Like many other Americans, Benjamin Tucker Tanner approached Christmas 1860 with both rejoicing for the religious celebration and trepidation over the troubled state of the country. South Carolina had voted to secede from the United States just days earlier, and it appeared that after decades of political turmoil, the nation was indeed on the brink of civil war. For Tanner, a powerful church leader and later a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the decisive issue was clear: slavery.