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Methodists and Baptists on the Issue of Black Equality in New York 1865 to 1868

After the Civil War the two largest religious denominations in New York, the Baptists and the Methodists, revealed conflicting attitudes towards blacks. Most clergymen felt that the Thirteenth Amendment had decided the moral question of freedom and that there was no further need to meddle in political matters. These men, along with a majority of the laity, insisted that the only extra-religious role of the Church lay in educating the Southern freedmen. A small minority, however, wished to bring blacks, North and South, into full and equal participation in the body politic, and held that it was the duty of good churchmen to support black political demands. A few disparaged the separation of the races in civil and social life, but their numbers were insufficient to make an impact. By 1868 both Baptists and Methodists appear to have lost the chance to use their immense moral influence in favor of de facto liberty and equality for blacks. This study describes the various paths by which the dominant churches in postwar New York came to reaffirm the segregation idea, only three short years after Appomattox.