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 along with the earlier separated Methodist Protestant Church of 1828. The Methodist Episcopal Church had split in 1844 over the issue of slavery and the impending Civil War in America. During the American Civil War, the southern denomination was known briefly as the Methodist Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America.