Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/187

 

Mr Carleton's servants, or rather the servants that had been Mr Carleton's, but who had now become the property of general Carter, was one named Thomas. While we had lived together at Carleton-Hall, I had contracted an intimacy with him, which we still kept up. He was of unmixed African blood, with good features, a stout muscular frame, and on several accounts, a very remarkable man.

His bodily strength, and his capacity for enduring privation and fatigue, were very uncommon; but the character of his mind was still more so. His passions were strong and even violent; but what is very rare among slaves, he had them completely under his control; and in all his words and actions he was as gentle as a lamb. The truth was, that when quite young, he had been taken in hand by certain Methodists, who lived and labored in his neighborhood; and so strong and lasting were the impressions which their teaching made upon him, and so completely had he imbibed their doctrines, that it seemed as if several of the most powerful principles of human nature had been eradicated from his bosom.

His religious teachers had thoroughly inculcated into a soul, naturally proud and high-spirited, that creed of passive obedience and patient long-suffering, which under the sacred name of religion, has been often found more potent than _ whips or fetters, in upholding tyranny, and subduing the resistance of the superstitious and trembling slave. "They had taught him, and he believed, that God had made him a servant; and that it was his duty to obey his master, and be contented with his lot. Whatever cruelties or indignities the unprovoked insolence of unlimited authority might inflict upon him, it was his duty to submit in humble silence; and if his master smote him on one cheek, he was to turn to him the other also. This, with "Thomas, was not a mere form of words run through with, and then forgotten. In all my experience, I have never known a man