He always held that taking someone's God-given right to freedom was contrary to the preaching and beliefs of the Church. Additionally, some of the first emigrants to the newly discovered lands (North America) were themselves slaves and were white. One of the main reasons they immigrated to North America was to escape religious persecution. The political situation didn't help either; too much support for the fight against slavery and the Church could lose much-needed support from the wealthy faithful. The institution failed to actively combat the problem of slavery, but instead focused its efforts on making slavery more "tolerable" for slaves. After all, most southern churchgoers were white slave owners and/or supported slavery in one way or another and economic factors benefited from this. In the North, the Presbyterian Church had deplored the question of blacks and religion; they were never able or unwilling to tackle the problem at its source. In the North, free blacks enjoyed greater religious freedom and were allowed to attend churches or form their own congregations. There was another phenomenon that affected the lives of slaves on plantations. Most owners controlled every aspect of their slaves, including religion. Owners used the gospel as a method of social control to explain to slaves why they should obey their masters (according to God) and instill and foster the belief that they should serve and be faithful to their masters.