the abolitionist resolution. Meade's last will and testament contains no explicit bequests of slaves, although it does direct (among other bequests) his executor to spend $200 to purchase tracts from the Evangelical Knowledge Society, the American Tract Society and the American Sunday School Union to be distributed among descendants of his brothers R.K. Meade and David Meade, as well as $500 to (ACS missionary) Rev. Charles Wesley Andrews "to be expended in the manner directed in a paper or papers accompanying this will", as well as refers to two farms (Mountain View previously purchased by his son Philip Nelson Meade but who had not received a deed, and the adjacent Browers Farm and land in Missouri given to his three sons jointly with the expectation of sale and division between them). Confederate bishop Meade fought against Virginians who threatened secession after the election of President Abraham Lincoln, preaching at Millwood against the looming civil war on June 13, nearly two months after Virginia's secession. Still, Meade believed in state's rights and acquiesced in his beloved Commonwealth's ultimate decision to secede. Although near retirement (John Johns having become his suffragan decades earlier), Meade became a leading figure in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America. In 1859, shortly after John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry (not very far down the historic Shenandoah Valley road from Meade's familial home and farm), the Episcopal Church held its General Convention in Richmond. There, the elderly Rt. Rev. Meade helped other southern bishops consecrate Henry Champlin Lay as a missionary bishop of the Southwest. Two years later, Bishop Meade as the senior seceding bishop, led the convention in Columbia, South Carolina in October 1861, which drew up the incorporation documents. However, he did not travel to Montgomery, Alabama for the preliminary organizational meeting July 3–6, 1861. Thus, Bishop Stephen Elliott of Georgia became the Presiding Bishop of the Confederate Episcopal Church. On March 6, 1862, the elderly and infirm bishop returned to Richmond for the last time in order to assist his suffragan and Bishop Elliott in consecrating Wilmer's son, Richard Hooker Wilmer, as bishop of Alabama at St. Paul's Church. Bishop Meade had traveled by train from Gordonsville, along with his son, the Rev. Richard K. Meade, although coughing and obviously ill. He arrived at the church in time for the consecration, but afterward was confined to bed at a friend's