Christianity • Protestantism James Andrew was licensed to preach in 1812 in Eliam Methodist Episcopal Church in the South Carolina Annual Conference of the M.E.

[3][4][5] In the 1840s, the bishop's ownership of enslaved people generated controversy within the Methodist Episcopal Church, as the national organization had long opposed slavery.

[6] Bishop Andrew was criticized by the 1844 General Convention and suspended from office until such time as he should end his "connection with slavery."

Southern members disputed the convention's authority to discipline the bishop or to require slave-owning clergy to emancipate the people whom they considered as property.

[9] Andrew's supporters in the Methodist Episcopal Schism argued that he was only an enslaver through marriage and inheritance, thereby absolving him of blame.

[8] The 1840 Census lists Bishop Andrew as a resident of Newton County, Georgia, and the "Slave Owner" of 13 enslaved people.

The Census count of "Slave Inhabitants" under the Three-fifths Compromise was a factor in determining the number of seats states with enslaved populations had in the U.S. House of Representatives and in the Electoral College.

[12] Since there is no written acknowledgment of her preferred name, her descendants and the members of the Black community of Oxford refer to her as either Catherine Boyd or Miss Kitty.

This story was related in Wade's biography of Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, a prominent defender of the institution of slavery who had himself owned dozens of enslaved people.

")[citation needed] The stone tablet states, "Kitty was a slave girl bequeathed to James O. Andrew by Mrs.

While Miss Kitty was allowed many personal freedoms, she remained enslaved by Bishop Andrew until her death at the age of perhaps twenty-nine, in 1851.

[13] Although under the laws of Georgia at that time, Bishop Andrew could have freed Miss Kitty and sent her to a free state,[14] he chose not to do so.

[16] This was part of an emerging recognition of the role of enslaved labor in the history of Emory University and Oxford College.

While the circumstances behind the construction of Miss Kitty's cottage and said plaque are not yet common knowledge on Oxford campus, steps are being taken to bring James Andrew's involvement into the light.

Mark Auslander, a former professor at Oxford college and renowned anthropologist, spent many years researching Catherine Boyd and ultimately wrote a book titled "The Accidental Slaveowner: Revisiting a Myth of Race & Finding An American Family".

He explains that "White members of the community [are] invested in the story that Miss Kitty was a loyal happy mammy and servant.

Another version of Miss Kitty's story sees her as possibly the daughter of James O. Andrew by another enslaved woman, or perhaps even his coerced mistress.

Allowing the conferences to make accommodations for slavery essentially reversed the anti-slavery heritage of the church, at least in the South.

But strongly abolitionist Northern delegates sponsored a resolution asking Bishop Andrew to "desist" from exercising the Episcopal office so long as he continued to enslave people.

The next year representatives of the Southern Annual Conferences met in Louisville, Kentucky, to organize their own denomination.

The first General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South met in Petersburg, Virginia, in 1846,[21] and Andrew was invited to preside.