A Glimpse of 1846 – 1866:

1846-1850:

In 1846 the United States took action to secure its northern and southern borders, by treaty with Canada and by war with Mexico. The northern border was established at the 49th parallel, and the southern at the Rio Grande River. While the nation was securing its borders, the Methodist Episcopal Church was moving apart. A General Conference met that year in Petersburg, Virginia to complete the organization of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, containing 13 annual conferences. The Southern church formed itself in accord with a seven-point Plan of Separation adopted by the 1844 General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church meeting in New York, a plan accepted by the South, but never ratified by the subsequent General Conference of the North.

The new church conference elected two new Bishops and provided for the general agencies of the church. It also elected a Fraternal Delegate to the Northern General Conference, which met in Pittsburgh in 1848. The Northerners refused to receive the offer of fraternity and the church remained divided until reunification in 1939.

 

1848 saw the conclusion of the Mexican war and the discovery of gold in California.     The following year, 1849, Zachary Taylor became the 12th President of the U.S.

 

In 1849-50, 56 members of Third Street M. E. (Methodist Episcopal) Church, South withdrew and built a new church, on 4th Street, known originally as Fourth Street Station. This church later became known as Court Street Methodist when the name of the street changed. One reason for the separation was the desire of the withdrawn members to have an organ, which the majority held to be evil. The minutes of the Third Street M. E. Church Quarterly Conference stated Fifty-six members have withdrawn from this church to build one upon the hill to serve the devil in. In 1850 President Taylor died and was succeeded by Millard Fillmore.

1850-1860:

The 1850s began with California being admitted to the union as a state. In 1852, Lynchburg was declared to be a city by the Virginia General Assembly, and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin was published.

 

Franklin Pierce became the 14th President in 1853 and in the following year Congress repealed the Missouri Compromise. Tensions between pro and anti slavery factions were inflamed. The country was heading into a dangerous era. Also in 1853 the Virginia Annual Conference met at Court Street M. E. Church, South.

 

1855 saw the beginning of a Methodist Protestant college for men in Lynchburg, the first such college in the South. It was called Lynchburg College and had Gothic military-style buildings similar to those of VMI in an area that became known as College Hill. The college lasted for only six sessions after which many of its students and faculty marched off to war. The buildings later served as a military hospital. Hall Campus Center at the present Lynchburg College houses a bronze memorial plaque, which commemorates this first but short­lived Lynchburg College. In that same year Third Street M. E. Church changed its name to Centenary M. E. Church, South. In 1855 Lynchburg was second only to New Bedford, Massachusetts in per-capita wealth. Lynchburg's wealth was built on the manufacture of plug tobacco.

 

On April 6, 1859, the cornerstone of a new Centenary was laid across the street at a site now occupied by the parking lot of Schewel's Furniture Store. The new building was dedicated May 2, 1860. This is the building that in the 1940s was moved to Memorial Avenue to become the present Parkview United Methodist Church. At the time of its dedication it was considered to be the finest church building in the Virginia Conference.

The growing tension between North and South was exacerbated in October of 1859 when John Brown and a body of men briefly captured the United States Armory and Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. U. S. Marines led by Lt. Col. Robert E. Lee, Lieutenants Green of the Marines and J. E. B. Stuart of the Army foiled this action the next day. Brown was tried and convicted of treason and insurrection. He was executed on December 2, 1859, after which tensions eased for a time. 1859 saw the meeting in Lynchburg of the Virginia Annual Conference of the M. E. Church, South as well as the organization of local militia units.

1860- 1866

In 1861 the hostilities that many feared commenced in the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina. A town meeting held at Old Centenary voted to ratify Virginia's severing of political relations with the federal government. Students at Old Lynchburg College raised the Confederate flag on April 6, 1861. The stage was set for what was to become a time of privation, fear, suffering and misery such as the citizens of Lynchburg and Virginia had not before known. Because of its three railroads in addition to the James River-Kanawha Canal Lynchburg quickly became a military supply center and a garrison town, an assembly center for troops from throughout the South. After the first battles in Northern Virginia, Lynchburg also became a military hospital town with as many as eight hospitals before the end of the war in 1865. In addition to the general hospitals, Dr. John J. Terrell in 1862 set up a smallpox hospital at Pest House just outside the Methodist cemetery (Old City Cemetery). The city was overcrowded with troops on their way to battle and wounded troops returned from battle. The hospitals were overfull and disease was rampant.

 

On June 6, 1864, General Grant issued orders for General David Hunter to move on Lynchburg with four divisions and an artillery company. General Hunter, commander of the Department of West Virginia, was ordered to take the city and to destroy the railroads serving it. General Hunter's forces marched from Staunton by way of Lexington and Buchanan. En route they suffered the harassing actions of Confederate cavalry under General John McCausland. In Lynchburg, the walking wounded and civilians were manning the defenses of the city. Major Confederate units led by Generals Imboden, Breckinridge, and Early reinforced them. General Hunter had made Sandusky, the home of George Christian Hutter, and his headquarters had a hole cut in the roof for a lookout station to observe Lynchburg. On June 17, 1864, General Hunter began an artillery attack. The next day General Jubal Early responded with infantry and that night Hunter's forces began to withdraw. Early pursued Hunter into West Virginia. When the Union forces left, George Hutter found himself in possession of a barn full of dead and wounded Union solders, a hole in his roof, and a porch that had been pulled down by the Federal horses tied to it. Lynchburg saw no more Federal troops, other than wounded and prisoners, until Federal Occupation Forces entered the city unopposed on April 10, 1865, the day after General Lee surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox Court House. On April 12, Lynchburg's Mayor Branch yielded control of the city to Union General Ronald S. Mackenzie. Lynchburg was the only major city in Virginia to be structurally untouched by the war.

On April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln. The following September several pastors met in the study of Dr. Leroy M. Lee of Centenary Church to plan for free public schools for the city. Union General N. M. Curtis provided $1,000 in collected fines and offered to provide other needed funds. Lynchburg soon had four public schools with 500 white students, and two black schools. The war has been romanticized in our day, but for the folks who experienced it, it was a very bad time.

 

In 1866 the second pipe organ to be used in a city church was installed at Court Street M. E. Church, South. One wonders if the dedication service included a response to the 1849 Third Street Station Quarterly Conference prediction.