In reply to suggestions of reunion they asserted that the Northern Methodists had become "incurably radical," were too much involved in politics, and, further, that they had, without right, seized and were still holding Southern church buildings.

They objected also to the way the Northern church referred to the Southerners as "schismatics" and to the Southern church as one built on slavery and therefore, now that slavery was gone, to be reconstructed.

The bishops warned their people against the missionary efforts of the Northern brethren and against the attempts to "disintegrate and absorb" Methodism in the South.

Within five years after the war, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was greatly increased in numbers by the accession of conferences in Maryland, Kentucky, Virginia, Missouri, and even from above the Ohio, while the Northern Methodist Church was able to organize only a few white congregations outside of the stronger Unionist districts, but continued to labor in the South as a missionary field.* * The church situation after the war was well described in 1866 by an editorial writer in the "Nation" who pointed out that the Northern churches thought the South determined to make the religious division permanent, though "slavery no longer furnishes a pretext for separation." "Too much pains were taken to bring about an ecclesiastical reunion, and irritating offers of reconciliation are made by the Northern churches, all based on the assumption that the South has not only sinned, but sinned knowingly, in slavery and in war.

We expect them to be penitent and to gladly accept our offers of forgiveness.