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A SALUTARY INFLUENCE latter was the Synod of Pennsylvania, which helped to organize the General Synod in 1820, withdrew from that body three years later, and then returned to the fold in 1853. The conservative eastern Pennsylvania churchmen soon began to question the wisdom of their reaffiliation, largely because of the continued unwillingness of the General Synod to commit itself to the Unaltered Augsburg Confession strongly enough to satisfy them. In 1864, three years before the General Council was formed, these conservative Lutherans established their own theological seminary in Philadelphia and called Charles F. Schaeffer, Professor of German Language and Literature at Gettysburg, to join its faculty. Three years later they organized their own college at Allentown and called Frederick A. Muhlenberg, Franklin Professor of Ancient Languages at Gettysburg, to be its president. Both Schaeffer and Muhlenberg had been the first incumbents of their respective chairs at Gettysburg. According to the agreement between the Pennsylvania Synod and Gettysburg College, the former controlled the endowment from which Schaeffer's salary had been paid and had the right to nominate his successors as German professor. According to the act of April 19, 1850, Gettysburg College held the endowment for the Franklin professorship which Muhlenberg occupied, but the synod had the right to nominate his successors. No sooner had Schaeffer resigned and departed for Philadelphia than it became evident that these arrangements, negotiated in the 1850s when the relations between the Pennsylvania Synod and the General Synod were improving, were not going to work as smoothly as intended.240 In April 1865 the Gettysburg trustees, after accepting Schaeffer's resignation and asking the Pennsylvania Synod to nominate his successor, approved a motion offered by Thaddeus Stevens, who was making one of his rare appearances at a board meeting, that they endeavor to gain control of the German professorship endowment, using whatever "ulterior measures might be necessary." Not surprisingly, the synod promptly rejected this proposal and nominated its candidate to succeed Schaeffer. After the trustees voted to defer any action on the nomination until his relationship to the seminary faculty could be clarified (Schaeffer, it should be recalled, taught in both institutions; the synod wanted his successor to devote full time to the College), the candidate withdrew his name from further con- 240There was ill feeling in Gettysburg over Schaeffer's hasty departure, for which he himself was not responsible. As late as August 10, 1864 he wrote to the College trustees that he did not expect to be called upon to leave his position for months, possibly for several years. Seventeen days later the president of the Synod of Pennsylvania informed the College that Schaeffer was being asked to assume his new duties in Philadelphia in a matter of days, which he did. The letters are in the GCA. 38