f the Presbyterians was checked when one Northern branch
declared as "a condition precedent to the admission of southern
applicants that these confess as sinful all opinions before held in
regard to slavery, nullification, rebellion and slavery, and stigmatize
secession as a crime and the withdrawal of the southern churches as a
schism." Another Northern group declared that southern ministers must
be placed on probation and must either prove their loyalty or profess
repentance for disloyalty and repudiate their former opinions. As a
result several Presbyterian bodies in the South joined in a strong
union, to which also adhered the synods of several Border States.

The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was confronted with conditions
similar to those which prevented the reunion of the Presbyterians. The
Northern church, according to the declaration of its authorities, also
came down to divide the spoils and to "disintegrate and absorb" the
"schismatic" Southern churches. Already many Southern pulpits were
filled with Northern Methodist ministers placed there under military
protection; and when they finally realized that reunion was not
possible, these Methodist worthies resolved to occupy the late
Confederacy as a mission field and to organize congregations of blacks
and whites who were "not tainted with treason." Bishops and clergymen
charged with this work carried it on vigorously for a few years in close
connection with political reconstruction.

The activities of the Northern Methodists stimulated the Southern
Methodists to a quick reorganization. The surviving bishops met in
August 1865, and bound together their shaken church. 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, a