We do not believe, nor do we wish to believe, that our Church intended, by anything done in the General Conference of 1884, or desired at that time to annul any of its hitherto impartial acts; to give any particular class of its members any indulgence in wrong-doing; to yield to any kind of race or class prejudice; that it attempted or desired to elevate any class of its members above another; or, on the other hand, that, while it slept, an enemy sowed “tares” in the field. We think no one believes that it was the intention of the Church to dishearten or disband or leave to themselves the schools among our white membership in the South, organized and conducted, as well as supported in part, by conferences of our Church, in the which _there are no colored members_. The Church must have seen and felt that _it is an utter impossibility_ for any Church, indeed for the United States government, to mix promiscuously, perforce, the schools in the South; that if the two races there are to be educated by our Church, in some sort they must be allowed a “free and unconstrained choice in all social matters.” Rome was not built in a day. Diseases that have become chronic, and remain within a system for two hundred and fifty-eight years, can not be eradicated in a month, even though an entire college of physicians attempt it. When the Church requested the Freedmen’s Aid Society “to give such aid to the above-named schools during the next quadrennium as can be done without embarrassment to the schools among the freedmen,” it recognized not only the _existence_ of exclusively white schools, but provided _for their perpetuation_. The situation of affairs is peculiar indeed. The above action was not intended (though we candidly believe that those who claimed the opposite had a right to, and did think so) to recognize the right to exclude _any pupil_ on account of race, color, or previous condition, on the plea of exercising their “free and unconstrained choice.” That General Conference, however, _did intend to allow the two races in the South to have the privilege of separate schools_, if they desired them, as it had not interposed objection to separate annual conferences. As proof of this, the General Conference put the entire educational work of the Church in the South under the direct management of the Freedmen’s Aid Society.