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2009-02-01 22:16
A tract arguing against post-emancipation segregation in the Methodist Church, by Rev. Thomas Pearne, a leading church figure (Dayton, Ohio: n.p., 1876). Digitized by the Antislavery Literature Project.
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<div class="Section1">
<h1>COLOR-CASTE</h1>
<h1>THOMAS H. PEARNE</h1>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;text-autospace:none'><b><span
style='font-size:10.0pt'>This is an annotated text of <i>Color-Caste</i>,
published by Thomas Pearne in Dayton, Ohio, in 1876. Original spelling,
punctuation and page citations have been retained; minor typographic errors
have been corrected.</span></b></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;text-autospace:none'><b><span
style='font-size:10.0pt'>This electronic edition has been prepared for the
Antislavery Literature Project, Arizona State University, a public education
project working in cooperation with the EServer, Iowa State University. Digitization has been supported by a grant from the Institute for Humanities
Research, Arizona State University.</span></b></p>
<div style='border:none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0pt 0pt 1.0pt 0pt'>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;text-autospace:none;
border:none;padding:0pt'><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>Editorial annotation
by Joe Lockard. Digitization by April Brannon. All rights reserved by the
Antislavery Literature Project. Permission for non-commercial educational use
is granted.</span></b></p>
</div>
<p><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:black'>Introduction</span></b></p>
<p> <span style='font-size:10.0pt'>Rev. Thomas
Pearne (1820-1901) was a leading figure of nineteenth-century American
Methodism. Born in western New York to English immigrant parents, he studied
at Cazenovia Seminary and joined the ministry in 1837. Until 1851 he served in
central New York and northern Pennsylvania. From 1851-1865 he organized the Methodist Church in Oregon, then returned east to Tennessee to participate in Reconstruction
activities. He was appointed US consul to Jamaica in 1870, where he spent four
years. Pearne concluded his career in the Cincinnati Conference, where he
functioned as a Methodist minister. For further, see Pearne, <i>Sixty-One
Years of Itinerant Christian Life in Church and State</i> (Cincinnati: Curtis
and Jennings, 1899). </span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText"> <span style='letter-spacing:0pt'>The present
text emerges from the post-emancipation debates within US Christian churches
concerning treatment of blacks. In this tract, Pearne argues against
segregation and denounces “color-caste” as a social and theological evil.
Early in his career, Pearne had encountered the divisiveness of the slavery
question at the 1844 General Conference where the Methodist Church split between slave-holders and opponents of slavery. He argues in this tract that the Methodist Church should not repeat its history of divisiveness by segregating itself along
the color line. Pearne calls for a fully integrated church, both in the laity
and ministry. Despite this anti-segregationist position, Pearne employs
repeated racial stereotypes in his writing and was, at the time of the tract’s
publication, the secretary of the American Colonization Society, dedicated to
sending emancipated slaves to Africa. Pearne’s theology called for formal
integration and spiritual equality between black and white church members, but
his cultural and political orientation favored separation and removal of black
ex-slaves from the United States. </span></p>
<p><span style='font-size:10.0pt'> — Joe Lockard</span></p>
<br clear="all"
style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='text-autospace:none'>[unnumbered page 1]</p>
<p style='text-autospace:
none'><b>COLOR-CASTE.</b></p>
<p style='text-autospace:
none'><b>_________________</b></p>
<p style='text-autospace:
none'><b>BY THOMAS H. PEARNE, D.D.</b></p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'><b> </b><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>PASTOR OF GRACE M. E. CHURCH, DAYTON, OHIO.</span></p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt'> ___________________</span></p>
<p style='text-autospace:
none'>COLOR-CASTE is that prejudice against black persons and mulattoes, which
leads one to treat them with disrespect, and which discriminates against them
in favor of the whites.</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>This
prejudice is born of slavery, and, like the tail end of the snake, which, it is
said, will not die until sunset, no matter what time of the day the body was
killed, this color-caste will not die; its sunset has not yet come. Just now,
this tail end of slavery is twisting itself into all manner of contortions, and
is raising quite a stir in the Methodist Episcopal Church, by insisting on the
separation of whites and blacks in those Southern conferences, where some of
the members are colored. Correspondents in the Church papers are earnest in
enforcing their views on this important question. The General Conference is
invoked to come to the rescue.</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>The question,
it is declared, has long since been practically settled by custom; but, like
Banquo's ghost, it will not remain down. Unless the General Conference shall
do something, harm will come to the Church, our position as a Church will be
misapprehended in the South, and the peace of that whole section will be
disturbed.</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>Writers in
the <i>Western Christian Advocate </i>urge separate conferences for the white
and black preachers.</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>The <i>Christian
Advocate </i>(New York) of April 19, 1876, has the report of three districts in
Tennessee, in convention, who ask the General Conference to establish, or to
authorize the establishing of, separate conferences on the color line.</p>
<p style='
text-autospace:none'><i>The Methodist
Advocate </i>(Atlanta) has presented the argu-</p>
<br clear="all"
style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='text-autospace:none'>[page 2] </p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>ments, <i>pro</i> and <i>con</i>,
on this question, but we fear it has given the weight of its influence to the
separationists. </p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'> What is the
grievance? A trivial one to endure, but a momentous one to change. The payment
of stamps a hundred years ago was a comparatively small affair; our
Revolutionary fathers could have paid them without much inconvenience. They
refused. That refusal gave birth to a free nation.</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>The grievance
is simply this. A few colored ministers meet, in conference only, with the
white ministers. They do not belong to the same classes; they do not sit in the
same congregations nor Churches; they do not go to the same day-schools nor
Sunday schools. O no! "Society," it is affirmed, has adjusted that.
How? By kukluxing the white teachers of freedmen schools, and by killing their
colored teachers, as has been repeatedly done, until, from fear of the deadly
bullet and the assassin's knife, the freedmen have learned to keep themselves
aloof from white Churches and schools.</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>This
separation, it is urged, has been by mutual consent, and for the benefit of
both parties. The consent has been just about as mutual as that between the
highwayman and his victim. "Society" has presented the revolver and
the bludgeon, and has said to the freedman, "Stand and deliver!" He
has submitted, by surrendering some of the dearest rights of manhood and some
of the sweetest amenities born of Christian civilization. He has consented to
be a pariah rather than to be extirpated from the land which gave him birth,
and which he has enriched by centuries of unrequited toil.</p>
<p style='text-autospace:
none'>The freedmen have never voluntarily consented to forego respect and fair
treatment, and to be subjected to proscription and degradation; they are not a
consenting party to the separation. But if they were, it does not follow that
the separation, as now existing, is wise or necessary. The wishes of the
whites, resulting from whim, caprice, or prejudice against color, do not
establish nor settle great moral principles. Nor can the consent of the
proscribed class settle them. The position of the colored people on this
question of color separation, as it has been and as it is sought to be, is much
what it was as to slavery during the earlier years of the war.</p>
<br clear="all"
style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='text-autospace:none'>[page 3]</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>"We 's de bone,
massa," said a black man to Chaplain Hunter the first year of the war.
"What do you mean by that?" said the Chaplain. "Why, massa, you
see two dogs fighting over a bone, de bone don't fight. We's de bone."
On this question they may yet fight as they did on that; but if they do, it
will not be on the side of their proscribers.</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'> And the separation,
now sought, is not by any means, by mutual consent. Nor would it be for the
benefit of the parties, nor of either of them. To allege that it would, is to
assume the very point in dispute. It must be more than asserted—it must be
proved. It can not be proved by any reasoning based on God's Word, or on sound
policy, that to treat the freedmen as an inferior, abject, outcast race, will
benefit them. Nor can it benefit the whites to be guilty of thus treating the
blacks. It is ennobling to exercise benevolence; but to mistreat the colored
people, because they are colored, or because they were slaves, is to display
and to cultivate the meanest and the most intense selfishness. Brutish
impulses are degrading; but to mistreat our fellow-man, because his skin is
dark, is brutish, and therefore this conduct is injurious to those practicing
it. Before any this is conceded to this clamor for separate conferences, let
it be shown by the clearest proofs, that the separation would be for the
benefit of those of both colors.</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'> Who demand
separation? So far, as appears, the whites, and not the freedmen. The letters
in the <i>Western Christian Advocate</i>, asking for separate conferences, are
all written by white persons. The convention referred to was made up of white
delegates. Some letters in the Western and in the <i>Methodist Advocate</i>,
against separation, are written by colored preachers. No colored members,
ministers, quarterly conferences, annual conferences, as such, ask this separation.
The Holston Conference, it is said, almost unanimously adopted a memorial,
asking separation. I venture the assertion that John C. Tate and Charles Mays
did not vote for it. If either of them did, or if others have, there or
elsewhere, it has been through persuasion, intimidation, or rebuff.</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'> It is claimed that,
in the convention held at Ellijay and Alabama on this subject, the colored
people were present, and agreed in asking for separate conferences. But the
blacks</p>
<br clear="all"
style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='text-autospace:none'>[page 4]</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>have never
so far as I know, originated such action. It has always originated with the
whites. When the colored people have acquiesced, or seemed to, they have been
persuaded or intimidated into such action. In line with this view, I quote
Rev. D.S. Huskins, of Georgia:</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'> <span
style='font-size:10.0pt'>Quoting from the tenth resolution of the Ellijay
Convention these words:</span> <span style='font-size:10.0pt'>"There
being no such desire on our part, nor do we understand it to mean that our
colored people are to be abandoned, forsaken, or hated," Brother Huskins
adds: "Now brethren, it affords me great pleasure to say that we are not
your colored people, as by the terms of the Fifteenth Amendment to the
Constitution of the United States we are declared free. Again, I will ask the
brethren of that convention, many of whom were ministers and members of the
annual conference, if no man should be elected bishop, because he is colored,
why should many men have a conference organization, because they are colored?
If color should not enter into the qualification for one, why should it in the other?”</span></p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'> Rev.
D.H. Hays, of the Tennessee Conference, says:</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt'>"The plea for separation implies a great deal
more than those who urge it care to bring to the surface. It means ostracism
and forced degradation of all to whom God has given a dark complexion. It
means the weakening and <i>the ultimate overthrow</i> [italics mine] of the
power and influence of Northern white men in the South. It means, practically,
a Methodist Episcopal Church in the South, for and under the control of white
men of the South. More than that. It means the fixing of the claim for
superiority in the color of the skin. Is the great loyal heart of the
Methodist Episcopal Church ready to favor it? A million and a half of voices
respond, No!"</span></p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>And now
comes good John C. Tate, or "Bishop Tate," as he is sometimes called,
of Holston Conference. Hear him:</p>
<p class="MsoBodyText"><span style='letter-spacing:0pt'>"We joined the
Methodist Episcopal Church from principle, and not from mere policy. Our
colored brethren of the Zion Church tell us that we are 'slaves of the white
people, and that we are able to run our own machine, that the white people will
impose on us, and that we can never be a people until we learn to do our own
business.' All very true, said I, <i>but we want to associate with those who
have what we have not</i> [italics mine], and what we so much need, and who are
willing to contribute to our necessities until we can stand alone. The
Methodist Episcopal Church was the first to stretch out her hand to take us on
board. Our white brethren in the South, whom we call Southern Methodists, withdrew
from us, or rather kicked us out of the back door, plainly declaring that they
would have nothing to do with negroes, that they might go to heaven or anywhere
else."</span></p>
<p style='text-autospace:
none'>If all the whites and negroes in the South should ask separate
conferences, that fact would not make the separation</p>
<br clear="all"
style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='text-autospace:none'>[page 5]</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>right, if it were not otherwise
right. Opinions and prejudices are not the rule of right. They are scarcely
safe guides as to what is expedient. It is not always true that "the
voice of the people is the voice of God." Majority opinion is not
necessarily right; but, if it were, we do not get it by submitting the question
to the wishes of the Southern white members of our Church, say fifty thousand,
as against the one hundred and seventy-six thousand of our colored members.
Both these together would be less than one seventh of our entire membership, as
a Church. If this question of color caste were submitted to the suffrages of
all races, the white race would go under, for they are an inconsiderable
minority. There are more dark races of men than light ones. The dark races
are much the more numerous.</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>In every
refined, intelligent negro, there is a shrinking from asking the recognition
from the whites, to which his manhood is entitled. But there certainly is not—there
can not be—a voluntary asking to have equality denied, and inferiority
conceded. I lived five years in the South, and I speak from close and careful
observation. A few years ago a white brother proposed a separate enumeration
of the whites and colored in the Holston Conference Minutes. Some of the whites
favored it, but none of the blacks did. The colored people are<i> </i>sensitive
about such allusions to their color as imply inferiority. During the last
battle of Hatcher's Run, when Grant extended his left line, Mr. D. L. Moody and<i> </i>myself were visiting the negroes on a plantation, which that advance had
included in our lines. Mr. Moody asked one of the negroes this question:
"Auntie, do you think the Lord Jesus loves colored people as much as he
does the white?" After a significant pause, she replied: "Brother,
the Lord Jesus loves all his redeemed children." A colored person would
never have asked a white person, such a question as to the whites. The
disparaging comparisons, the suggestions of inferiority, the proposal of
painful and doubtful separations, always come from the whites.</p>
<p style='text-autospace:
none'>The reasons assigned for this proposed change, are, first, the welfare of
the colored people, who, it is claimed, would develop more rapidly and
healthily if thrown upon their own resources; and secondly, the more convenient
working of our</p>
<br clear="all"
style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='text-autospace:none'>[page 6]</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>white work in the South, as it
would free them from the reproach to which these mixed conferences subject
them. </p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>As to the
former of these reasons, it is not borne out by the facts. The purely colored
Methodist organizations are not equal in development with the colored numbers
of the Methodist Episcopal Church. John C. Tate inquires in vain for a single
colored school in the South supported by the Zion (colored) Church. In Jamaica
(West Indies), the color line was long since abjured, especially in Church
matters; and there harmony, thrift, civilization, and religion have advanced.
In Hayti, white association has been unknown. The blacks have exclusively
administered their own affairs. The result there has been division,
revolution, irreligion, cannibalism.</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'> It is reasonable,
not because of color, but in the nature of the case, that the less informed,
less cultured, would profit more by association with those more advanced than
they would if separated from them. No one in the North would favor the
separation of the less advanced white members of our annual conferences from
their more experienced white brethren, that the former might be more
self-dependent and developed. Why, then, propose it as to the colored people
in the South?</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>On several
accounts separate conferences of whites and blacks are objectionable:</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>The demand
for them springs from a hostile animus toward the freedmen. Those who advocate
separate conferences on the color line seem incapable of recognizing merit in
the colored people. They make disparaging comparisons between the white and
colored people. They make disparaging comparisons between the white and
colored preachers. The blacks can not sustain a respectable examination in the
prescribed studies; they are "lacking in industry, sobriety, truthfulness,
and chastity.'' And yet it is proposed to set them off by themselves, that they
may improve! The money expended on their schools has proved vain. Hardly the
desire for education is left, while the mass of the colored people have sunk
into perfect indifference. I adduce these statements not to deny them. That is
unnecessary; but simply to show the spirit of those who demand separation.
Intelligent colored men denounce such statements as libelous.</p>
<br clear="all"
style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='text-autospace:none'>[page 7]</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>D.H. Hays thus repels such
assaults:</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt'>"It is true we are not yet out of the misty, miry
log of sin, into which we were most inhumanly thrust, and kept confined during
the woeful days of slavery. And it is equally true that we are not so radically
deficient in those lovely traits which constitute the basis of moral excellence
as the utterer supposes. My soul heaves with indignation when I see men</span></p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>who
taught us to prevaricate, while trembling under the lash, who put the bottle to
our lips, to make us do a greater amount of work, who spoiled the innocence of
our mothers and sisters by tyrannical force, wasting their energies in the
attempt to impede our progress, by fastening upon our dejected brow undeserved
reproach."</span></p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>Is it wise to
grant separation on the request of those who discover this want of sympathy and
appreciation toward the freedmen? A similar animus toward those who oppose separate
conferences is displayed by the advocates of color separation.</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>Bishop Haven
is roundly abused for holding the opinion that freedmen have rights which
fellow-Christians should respect. A year or two since, he dined with a black
brother in Atlanta, and forthwith he is denounced from Charleston to the Rio
Grande, as having outraged the decencies of "society" in that
country. These separationists draw it mildly when they speak of such men as
Bishop Haven, Dr. Braden, brothers Lansing and Hartzell, as "zealous but
weak-minded white brethren among us," whose "zeal is not born of
wisdom," who seem to think "that the most rapid and ready way to
elevate the black man is to rub him up against the whites." God has said,
"He who walketh with wise men shall be wise." These separationists
sneer at those who would act upon God's plan, as "zealous but
weak-minded." Will the General Conference divide conferences on the color
line, to gratify those who display this spirit toward the freedmen's truest
friends?</p>
<p style='text-autospace:
none'>One of' the chief reasons urged in favor of separate conferences
discloses recklessness concerning the colored people, if not direct hostility.
That reason is, that our work in the South, especially as to the mixed
conferences, <i>is "an attack upon the social customs of the country in
relation to the two races." </i>Those "customs" ostracize and
oppress the colored people, drive them from the polls, treat them with rigor,
deny to them the rights of manhood. The prevalence of those "customs<sup>"</sup> made necessary the Fifteenth Amendment. It is still</p>
<br clear="all"
style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='text-autospace:none'>[page 8]</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>necessary for the same reason.
If those "social customs" could work out their full and fell purpose
unhindered by the freedmen's friends, they would repeal the Fifteenth
Amendment, if possible, and if not, they would render it nugatory by State laws
and by lawless raids upon a defenseless people, and thus, without the name or
the forms of slavery, reduce the blacks to a serf or subject condition, and so
reap the monetary and political results of practical slavery. Because the
Methodist Episcopal Church in the South antagonizes, or is supposed to
antagonize, these tendencies and purposes, therefore we must change our policy,
and so leave these "social customs" to work out these unhappy
results. This reason can not certainly have weight with our General
Conference.</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>The mode in
which the division is sought is objectionable. The separation is now asked
only by the whites. They ask that, on the request of the whites <i>or</i> the
blacks, separate conferences may be organized. Since only the whites ask it or
will ask it, it is proposed that they shall have it, whether the colored people
want it or not, whether it is best for them or not, whether it would be for the
real welfare of the Church in that section, or in the Church at large, or not.
This one-sided treatment of a question upon the wish of a <i>minority </i>would
not be asked by any sane person in reference to any conference in the North.
What would be thought of a proposition to provide that all in the Ohio
Conference who had red hair and blue eyes might, upon the request of those
having black eyes and hair, be organized into a separate annual conference? A
proposal to let a majority of <i>all our members </i>in the South, or all our
members in the Church at large, decide this question, would be more fair. But,
if the division of conferences on the color line were allowed in the manner
asked, that is, upon the request of either party, one party being a minority, a
principle would be admitted fatal to all Church order and organization. We can
not afford to do this.</p>
<p style='
text-autospace:none'>Color prejudice
originates chiefly in the former servile condition of the freedmen. It would
soon die out if left to itself. But it is all time stimulated to its utmost
malignity by the Church South and by sectional politicians. It is part of a
deeply laid and tenaciously held policy to drive from the South all white
sympathy and a cure for the freedmen, so</p>
<br clear="all"
style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='text-autospace:none'>[page 9]</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>that ultimately the whites in
the South can have as full control of the labor and of the political power of
the black men as they had when they held them as their own. I state this
purpose with the fullest conviction of its correctness. </p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>The policy of
the Methodist Episcopal Church South toward our Church in the South is the
first to divide and then to destroy it, by arraying the colored and white
members against each other, or at least by separating them so producing
competition, and then mutual aversion. From a careful observation, under
favorable conditions, I am satisfied that our white brethren in the South who
demand separate conferences do it under the pressure of a public sentiment
sedulously kept alive and sensitive by Southern ecclesiastical and political
demagogues. They may not see that this is the real policy of the Church South;
but it is, notwithstanding. From the first our going into the South was
regarded as an intrusion and an offense. In an interview, in May, 1865,
between Bishop Clark, Dr. Poe, and Rev. Dr. M'Ferrin, at which I was present,
this was the view urged by Dr. M'Ferrin, who sought to dissuade Bishop Clark
from his purpose to organize the Holston Conference.</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>If the
Methodist Episcopal Church South were benevolently disposed toward the blacks,
would they not hail the bestowal of labor and money on the freedmen by our
Church? Would they not commend our zeal and liberality, rather than stigmatize
them as fanatical? The Church South dismembered their colored people, and gave
them the chapels they had built when slaves, provided they would remain a
purely colored organization. Why? Simply that they would not recognize the
Christian manhood of the late chattels of the ex-slaveholders. If
de-organization and separation were so<i> </i>good for the blacks, why did not
the Southern Church try their virtue upon the whites? They did not love the
freedmen as men, as Christians, as Methodists. In no other way</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>can we rationally account for
the continued hostility of the Methodist Episcopal Church South to our Church
and work in the South. The Tennessee Conference and the Church South do not
fraternize. Dickson District and the Church South do fraternize. Why this difference?
The former opposes, and the latter favors, separate conferences.</p>
<br clear="all"
style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='text-autospace:none'>[page 10]</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>We can have
fraternity with the Methodist Episcopal Church South, and our white brethren
there can have peace, if only we will go back on the freedmen. If, to please
our fifty thousand white members in the South, we will practice injustice and
wrong upon one hundred and seventy-six thousand colored members there, we can
have peace in all our Southern work. But, if we do this, we shall have God's
displeasure, and we shall deserve the contempt of all true men, the freedmen
included. Nor will it stop here. In the North the anti color-caste views and
practice are growing. In the opera-house in Cincinnati, in the Bromfield-street
Baptist Church in Boston, in political meetings, lectures, and concerts, the
blacks and whites are seen sitting side by side. This will grow until the
foolish pride of race and color shall have disappeared. Is our Church prepared
to go back on God's poor, and to turn back the hands of progress on the world's
dial? If we do, we shall not only be disrupted and disorganized in the South,
but we shall also lose our following in the North, and we would deserve to lose
it. </p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>Grand
opportunities come but seldom. One came in 1844. We seized it. God crowned us
with honor and victory. This is another golden opportunity. If we are wise,
it will be improved. In the old slavery times our General Conference refused to
black members the right to testify in Church trials. In 1868, in the days of
freedom—thirty years afterward—we were glad to purge our record from the black
and damaging spot. If we separate conferences on the color line, the time is at
hand when such a record will create universal shame and regret.</p>
<p style='text-autospace:
none'>It is safer and better to stand by principle, even though, at the moment,
inconvenient, than it is to follow the <i>ignis fatuus </i>of policy. God
requires us to "honor all men." Is the freedman <i>a man </i>as
really as the proudest white oppressor? Then we must honor him. Did Christ die
for the freedman? Then we may "not destroy our brother" by unfriendly
and wicked ostracism. Will the Methodist Episcopal Church dare to attempt this?
When Bishop Kingsley presided at the Holston Conference, several colored men
were elected to orders. On Saturday there was a stir as to whether Bishop
Kingsley would ordain the black men at the same time and at the</p>
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<p style='text-autospace:none'>[page 11]</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>same altars as the white
candidates. The Bishop was waited on and asked to ordain the blacks at some
other time and place, and so avoid arousing violent prejudices. He replied,
that as God had made no difference in calling colored and white men to the
ministry, he should make none as to their ordination. Noble words, worthy of
the honored Bishop and of the Church, whose bishop he was.</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>When Bishop
Clark preached at a conference in Atlanta, one of the ministers, greatly to the
Bishop’s annoyance, when he afterward learned of it, stood in the door and
turned away colored preachers who came to hear their bishop preach. </p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent">Color-caste is
unchristian. Its effects on national life are disastrous; on Church life,
deadly. It dishonors Christ. It is degrading, divisive, disorganizing. It
begets uncharitableness, unkindness, hatred, rancor, bitterness, murder. </p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>If
color-caste had control of all the agencies reaching the freedmen, they would
have been left without protection, provision, education, evangelization.</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>The
separation of conferences is instigated by color-caste, and it promotes it. On
grounds of public policy it should be refused. Rupture, civil dissensions,
strife, revolution, and war are opposed to Christ's kingdom. In their presence
every interest of' Zion suffers. We are, as Christians, interested in avoiding
whatever tends to<i> </i>such results. But color-caste does. Therefore, we
should not yield to its dictum.</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>Ex-slave-holders
fluently predicted, at the close of the war, that the blacks would die out.
This they refuse to do. In spite of abuses and murders they not only live, but
they increase. In 1864 they numbered four millions. They number five millions
now. They can not remove, <i>en masse, </i>to some other country, if they
would. We would not have them if they could. Compelled to live with them in the
same country, under the same laws, shall we live in peace, or in war? in
fraternity, or in Ishmaelitish hate? religiously, in the spirit of Christ, or
in the very spirit of the devil? If the former, then we must eschew this
diabolical color-caste, which is both God-dishonoring and man-destroying.</p>
<p style='text-autospace:
none'>The Roman Catholic Church, regardless of color, recognizes the Christian
manhood of the negro, instructs him, evangelizes him, ministers to him in
sickness, relieves him when in</p>
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<p style='text-autospace:none'>[page 12]</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'>want, stands by him when he is
denounced and proscribed. This is so obvious that Downing, of Washington, and
other sagacious and leading colored men, urge the freedmen to make that Church
their home. Can we, then, afford to go back on the freedmen? Philip
associated with the Ethiopian eunuch, got up into his chariot, and preached
Jesus to him. God sent the vision to Peter to assure him that where God has
made no difference, men may not. The Pentecostal baptism came upon the
dwellers of all lands. Jesus died for all men. He gave commandment that
repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all
nations, beginning at Jerusalem. He sent them into all the world to preach the
Gospel to every creature. To separate the blacks and the whites in annual
conferences where they are now associated, would be to act, in spirit, against
these facts. A backward movement by the Methodist Episcopal Church on this
subject means more, and effects more injury, than by any other Church, because
we are, numerically at least, the strongest branch of the strongest Protestant
organization in the United States. Will this great Church, in this, the
nineteenth century—in this, the century-year of our national history, and in
the thirteenth year of American emancipation—dare to lay a proscribing hand
upon us. We can not prosper and be a party to the degradation of this people.</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'> Will Christian
ministers, Methodist ministers, in this Centennial year, lay a burden that God
has not imposed upon our brethren? Shall our Heavenly Father, who has
"made of one blood all nation of men to dwell on all the face of the
earth," see that we, the sons of Wesley, and the preachers of a full and
free salvation, have consented to affix a brand and a stigma upon a race whose
only crime is, that they have been in bondage, that they are poor, and that
they bear the complexion God gave them?</p>
<p style='text-autospace:none'> Talk about policy!
Talk of convenience! Better everyone of the fifty thousand of our white
members in the South should leave us, if that were the alternative (thank God
it is not), than that this General Conference should ordain separate
conferences in the South, on the color line.</p>
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