As a natural result of the supposed compromise with slavery made by the “Conference Rights” act, many conferences complained by memorial that they had difficulty after difficulty in properly adjusting the matter of slavery. Hence came the next step—legitimate child of previous action—a declaration that the question of slavery was one of those peculiar cases where only the civil law could properly adjust and act upon it. From 1836 to 1844 the war on slavery and in favor of slavery was unceasingly waged within and without the Church. The thought of the regular succession of events is not to be questioned when we remember the struggles of the General Conference of 1840 at Baltimore over the appeal of Silas Comfort, and that of the marriage of a Baltimorean preacher and a Georgian bishop to slaveholding women. The Silas Comfort decision was, on the whole, the best thing possible for the peace of the colored man within and without the Methodist Episcopal Church. The decision was all that could have been asked so far as the then present peace of the colored man was concerned. But the Lord Jesus at one time said: “I came not to bring peace on the earth, but a sword.” If we have the proper conception of his meaning, there are times when peace is not the best thing possible. When the General Conference received the protest from Sharp Street Church against the decision, it only exhibited the fact that men and Churches do not always see themselves as others see them. But if in the Silas Comfort appeal decision the enemies of human rights scored a victory over the friends of human freedom, the latter turned the tide and scored a more glorious as well as righteous victory at the General Conference of 1844, that met in the city of New York, when the resolution that had been carried and placed on record denouncing the action of “the two Abolition lecturers” was ordered to be expunged therefrom. At that General Conference a petition was presented from the colored ministers within the Church asking admission into the annual conferences. This was refused for some reason. Then there followed a petition for a separate conference. The wisdom of the refusal to grant said separate conference is now apparent to all who are either concerned or have the interests of the race, as such, at heart. No argument is needed to substantiate the above proposition in the minds of any intelligent person. Notwithstanding this, the historian of African Methodism said in his “Apology:” “It would have been a source of unspeakable joy had he been permitted truthfully to record that your Church had acknowledged your full and true manhood, and not denied it both in practice and in law—had received you into conference upon a perfect ministerial equality; but, alas! the doors of its conferences were locked, and bolted and barred against you.” Such thrusts as the above, if there was no other sufficient reason for asking it, were certainly calculated to urge the matter forward, because the