I learned to pray when very young and kept it up even in my unsaved days.  My white master’s folks knew me to be a praying boy, and asked me—­in 1865—­when the South was about whipped and General Wilson was headed our way—­to pray to God to hold the Yankees back.  Of course, I didn’t have any love for any Yankees—­and haven’t now, for that matter—­but I told my white folks straight-from-the-shoulder that I could not pray along those lines.  I told them flat-footedly that, while I loved them and would do any reasonable praying for them, I could not pray against my conscience:  that I not only wanted to be free, but that I wanted to see all the Negroes freed!

I then told them that God was using the Yankees to scourge the slave-holders just as He had, centuries before, used heathens and outcasts to chastise His chosen people—­the Children of Israel.”

(Here it is to be noted that, for a slave boy of between approximately 15 and 17 years of age, remarkable familiarity with the Old Testament was displayed.)

The Parson then entered into a mild tirade against Yankees, saying: 

“The only time the Northern people ever helped the Nigger was when they freed him.  They are not friends of the Negro and many a time, from my pulpit, have I warned Niggers about going North.  No, sir, the colored man doesn’t belong in the North—–­has no business up there, and you may tell the world that the Reverend W.B.  Allen makes no bones about saying that!  He also says that, if it wasn’t for the influence of the white race in the South, the Negro race would revert to savagery within a year!  Why, if they knew for dead certain that there was not a policeman or officer of the law in Columbus tonight, the good Lord only knows what they’d do tonight”!

When the good Parson had delivered himself as quoted, he was asked a few questions, the answers to which—­as shall follow—­disclose their nature.

“The lowest down Whites of slavery days were the average overseers.  A few were gentlemen, one must admit, but the regular run of them were trash—­commoner than the ’poor white trash’—­and, if possible, their children were worse than their daddies.  The name, ‘overseer’, was a synonym for ‘slave driver’, ‘cruelty’, ‘brutishness’.  No, sir, a Nigger may be humble and refuse to talk outside of his race—­because he’s afraid to, but you can’t fool him about a white man!

And you couldn’t fool him when he was a slave!  He knows a white man for what he is, and he knew him the same way in slavery times.”

Concerning the punishment of slaves, the Reverend said: 

“I never heard or knew of a slave being tried in court for any thing.  I never knew of a slave being guilty of any crime more serious than taking something or violating plantation rules.  And the only punishment that I ever heard or knew of being administered slaves was whipping.

I have personally known a few slaves that were beaten to death for one or more of the following offenses: