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FREESTONE pies of the freesoil party. It formed the nu- cleus of the republican party, which was founded in 1856 chiefly from the dissolving whig party. The adoption hy the republicans of the freesoil platform in respect to slavery ended the freesoilers as a distinctive party. FREESTONE, an E. central county of Texas, bounded E. by Trinity river and intersected by Pecan creek ; area, 900 sq. m. ; pop. in 1870, 8,139, of whom 3,368 were colored. It is heavily timbered. The soil is fertile and well watered. Mineral springs exist. The chief productions in 1870 were 197,431 bushels of Indian corn, 26,015 of sweet potatoes, and 6,465 bales of cotton. There were 3,640 horses, 4,931 milch cows, 14,539 other cattle, and 18,- 439 swine. Capital, Fairfield. FREE THINKERS, a name applied to the op- ponents of Christianity in England in the 17th and 18th centuries. Lord Herbert of Cher- bury, Hobbes, Toland, Tindal, Woolston, Chubb, and Anthony Collins were among their most noted writers. Bolingbroke, Shaftesbury, and David Hume were counted among their ablest representatives. They were never an organ- ized sect. The French writers, including Vol- taire, D'Alembert, Diderot, and Helvetius, who labored for the overthrow of Christianity, and who called themselves esprits forts, were in England called free thinkers. FREETOWN, a town of W. Africa, capital of the British colony of Sierra Leone, on the left bank of Sierra Leone river, about 5 m. from the sea; lat. 8 29' N., Ion. 13 9' W. ; pop. estimated at 18,000. It is on an inclined plane, 50 ft. above sea level at high-water mark. The streets are wide, well laid out, and ornamented with rows of orange, lime, banana, or cocoa- nut trees. Several of the houses are commo- dious and substantial stone buildings. The principal public edifices are St. George's church, the church missionary and "Wesleyan mission- ary institutions, the grammar school, market house, custom house, jail, and lunatic asylum. The governor's residence, barracks, and gov- ernment offices are on hills above the town. The navigable entrance of the Sierra Leone river is narrow, there being a large shoal called the Bullom shoal in its centre. FREEWILL BAPTISTS, or Free Baptists, a de- nomination of evangelical Christians in the United States and Canada. Its founder was Benjamin Randall (1749-1808), who was one of Whitefield's hearers at Portsmouth, N. H., Sept. 28, 1770. The impression made by the sermon, and more especially by the tidings of the preacher's death two days later, resulted in his conversion. At first a Congregationalist, he connected himself in 1776 with the Baptist church in South Berwick, Me., and soon after entered the ministry, but was called to account for preaching a doctrine different from that of his brethren. In 1780 he organized in New Durham, N. H., a church holding views simi- lar to his own, which was the nucleus of the new denomination. The distinctive tenets of FREEWILL BAPTISTS 473 Randall and his coadjutors were the doctrines of free salvation and open communion, as op- posed to those of election and close communion held by the Calvinistic Baptists. They also insisted upon the freedom of the will, as essen- tial to man as a subject of moral government, and therefore as inviolable by the divine sov- ereignty, and not to be contravened by any explanation of it. Their opponents styled them " General Provisioners," " Freewill Bap- tists," and "Free Baptists," by the second of which names they have usually been desig- nated, though the last is now preferred in some of their own publications. In govern- ment they are congregational. The first church held a conference once a month, which was call- ed a monthly meeting. "When other churches were formed in neighboring localities, a gen- eral quarterly meeting by delegation was held. As Randall and his associates travelled and ex- tended the denomination through New Hamp- shire and the adjacent states, numerous quar- terly meetings were organized, and yearly meetings were instituted, consisting of dele- gates from associated quarterly meetings. The organization was completed by the institution in 1827 of the general conference, composed of delegates from all the yearly meetings, which convenes once in three years. To all these bodies the laity and clergy are alike eligible, and they all combine the services of public worship with the discussion and decision of questions of business and benevolence. In 1827 a correspondence was opened between the Freewill Baptists of New England and a few churches in North Carolina of similar sen- timents, the result of which was that the lat- ter in 1828 published their records as the "Minutes of the Freewill Baptist Annual Con- ference of North Carolina." they soon num- bered 45 churches and about 3,000 members, and, though never formally united with the denomination in the north, maintained a con- stant correspondence with it. In 1839 Dr. William M. Housley of Kentucky, once a close communion Baptist clergyman, who for doctri- nal reasons had taken a letter of dismission and commendation from his former connection, attended the general conference of the Free- will Baptists at Conneaut, Ohio, and there ap- plied for ordination to the ministry. He had already been admitted to the church in that place. There was a prospect of a large ac- cession to the sect from Kentucky, and a coun- cil reported that Dr. Housley had approved himself qualified for the sacred office, except- ing only that he was a slaveholder. But for this reason alone the council declined to " or- dain him as a minister or fellowship him as a Christian," and the general conference after a spirited discussion voted without opposition " that the decision of the council is highly BB factory." The connection of the denomination with slaveholding churches in North and 8 Carolina was brought before the same conte ence, and was entirely dissolved. From that