American Scenes, and Christian Slavery: A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United StatesDavies, Ebenezer
History
American Scenes, and Christian Slavery: A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States
Davies, Ebenezer
Slavery -- United States; United States -- Description and travel
The Baptist Church is a small place, about 60 feet by 30, without
galleries, except a little one for the singers. When we arrived, a
small Sabbath-school was being conducted in the body of the chapel.
About fifty children were present, of whom not one was coloured. One of
the teachers kindly led us to a pew. It was the third or fourth from
the door. The school, which occupied the part next to the pulpit, was
about to be dismissed. The superintendent got into the "table-pew" to
address the scholars. It was the first time I had had an opportunity of
hearing an address to children in America. In the land of the Todds,
the Abbotts, and the Gallaudets, I expected something very lively and
interesting. But grievous was my disappointment. The address was dull
and lifeless. There was in it neither light nor heat. When the
superintendent had done, an elderly gentleman, shrewd and busy-looking,
having in his hand a black walking-stick and on his neck a black stock,
with shirt-collar turned over it like a white binding (the national
fashion of the Americans), came up, and told the school that the
proprietor of the splendid picture, "The Departure of the Israelites
from Egypt," had requested him to deliver a lecture upon it; that he
had engaged to do so on Monday a-week; and that the scholars and
teachers of that school would be admitted free. I should like (said I
to myself) to hear you: a lecture on the emancipation of those poor
slaves cannot fail to be interesting in the slave-holding city of New
Orleans. The school was now dismissed, and the scholars left to enjoy
their full swing of lawless liberty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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