These were mostly the
cast off books of their young masters or mistresses. I taught,
at first, on our own farm. All were impressed with the necessity
of keeping the matter as private as possible, for the fate of the
St. Michael's attempt was notorious, and fresh in the minds of
all. Our pious masters, at St. Michael's, must not know that a
few of their dusky brothers were learning to read the word of
God, lest they should come down upon us with the lash and chain.
We might have met to drink whisky, to wrestle, fight, and to do
other unseemly things, with no fear of interruption from the
saints or sinners of St. Michael's.
But, to meet for the purpose of improving the mind and heart, by
learning to read the sacred scriptures, was esteemed a most
dangerous nuisance, to be instantly stopped. The slaveholders of
St. Michael's, like slaveholders elsewhere, would always prefer
to see the slaves engaged in degrading sports, rather than to see
them acting like moral and accountable beings.
Had any one asked a religious white man, in St. Michael's, twenty
years ago, the names of three men in that town, whose lives were
most after the pattern of our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, the
first three would have been as follows:
GARRISON WEST, _Class Leader_.
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