Dissent and reform in the first two decades of the nineteenth century have been almost totally ignored in American Methodist history. This dissertation's goal is to expand that story by examining four groups in the north and east who broke away from the Methodist Episcopal Church during this time. Each one created a church polity faithful to their understanding of "primitive Methodism."

First among these groups was a short-lived secession in Philadelphia in 1800, who objected to alterations in, and abrogations of, the provisions of the Methodist Discipline. In 1803 a more enduring secession arose in Monmouth County, New Jersey, calling themselves "Independent Methodists". Ten years later, two more groups departed from mainstream Methodism. In the Catskill Mountains of New York State, a small group called the Samaritans seceded over definitions of sanctification, shortly joining with another group in Vermont. In 1814, a coalition coming from Southern Vermont, nearby New York State, plus delegates from Pittsfield and Douglas, Massachusetts organized the Reformed Methodist Church. They renounced the episcopal mode of church government, and devised their rules to promote holiness. Their congregational polity developed in conjunction with their republican convictions. Furthermore, they framed the earliest disciplinary articles on sanctification (theology and piety) and pacifism (anti-war) in American Methodism.

The Reformed Methodists evolved from the establishment of a communal farm to then joining the westward expansion following the War of 1812 into Central and Western New York State and into Upper Canada (Ontario). Forging a cooperative agreement with the Independent Methodists, by 1820 this church had grown in numbers and geographical extent, now an organized church that demonstrated its ability to articulate another expression of Methodism in the early republic. It was a small but vibrant church that clearly had prospered after its withdrawal from the Episcopal Methodists, and stood as a viable example of "holiness and a free church government" when the next reform movement of the Methodist Episcopal Church began in 1820.