ntinued to give friendly aid but exercised no control.
For many years the Colored Methodist Church was under fire from the
other Negro denominations, who called it the "rebel," the "Democratic,"
the "old slavery" church.

The Negro members of the Cumberland Presbyterians were similarly set off
into a small African organization. The Southern Presbyterians and the
Episcopalians established separate congregations and missions under
white supervision but sanctioned no independent Negro organization.
Consequently the Negroes soon deserted these churches and went with
their own kind.

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 w