The following twenty years were crowded with far-reaching events in church and state, as affecting the Negro. Each of the three divisions of Methodism had its place according to its convictions during that twenty years of agitation and war. The distinctly Negro organizations in the North, while having slaves in their own communions, were, of course, anti-slavery in principle, and sought in every way to advance the cause of abolitionism. Outside of Maryland and Delaware they had no churches in the South, except one in New Orleans and one in Louisville. A church organized in Charleston was driven out, after an attempted Negro insurrection. Permission was given by the mayor of St. Louis to one of its ministers to preach in that city, but the permit was afterwards recalled on learning the sentiments of his church.[12] During this period of twenty years the Methodist Episcopal Church had wonderful growth throughout the North and West in membership, church buildings, publishing interests, educational institutions, and in social and moral power. Her entire membership rose from 644,294 to 1,032,184. Her Negro membership, however, steadily declined. In 1846 it numbered, as we have seen, 30,516, while in 1865 at the close of the Civil War there were only 18,139. Shut away from the large Negro populations of the South, and confronted with aggressive African Methodism among the smaller Negro population in the North calling for separation from the whites in ecclesiastical organization and government, the field of operation of the Methodist Episcopal Church was necessarily proscribed among Africa's sons and daughters. She was, however, faithful to her trust and retained her Negro membership in church and conference relations, and, as the years went by, became more and more permeated with sentiments of antagonism to slavery, both as related to the church and the nation.