He was Southern born, inherited slaves, had given them their liberty one by one, and had recently returned from the North, where he had been to see two of them--the last of his household--embark as hired servants with families who were to travel in Europe.
"Some of us asked him about his visit to the North.

Said he, 'I went to church one day, and was enjoying the devotional services, when all at once the minister broke out in prayer for the abolition of slavery.

He presented the South before God as "oppressors," and prayed that they might at once repent, and "break every yoke," and "let the oppressed go free." I took him to be an immediate emancipationist, perhaps peculiar in his views.

But in the afternoon I went into another church, and in prayer the minister began to pray "for all classes and conditions of men among us." I was glad to see, as I thought, charity beginning at home.
But the next sentence took in our whole land; and the next was a downright swoop upon slavery; so that I regarded his previous petitions merely as spiral movements toward the South.

If the good man's petitions had been heard, woe to him and to the North, and to the slaves, to say nothing of ourselves.
"'I stopped after service, and, without at first introducing myself, I asked him if he was in the habit of praying, as he had done to-day, for slave-holders.