The Rev. Thomas Asbury Morris was elected to the Episcopacy of the M.E. Church by the 1836 General Conference. He was diligent and faithful in the discharge of all his duties, traveling extensively through the circuit of the Annual Conferences, which then embraced the whole of the settled part of the U.S.A. In 1844, when the church divided North and South over the issue of slavery, Bishop Morris remained in the Methodist Episcopal Church (the northern branch), notwithstanding that Virginia was his native State. Needless to say, he regretted the separation deeply. The division was healed in 1939 when the M.E. Church, the M.E. Church, South, and the M.P. Church reunited to form the Methodist Church. In 1968 the Methodist Church merged with the Evangelical United Brethren Church to form the United Methodist Church. For sixteen years of his thirty-six total years in the Episcopacy, Bishop Morris was Senior Bishop of his denomination (following the death of Bishop Waugh in 1858). He was practical, witty, and blunt, but kind. His spirit was said to be indomitable, and he possessed charming simplicity, both of taste and manner.