Northern Methodist preachers had become fanatical on the subject of the abolition of slavery—had recently discovered great moral wrong in the “peculiar institution,” and commenced a war upon everything that favored the existing relations of master and slave. All at once it was discovered that all the resolutions and pastoral address of 1836 were in sympathy with the “sum of all villainies,” and for that reason should be disregarded. It was discovered that ministers of the gospel were slaveholders—which had been the case from the beginning—and the most noted instance then existing was James O. Andrew, a man of unblemished character, unswerving integrity and singular purity of heart and life. Why not take him for a scapegoat? They needed one, for many of them had been connected with the same institution in one way or another. But how could they reach his case? Did the law of the Church cover the case? Did the constitution of the Church confer upon the General Conference the power to depose a Bishop because his wife had inherited a slave, and the laws of the State would not admit of emancipation? Could not a majority of the General Conference so interpret and construe the law that the case could be reached, and the “abolition movement” that had been unequivocally condemned eight years before be just as unequivocally indorsed now and greatly advanced by the great Methodist Church in the United States? And what if this assumption of constitutional power should be rejected? Aye, there was the rub. _This was the cause._ Admit the authority of the General Conference to depose a man from office for incidental or even positive complicity with slavery, and with it the right is established to depose a man from the ministry for complicity with democracy, republicanism, or any thing else purely political. The same authority extends to the ballotbox and all the distinctive privileges of citizenship. There were other questions incidentally brought out at the Conference of 1844 which tested the _animus_ of the delegates from the North, and disclosed the construction placed by their leaders upon the constitutional prerogatives of the college of Bishops. Any one at all acquainted with ecclesiastical government can readily see how these questions could divide the Church whether slavery had an existence or not. The same questions have produced division in ecclesiastical bodies since slavery was abolished. It was not the three cents a pound upon tea that caused the American revolution of 1776, but the right to tax tea to that amount involved the right to make every man in the British colonies a slave; and the right to depose Bishop Andrew implied the right to depose every man from the ministry who differed from the numerical majority upon any political question whatever. To all sober, unbiased, right-thinking, candid men this position will be undeniable—unanswerable. To others it will be like “casting pearls before swine.”