Our feelings were more alike than our opinions.

All, however, were ready to act, when a feasible plan should be proposed.

"Show us _how_ the thing is to be done," said they, "and all is clear." We were all, except Sandy, quite free from slaveholding priestcraft.

It was in vain that we had been taught from the pulpit at St.Michael's, the duty of obedience to our masters; to recognize God as the author of our enslavement; to regard running away an offense, alike against God and man; to deem our enslavement a merciful and beneficial arrangement; to esteem our condition, in this country, a paradise to that from which we had been snatched in Africa; to consider our hard hands and dark color as God's mark of displeasure, and as pointing us out as the proper{213} subjects of slavery; that the relation of master and slave was one of reciprocal benefits; that our work was not more serviceable to our masters, than our master's thinking was serviceable to us.

I say, it was in vain that the pulpit of St.Michael's had constantly inculcated these plausible doctrine.