As if afraid its influence would not be potent enough by its General and annual conference action on the question of slavery, several of the annual conferences sent up memorials to Congress and to President Lincoln. The New York East Conference—when the bill freeing “slaves used for insurrectionary purposes” was approved, August 6, 1861, and another forbidding the return of fugitive slaves by persons in the army, March 13, 1862, and the abolishment of slavery in the District of Columbia by Congress, April 16, 1862—adopted a report drawn up by James Floy, which declared “the system of American slavery is evidently, in the good providence of God, destined soon to come to an end; that the recent action of our national authorities, by which the nation has been unequivocally committed to the cause of freedom, meets with our entire approbation.” The same body, with the New York Conference, in 1864, memorialized Congress, praying the enactment of an amendment to the Constitution for the abolishment of slavery a year and a half or more before it was done. The New England Conference sent up the following, which, for historic accuracy, prophetic ken, and loyalty to the cause of human freedom, has rarely been surpassed, and will stand in the forefront of the reputation of that conference for level-headedness and right doing. We here reproduce it: “After thirty years of exciting but healthful agitation on the subject of slavery, the present aspects of our cause furnish abundant motive for devout thanksgiving to God. The two antagonistic tendencies of public sentiment existing and increasing in the nation for so many years, have at length reached their legitimate crisis of mutual and final conflict, of which the issue can not be doubtful. By its own diabolical act [slavery] has been placed in a position where it can claim no constitutional protection, and where there is no prudential motive for its retention; and the voice of the people, which evidently coincides with the voice of God, says: ‘Let it perish!’ In the Church the progress of the anti-slavery sentiment has been equally gratifying. Instead of a continued and meager minority which regarded slavery as a sin, a great majority of the representative assemblies of the Church register their solemn verdict of its criminal character, and demand that it shall cease, not only in the ministry, but in the whole membership.” The Black River Conference also gave no uncertain sound when it declared: “The signs of the times give evidence that the hitherto dominant and domineering slave power is rapidly approaching its end, and even now we may witness its horrible death-throe. The time is rapidly approaching when the last fetter will be broken, and the last bondman be released.”