The plea was formulated twice, independently, within five years, by men who did not know each other. Barton W. Stone, a Presbyterian minister whose Cane Ridge revival of 1801 had drawn thousands into the Kentucky woods, found himself and four colleagues at odds with their synod over Calvinist subscription. In 1804 they dissolved the presbytery they had formed, in a document titled its Last Will and Testament which willed that the Springfield Presbytery sink into union with the body of Christ at large, and took no name but Christian.
Thomas Campbell, a Scots-Irish Presbyterian who arrived in Pennsylvania in 1807, was censured for admitting Presbyterians of other synods to communion, and answered with the Declaration and Address of 1809, holding that the church of Christ on earth is essentially, intentionally and constitutionally one, that nothing should be required as an article of faith which is not as old as the New Testament, and that the opinions and inventions of men are the cause of division rather than its cure. His son Alexander Campbell turned the argument into a career, debating Presbyterians, Catholics and the sceptic Robert Owen, and publishing periodicals that carried the plea across the American frontier. The two movements recognized each other and united at Lexington, Kentucky, in 1832, joining Stone's Christians to the Campbells' Disciples on a handshake between Barton Stone and John Smith rather than on any agreed constitution, which was consistent with the plea and stored up trouble for later.