would sit and humbly supplicate him to instil into me,
that which neither devils nor tyrants could remove, only with my
life--for the Africans to acquire learning in this country, makes
tyrants quake and tremble on their sandy foundation. Why what is the
matter? Why, they know that their infernal deeds of cruelty will be
made known to the world. Do you suppose one man of good sense and
learning would submit himself, his father, mother, wife and children,
to be slaves to a wretched man like himself, who, instead of
compensating him for his labours, chains, handcuffs and beats him and
family almost to death, leaving life enough in them, however, to work
for, and call him master? No! no! he would cut his devilish throat
from ear to ear, and well do slaveholders know it. The bare name of
educating the coloured people, scares our cruel oppressors almost to
death. But if they do not have enough to be frightened for yet, it
will be, because they can always keep us ignorant, and because God
approbates their cruelties, with which they have been for centuries
murdering us. The whites shall have enough of the blacks, yet, as true
as God sits on his throne in heaven.

Some of our brethren are so very full of learning that you cannot
mention any thing to them which they do not know better than
yourself!!--nothing is strange to them!!--they knew every thing years
ago!--if any thing should be mentioned in company where they are,
immaterial how important it is respecting us or the world, if they had
not divulged it; they make light of it, and affect to have known it
long before it was mentioned, and try to make all in the room, or
wherever you may be, believe that your conversation is nothing--not
worth hearing!! All this is the result of ignorance and ill-breeding;
for a man of good breeding, sense, and penetration, if he had heard a
subject told twenty times over and should happen to be in company
where one should commence telling it again, he would wait with
patience on its narrator, and see if he would tell it as it was told
in his presence before--paying the most strict attention to what is
said, to see if any more light will be thrown on the subject; for all
men are not gifted alike in telling, or even hearing the most simple
narration. These ignorant, vicious, and wretched men, contribute
almost as much injury to our body as tyrants themselves, by doing so
much for the promotion of ignorance amongst us; for they, making such
pr