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.

The Conference of 1860 was held Sept. 26th, at Janesville, Bishop Scott presiding.  At this session the Conference received Rev. I.L.  Hauser, and he was sent as a Missionary to India.

Brother Hauser is of Austrian, German and French descent.  His mother’s family were German, and the Hauser name is over six hundred years old in Vienna, Austria.  His grandmother on his father’s side was directly descended from one of the Huguenot families driven out of France by the revocation of the edict of Nantes.  Coming to America, the family settled in Pennsylvania, where Brother Hauser was born, in 1834.  His family came to Wisconsin and settled at Delavan in 1850.  He graduated from Lawrence University in 1860.  During his senior year he was President of the College Missionary Society, and when writing to Rev. Dr. Durbin, requesting him to preach the annual sermon at Commencement, he stated that he would soon be through College and be ready for duty, but he did not know just what it was, and wished advice.  The reply came for him to send the name of the Pastor of the Church.  The names of Rev. M. Himebaugh, Pastor, and Rev. Dr. Knox, one of the Professors, were sent.  Three days after his graduation, having reached his home, he received a letter from Bishop Simpson, asking him to come at once to Evanston.  From there the Bishop sent him to the Erie Conference, then in session at Erie, Penn., where he was ordained and appointed to the Mission in India.

Returning to Wisconsin, he was united in marriage with Miss Jeannette Shepherd, of Kenosha, Sept. 13th.  Starting for their field of labor, they sailed from Boston on the vessel Sea King, and after a tedious and stormy voyage of one hundred and thirty-eight days, they reached Calcutta.  From there, after an eleven days’ journey of one thousand and three miles up the valley of the Ganges, they arrived at Bijnour, forty-five miles from where the river Ganges flows out of the mountains into the plains of India.  Here they labored six years, their field comprising a District of nineteen hundred square miles, with a population of nearly one million, being fifty-four miles from the nearest Mission Station.