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CHAPTER XIII.

THE CONFERENCES FROM 1785 TO 1792.

CCORDING to adjournment at Baltimore in the spring

of 1784, notwitstanding the unexpected intervention of the Christmas Conference, three Conferences were held in the spring of 1785: the first at Green Hill's, North Carolina, April 20; the second at Mason's, Brunswick Co., Va., May 1; and the last, as usual, at Baltimore, June 1. All these slightly anticipated the appointed time.* Jesse Lee, who gives us these dates, also informs us that, in the original publication, "the business of the three Conferences was all arranged in the Minutes, as if it had all been done at one time and place," an arrangement also followed in the reprints of 1795 and 1813. This continued to be the form of publication adopted for the General Minutes until 1802, when for the first time, the one traveling connection is divided into recognized Annual Conference bodies by separating and designating the appointment of the preachers as in the following Conferences: Western; South Carolina; Virginia; Baltimore; Philadelphia; New York; and New England. The next year this improved arrangement is extended to the statistics of members in Society; and in 1805 the division into Annual Conference groups is carried through the answers of all the disciplinary questions.§ Lee further says that "This year [1785] and the two succeeding years the Minutes were called Minutes of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America,'" and he is confirmed by the original pamphlet Minutes of 1785, 1786, and 1787, which lie before me. Lee has exactly reproduced the formula which appears on the title-pages of each year.

Minutes, ed. 1795, p. 73; ed. 1813, p. 48. † Minutes of 1813, pp. 275-281. Ibid., pp. 290–294. § Ibid., pp. 325-355

Hist. of the Methodists, p. 118.

(221)

The original Minutes of 1785 do not contain the account of the Christmas Conference, prefixed later. Evidently the term "General Conference," in these earliest official records of the Church, is employed in a sense different from that which it subsequently acquired. The Conferences collectively, or in the final session, were competent to exercise in any year the full legislative powers of the Church, repealing, it might be, enactments of the Christmas Conference; their collective supremacy or sovereignty, or that of the final session of the year, seems to have been recognized in this use of the term "General Conference." Lee gives an interesting notice of the rise of the presiding eldership, as we have outlined it in a preceding chapter, confirming our view that as early as 1785 the elder had charge of his circuit preachers. He says:

The form of the Minutes of Conference was changed this year, and all the elders who were directed to take the oversight of several circuits were set to the right hand of a bracket, which inclosed all the circuits and preachers of which he was to take charge. This may be considered as the beginning of the presiding elder's office; although it was not known by that name at that time, yet, in the absence of a superintendent, this elder had the directing of all the preachers that were inclosed in the bracket against which his name was set.*

Three Conferences are appointed for 1786 and 1787, six for 1788, eleven for 1789, fourteen for 1790, extending from Georgia to New York and from Baltimore to Kentucky and Holstein; for 1792, the last year of our present period, seventeen were appointed.† We can no longer, however, follow these sessions even in the scanty detail which the extant sources afford, but must dismiss them with the remark that the Minutes cannot be depended upon for the sessions actually held, but only for those appointed. "Some, as for example, the first New York session, [1788] are unmentioned; others, like that designated in the printed list as of 'Connecticut' for 1791, did not meet."‡

The only important business in the Conferences of 1785, as we have seen, was the suspension and virtual repeal of the slavery legislation of the Christmas Conference. Coke con

*Hist. of the Methodists, pp. 119, 120. Minutes, 1795, pp. 83, 93, 105, 117, 118, 132, 161. Stevens, Hist. M. E. Ch., II. 495.

tinued in America for about five months after the adjournment of that body, sailing for England June 2. Sunday, May 1, he is with Asbury at the Virginia Conference.

After mature consideration [he says] we formed a petition, a copy of which was given to every preacher, entreating the General Assembly of Virginia to pass a law for the immediate or gradual emancipation of all the slaves. It is to be signed by all the freeholders we can procure, and those I believe will not be few. There have been many debates already on the subject in the Assembly. Many of our friends, and some of the great men of the states, have been inciting us to apply for acts of incorporation, but I have discouraged it, and have prevailed. We have a better staff to lean upon than any this world can afford.

This was, doubtless, a better concerted scheme than that of emancipation by Church regulations; for, at this time, many of the statesmen and people of Virginia, as well as other parts of the South, were decidedly in favor of some method of gradual emancipation by law. By Jefferson's ordinance of 1784, though slavery then prevailed throughout much more than half the lands of Europe, it "was to be rung out with the departing century, so that in all the western territory, whether held in 1784 by Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, or the United States, the sun of the new century might dawn on no slave." Washington, Richard Henry Lee, Jefferson, Randolph, Madison, and Grayson desired the abolition of slavery.† The committee of eleven in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, to whom was referred the question of limiting the time of the legal toleration of the slave trade, reported in favor of the year 1800. It was moved and seconded that the time be extended to 1808. "Madison spoke earnestly against the prolongation; but, without further debate, the motion prevailed by the votes of the three New England States, Maryland, and the three southernmost States, against New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia." At about the time when the Virginia Conference, under the lead of Coke and Asbury, was formulating and circulating its petition to the General Assembly for the immediate or gradual emancipation of the

* Bancroft, Hist. U. S., VI. 117. †Ibid., VI. 262. ‡Ibid., VI. 320.

slaves, Jefferson and Wythe, as commissioners to codify the laws of Virginia, had provided for gradual emancipation, which, however, the legislature of 1785 refused to do.* It was this movement in the civil realm, which, doubtless, the Virginia Conference in 1785 sought to foster and support. Washington's sentiments may be gathered from Coke's account of the interview, when he and Asbury dined by appointment at Mount Vernon:

He received us [says Coke] very politely, and was very open to access. He is quite the plain country gentleman. After dinner we desired a private interview, and opened to him the grand business on which we came, presenting to him our petition for the emancipation of the negroes, and entreating his signature, if the eminence of his position did not render it inexpedient for him to sign any petition. He informed us that he was of our sentiments, and had signified his thoughts on the subject to most of the great men of the State; that he did not see it proper to sign the petition, but if the Assembly took it into consideration, would signify his sentiments to the Assembly by a letter.f

The Conferences of 1786 enacted nothing material to our history; but this year a second edition of the Sunday service was printed in London for the use of the American Methodists. Traces of the use of Mr. Wesley's prayer-book continue to be met with down to 1792: it was reprinted by order of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, held in 1866, and its use made optional in the Churches. Gowns and bands were also used by the Bishops and elders for some years after the Christmas Conference. Jesse Lee attended a service conducted by Bishop Asbury in January 1785, and "to his very great surprise and no little mortification, just before the commencement of the service, Bishop Asbury came out of his room in full canonicals, gown, cassock, and band."

Mr. Asbury had evidently procured his canonicals immediately after his ordination as Bishop. Sunday, June 5,

* Bancroft, Hist. U. S., VI. 118.

†Drew, Life of Coke, pp. 108-113, speaks of Washington as, at this time, President of the United States which is, of course, an error. He seems to have confused this interview of the two Bishops with Washington in 1785 with an Address which they presented to the President in 1789, just after his inauguration, to which attention will be given later.

1785, he laid the corner-stone of Cokesbury College. "Attired in his long silk gown and with his flowing bands the pioneer Bishop of America took his position on the walls of the College."* To Asbury, who had been a life-long attendant on the services of the Church of England, this attire seemed no affectation in one occupying the position. of a Bishop, but natural and necessary.

It was Wesley's desire that a General Conference of all the preachers should be held in 1787, as may be gathered from the following letter:

LONDON, September 6, 1786.

DEAR SIR:-I desire that you would appoint a General Conference of all our preachers in the United States to meet at Baltimore on May 1, 1787, and that Mr. Richard Whatcoat may be appointed superintendent with Mr. Francis Asbury. I am, dear sir, your affectionate friend and brother.

To the REV. Dr. COKE.

JOHN WESLEY.

Objections, which will presently be considered, were raised to the election of Whatcoat and he was not, at this time, made a Superintendent. Wesley also nominated Garrettson for Nova Scotia. Jesse Lee tells us that

When the business was taken under consideration, some of the preachers insisted that if he was ordained for that station, he should confine himself wholly to that place for which he was set apart. Mr. Garrettson did not feel freedom to enter into an obligation of that kind, and chose rather to continue as he was, and therefore was not ordained.†

This appears to harmonize with Garrettson's own ac

count:

It was the desire of Mr. Wesley and others that I should be set apart for the superintendency of the work in Nova Scotia. My mind was divided. Man is a fallible creature. In the end I concluded not to leave the States, for thousands in this country are dear to me. On the whole we had a blessed Conference, and my appointment was to preside in the Peninsula. ‡

Thus the first attempt of the Methodist Episcopal Church to create a missionary bishop proved abortive. Garrettson had been ordained elder at the Christmas Conference and appointed to Nova Scotia, where his labors were extensive and successful. Wesley was so favorably impressed that * Strickland's Asbury, p. 163. † Hist. of the Methodists, p. 126. Autobiography, p. 220.