Dr. Bannister is one of Nature's noblemen, and his membership in any Conference is an honor to the body. The Wisconsin Conference has recognized his worth, and has sent him three times as one of her delegates to the General Conference, and on one occasion was pleased to put him at the head of the list. But he is not the property of a Conference; he belongs to the whole Church, and is the peer of his brethren in any convocation she may assemble.
The General Conference met in Buffalo, N.Y., in May, 1860. The agitation known as the Nazarite movement was then raging through Western New York, and it was understood that several cases would come before the General Conference on appeal from the expelled members of the Genesee Conference. I was requested to go down to the troubled District and look the ground over before the opening of the Conference. I did so, but found the movement too far advanced to avoid a rupture of the Societies in many of the charges. Several of the men who had taken an appeal had stultified themselves and vitiated their appeals, by forming Societies on the basis of the new movement; and though they disclaimed all intention to establish another Church, the formation of these Societies, it was held, could be interpreted in no other way. Having thus become members of another Church their appeals, which contemplated their restoration to the former Church, could not be entertained.
But the great question before the body was the new Rule on Slavery. At the beginning, the subject was given to one of the large Committees, of which the writer was a member. The late Bishop Kingsley was the Chairman, and the Committee met almost daily for three weeks. The report to the General Conference was made to cover the whole ground, and accepted the basis which had been advocated so long by the Wisconsin Conference. On its presentation a long discussion followed, and it was believed that the requisite two-thirds vote would be obtained. But judge of our surprise when, on taking the vote, we found the measure had been lost by a few votes, and these had been mostly given by the delegation of the troubled District in Western New York.
But though the majority were thus defeated in their effort to change the General Rule, they passed a chapter that declared it to be unchristian to hold slaves, as well as to traffic in them. The war, however, soon followed, and the "logic of events," disposed of the Slavery question. At this Conference I was elected a member of the General Mission Committee at New York, which rendered it necessary for me to visit the city annually for four years.