We have seen that at each General Conference of our Church from the beginning, the question of human slavery was discussed, opposed, and anathematized by the Church. And yet during that time many strange things occurred. In the General Conference of 1804, that met in the city of Baltimore, Freeborn Garrettson moved that the question of the buying and selling of slaves be left to the three bishops for regulation. Just what this meant does not appear on the surface. It could have meant that the Church knew the hearts of the three bishops were right, and that they would therefore oppose anything like a compromise with the system of human slavery then in vogue. It could have meant that they were conservative, and would not, therefore, likely precipitate any trouble upon the Church on account of this vexed question. Viewed from any point at this distance, it assumes a strange attitude. It may have been intended as a measure to “bring peace out of confusion;” but “peace,” “peace,” when there could be no peace, had been the slaveholders’ cry all along. It was considered a conciliatory measure. It proved to be exactly the reverse. It resulted in confusion; for the following General Conference, in 1808, declared that the question of “buying and selling slaves must hereafter be left to the discretion of the several annual conferences for decision.” Though this action was taken seventy-nine years ago, it appears as inexplicable to the writer as it did to some men at that day. Its consistency and spirit do not even to-day present a single redeeming feature. Every General Conference had moved a notch higher in opposition to slavery, and now the whole subject was ordered out of the General Conference, to be decided by the annual conferences, in the which were some probably, if not slaveholders, sympathizers with slavery. This was done, too, in face of the well-known fact that the United States government had become so disturbed on account of the discussions arising out of the question of human slavery and other causes, as to prohibit the importation of any more African slaves into America. It could have been one of those peculiar proceedings that occur now and then, in the which “certain inalienable rights, among which life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” have no consideration; but in the which “expediency,” and not principle, obtain. It is thought by some that the action taken by that General Conference on the question of slavery was regretted by many afterward. The motion by which that question was sent down to the annual conferences was a repetition of the political idea of the doctrine of States’ rights, with the colored man’s interests not considered.