Thomas King Carroll, like many another Maryland planter, was fully convinced that in itself slavery was wrong. The early settlers of Maryland would gladly have excluded it, but the institution was forced upon them by the mother country, the English monarch and his court deriving large incomes from the sale of slaves and canceling every law made by the early settlers to prevent their introduction into the colony. Slavery had now become a settled institution, on which the whole social fabric was built, and individual proprietors, however they might disapprove of the system, could see no way to change it. All that Thomas King Carroll knew how to do was to seek as far as possible the happiness and welfare of his slaves, and slavery showed itself on the Kingston plantation in its mildest and most attractive form. Not much money was made usually upon plantations, but everything was produced upon the estate that was needed to feed and clothe the great group of dependents. And this was the state of things at Kingston Hall. There was Uncle Nathan, the butler, whose wife was Aunt Susan, the dairywoman; Uncle Davy, the shoemaker; Saul, the blacksmith; Mingo, the old body servant of Colonel Carroll; Fortune, the coachman, etc., etc.--all very powerful men. Every trade was represented upon the estate. There were blacksmith shops; there were shoemakers, tanners, weavers, dyers, etc. All the goods worn by the servants, male and female, were manufactured on the place. The wool was sheared from the sheep, and went through every process needed to produce the linsey-woolsey garments of men and women. The women were allowed to choose the colors of their dresses, and the wool was dyed in accordance with their tastes. Two of these dresses were allowed for a winter's wear, and each woman was furnished with a new calico print for Sundays. There were few local preachers among them at that time, but two were noticeable during the childhood of the Carroll children, Ethan Howard and Uncle Saul. And there was an Uncle Remus, too, in Fortune, the coachman, who told the children the stories of Brer Rabbit and the Tar-baby quite as effectively as the Uncle Remus of our popular magazines. The servants had their own rivalries and class distinctions. One portion of the house servants prided themselves as being the old servants--born on the place. Another group plumed themselves as having come in with the "Mistis," and having seen outside regions and a wider range of life. But all the house servants considered themselves vastly superior to the field hands and treated them with condescension. The house servants, though slaves, in fact, were absolute despots in their own department. The Carroll children would not have dared to touch a knife or a fork without the permission of the butler, and if they had attempted to enter the cellar or the dairy without leave from their respective guardians a revolutionary war would have been the result.