The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 68, July 1964 - April, 1965 Page: 319
574 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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The Methodist Episcopal Church in North Texas
and included Missouri, Arkansas, and all territory to the north
and west, except Iowa, as far as the Rocky Mountains.' In its
first year, the conference included a membership of 1,538 in three
districts, one of which was Arkansas.8 In 1852, the General
Conference created the Arkansas Conference, which included
the state of Texas and territories to the west.9 By 1856, there were
about twelve hundred members within the Arkansas Conference,
but the number never reached thirteen hundred. The Missouri
Conference reached its peak in 1859 when it reported a mem-
bership of 7,084.10
From the inception of the program there was friction between
the Methodists of the North and residents of slave states. Re-
sentment toward the Methodist Episcopal Church rested in part
on the feeling among Methodists in the South that it had broken
its "covenant" with them as embodied in the Plan of Separation.
"Honorable, God fearing men keep covenants-dishonorable men
break them," one editor wrote."
But a far more intensive, vigorous, and general reaction arose
from the argument that, in view of the insignificant differences
among Methodists other than over slavery, the mere presence of
the Methodist Episcopal Church in slave states was related to
abolitionist enterprise. A group of citizens in Fabius Township,
Marion County, Missouri, in 1854, passed resolutions expressing
that charge, which was maintained consistently by residents in
the Southwest over the next several years. The group reasoned
'Ibid., June 14, 1848, p. 38.
*Charles Elliott (LeRoy M. Vernon, ed.), South-Western Methodism. A History
of the M. E. Church in the South-West, from x844 to x864. Composing the Martyr-
dom of Bewley and Others; Persecutions of the M. E. Church, and its Reorganiza-
tion, Etc. (Cincinnati, 1868), 25. This book is labelled a "venemous indictment
of the South" by a historian of Texas Methodism. Macum Phelan, A History of
Early Methodism in Texas 8x7-.x866 (Nashville, 1924), 441. The intent of the
book was certainly no less than to indict the South. It contains, nevertheless, a vast
quantity of reprinted source material of a varied nature which Elliott was in a
position to collect as editor of the Central Christian Advocate of St. Louis, a paper
established by the denomination to serve that area of overlapping interests.
*Journal of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Held in
Boston, Massachusetts, 1852 (New York, 1852), 152.
10See Minutes of the Annual Conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church for
years in question. Minutes of annual conferences throughout Methodism were
bound in condensed form in one volume each year.
11St. Louis Christian Advocate, January 14, 1858, quoted in Elliott, South-Western
Methodism, 113.319
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 68, July 1964 - April, 1965, periodical, 1965; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101198/m1/389/: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.