"A few minutes before midnight, I requested all the people to kneel down in silent prayer to God, as befitting the solemnity of the hour. I looked down upon them as they knelt. The silence was broken only by sobs of emotion, which it was impossible to repress. The clock began to strike. It was the knell of Slavery in all the British possessions! It proclaimed liberty to eight hundred thousand human beings! When I told them they might rise, what an outburst of joy there was among that mass of people! The clock had ceased to strike, and they were slaves no longer! Mothers were hugging their babes to their bosoms, old white-headed men embracing their children and husbands clasping their wives in their arms. By and by all was still again, and I gave out a hymn. You may imagine the feelings with which these people, just emerging into freedom, shouted 'Send the glad tidings o'er the sea! His chains are broke, the slave is free!'" But though the dreaded 1st of August passed away so peacefully and pleasantly, the planters could not get rid of the idea that their laborers would not work after they were free. Mr. Daniell, who managed several estates in Antigua, talking of the subject, two years afterward, with an American gentleman from Kentucky, said: "I expected some irregularities would follow such a prodigious change in the condition of the negroes. I supposed there would be some relaxation from labor during the week that followed emancipation; but on Monday morning, I found all my hands in the field, not one missing. The same day I received a message from another estate, of which I was proprietor, that the negroes, to a man, had refused to go into the field. I immediately rode to the estate, and found the laborers, with hoes in their hands, doing nothing. Accosting them in a friendly manner, I inquired, 'What is the meaning of this? How is it that you are not at work this morning?' They immediately replied, 'It's not because we don't want to work, massa; but we wanted to see you, first and foremost, to know what the _bargain_ would be.' As soon as that matter was settled, the whole body of negroes turned out cheerfully." Another manager declared that the largest gang he had ever seen in the field, on his property, turned out the week after emancipation. And such in fact was the universal testimony of the managers throughout Antigua. In the days of Slavery, it had always been customary to order out the militia during the Christmas holidays, when the negroes were in the habit of congregating in large numbers, to enjoy the festivities of the season. But the December after emancipation, the Governor issued a proclamation, that, "_in consequence of the abolition of Slavery_," there was no further need of taking that precaution. And it is a fact that there have been no soldiers out at Christmas from that day to this.