The Methodist Church was the official name adopted by the Methodist denomination formed in the United States by the reunion on May 10, 1939, of the northern and southern factions of the Methodist Episcopal Church (which had split earlier in 1844 over the issue of slavery and the impending Civil War in America. During the War Between the States of 1861-1865, the denomination was known briefly as The Methodist Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America) along with the earlier separated Methodist Protestant Church of 1828.