The fact that colored delegates were recognized by the General Conference of 1868, and provision made for the organization of the Lexington Annual Conference, that had hitherto been mixed with the Kentucky Conference, white; that separate annual conferences had been formed; indeed, that every practically conceivable thing was being done by the Church for her colored members,—caused many to flock toward her that had fled for safety in another direction. The tide was soon checked by the ministry and membership of the two colored denominations—the African Zion and the African Methodist Churches—that were toiling in the same field, by crying out “the Methodist Episcopal Church will never permit a colored man to be elected a bishop.” Consternation seized many of our members when they were told that the Methodist Episcopal Church would only tolerate a black membership as “hewers of wood and drawers of water.” It at last became to many, as they said, “self-evident, that to retain the better class of colored people there must be no discrimination anywhere in Methodism on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Many, many hard battles were fought, not with the enemy of souls, but with our brethren of the above-named two denominations. From 1868 to the adjournment of the General Conference of 1872 a bitter religious warfare was waged. At last, as the quadrennium drew to a close, it was evident that the agitation of the question of a bishop of African descent had not only done much injury, poisoning and unsettling the minds of our colored membership, but that, in one way or the other, the question must be put and answered by the ensuing General Conference. This was one of the most important questions considered by the General Conference of 1872, sitting in Brooklyn, New York. This, the twenty-first session of our General Conference, will be remembered as the largest ever held by our Church up to that time, there being four hundred and twenty-one delegates. Several of our colored conferences sent up memorials in favor of the election of a bishop of African descent. As they were presented they were respectfully referred to the Committee on Episcopacy, composed of one delegate from each annual conference, colored or white. The petition for a bishop of African descent from the preachers’ meeting of New Orleans received the following reply: