequality, but for a social separateness which is not justly or truthfully called caste. Each of the two colors, equally and alike, feels this natural self-preference. Were both colors in this country absolutely equal in numbers and in every point of power and respectability, and perfectly friendly to and on a level with each other, yet each would by spontaneous affinity gravitate to its own, and a perfectly Christian and amicable distinctness, without caste, would exist. The philosophy, or the religion, which overlooks this truth will make a fool of itself.

3. Southern white Methodism is, or seems to think that it is, going to the work of negro education with all its might. We think the expression too general, too earnest, and too repeated, to be insincere or merely competitive. And in spite of the antieducational laws that formed one of the damning disgraces of

the accursed old slavery system, the record of the Southern Church, as Mr. Caldwell shows, is in keeping with its present progressive position. Southern Methodism we have before said, and we may safely repeat, is and has been the best southern friend of the negro. Southern black Methodism, while repudiating promiscuous association of the two races, claims the Church, South, to be a better friend than Northern Methodism. Now we think it would be becoming in us, instead of ignoring or destroying such a Church, rather to aid its poverty in its labors for negro education. If upon proper examination these labors are based upon right principles and prosecuted with probably best success, northern wealth ought, even while pressing them with a quickening competition, rather to endow their treasury and energize their work, than to disintegrate, disparage, or grudgingly acknowledge them.

4. Some complications there appear to be touching Church property, in regard to which we need further facts before we make any remarks. The final words, and all the words, between the parties appear to be amicable.

ART. VII. THE NEW YORK EAST CONFERENCE AND THE SOUTHERN GENERAL CONFERENCE.

THE session of the New York East Conference at Brooklyn, in 1866, will be marked in our history as furnishing the first interchange of courtesies between our two ecclesiastical bodies of Northern and Southern Methodism since the memorable separation in 1844. Obliged to be absent the first day, the writer of this article, in view of the distance of our next General Conference, from which alone any proper proposition of churchly recognition should come, bethought himself whether at least some Christian courtesy extended to the Southern General Conference now in session might not be a happy initiation. As the matter required instant action, and he had no one of his conference with whom to advise, he drew up in his own study, without consulting or having consulted on the subject with any human being, the telegram which, without alteration of a single syllable, was finally sent. On the second day

of the Conference he presented the document, (seconded by Secretary Woodruff,) and when he presented it no one in the conference but the seconder and the copyist of the resolution knew for what purpose he rose, any more than the members of the Southern General Conference. In particular let us note that no bishop was ever consulted by us; nor did we know at the moment whether our views in the Quarterly or the sentiment of the telegram were approved or condemned by any or all the bishops on the bench. And these details will, we trust, disperse a thousand cobwebs from the brains of our Southern friends about "traps," "policy," "duplicity," etc. If there was any trap or policy about it, it is entirely of our own personal invention, and we, and we alone, know all or anything about it. And if our assertion, made thus publicly at the risk of exposure if untrue, is worth anything, the only trap was a purpose to initiate mutual peace, by mutual prayer, between two separate Churches and separate sections of country. Our own humble consciousness before God is, that seldom or never was a nobler or holier object prosecuted with purer or simpler aims. Although confident of the support of a number of our old antislavery brethren, (yclept "radicals" by our Southern friends,) we had not the slightest conception in presenting the resolutions whether we should be voted up or voted down. For four Quarterlies past we had pressed our own views, little cheered by the countenance of our editorial brethren, and opposed by the rare skill and ability of the editor of our New York Advocate. On the other hand we had so lately as our January Quarterly, published numerous extracts from southern bishops and editors, affirming the sentiment of "Peace and Loyalty;" the southern editors had pronounced our representation "a fair thing" and reaffirmed the sentiment; and although our brother of the Advocate repudiated the genuineness of that "loyalty," yet we did not see how it could be questioned without endangering the foundations of all social confidence. We had not the slightest misgiving, therefore, but that the proffer of concert-prayer for "peace" in the following overture would be heartily accepted:

Whereas, The General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, is now in session in the city of New Orleans; therefore,