Orange Scott

Orange Scott (February 13, 1800 – July 31, 1847) was an American Methodist Episcopal minister, Presiding Elder, and District President. He presided over the convention that organized the Wesleyan Methodist Connexion in 1843, having separated from the Methodist Episcopal Church. As an abolitionist, Orange Scott stated that "If slavery be a moral evil, the conclusion is irresistible that it ought to be immediately abandoned."

Early life Orange Scott experienced convicting grace while working in a field and experienced the New Birth at a camp meeting at the age of twenty.

Rev. Scott: "I assumed the position that the principle of slavery—-the principle which justifies holding and treating the human species as property, is morally wrong—-or, in other words, that it is a sin. The principle, I contended, aside from all circumstances, is evil, ONLY EVIL, and that CONTINUALLY! I said, no hand could sanctify it—-no circumstances could change it from bad to good. It was a reprobate—-too bad to be converted—-not subject to the law of God, neither indeed could be. I admitted that circumstances might palliate, and circumstances might aggravate, but no circumstances could justify the principle." "He who has made of one blood, all nations of men to dwell on the earth' [Acts 17:26] must look with disapprobation upon such a system of complicated wrongs, as American slavery... abolition is from above (of which I have no more doubt than of the truth of Christianity)..."

Along with three others, Orange Scott published in 1843 in the True Wesleyan (a periodical founded by him and Jotham Horton), an announcement to hold A Wesleyan Anti-Slavery Convention at the Methodist church in Andover, Massachusetts with the purpose of planning the formation of a separate denomination "free from Episcopacy and Slavery".