Resentment at the methods employed by the Northern religious carpetbaggers was strong among the Southern whites. "Emissaries of Christ and the radical party" they were called by one Alabama leader. Governor Lindsay of the same State asserted that the Northern missionaries caused race hatred by teaching the negroes to regard the whites as their natural enemies, who, if possible, would put them back in slavery. Others were charged with teaching that to be on the safe side, the blacks should get into a Northern church, and that "Christ died for negroes and Yankees, not for rebels." The scalawags, also, developed a dislike of the Northern church work among the negroes and it was impossible to organize mixed congregations. Of the Reverend A. S. Lakin, a well-known agent of the Northern Methodist Church in Alabama, Nicholas Davis, a North Alabama Unionist and scalawag, said to the Ku Klux Committee: "The character of his [Lakin's] speech was this: to teach the negroes that every man that was born and raised in the Southern country was their enemy, that there was no use trusting them, no matter what they said--if they said they were for the Union or anything else. 'No use talking, they are your enemies.' And he made a pretty good speech, too; awful; a hell of a one; ... inflammatory and game, too.... It was enough to provoke the devil. Did all the mischief he could ... I tell you, that old fellow is a hell of an old rascal." For a time the white churches were annoyed by intrusions of strange blacks set on by those who were bent on separating the races. Frequently there were feuds in white or black congregations over the question of joining some Northern body. Disputes over church property also arose and continued for years. Lakin, referred to above, was charged with "stealing" negro congregations and uniting them with the Cincinnati Conference without their knowledge. The negroes were urged to demand title to all buildings formerly used for negro worship, and the Constitutional Convention of Alabama in 1867 directed that such property must be turned over to them when claimed.