I never knew him to deny such a request, and yet, in those cases where the slave did not ask it, he never required him to be married by a minister.

Of course, no Bibles, Tracts, or religious books of any kind, were ever given to the slaves; and no ministers or religious instructors were ever known to visit our plantation at any time, either in sickness or in health.

When a slave was sick, my master being himself a physician, sometimes attended, and sometimes he called other physicians.

Slaves frequently sickened and died, but I never knew any provision made to administer to them the comforts, or to offer to them the hopes of the gospel, or to their friends after their death.
* * * * * _There is no one feature of slavery to which the mind recurs with more gloomy impressions, than to its disastrous influence upon the families of the masters, physically, pecuniarily, and mentally._ It seems to destroy families as by a powerful blight, large and opulent slave-holding families, often vanish like a group of shadows at the third or fourth generation.

This fact arrested my attention some years before I escaped from slavery, and of course before I had any enlightened views of the moral character of the system.