ious overruling
Providence had been pleased to bring to this land of Freedom another
cargo of benighted heathen to enjoy the blessing of a Gospel
dispensation," and I suppose he fancied he had cheated his Maker, his
congregation, and himself into believing that there was some truth and
decency in the specious words that framed a lie in every clause. Many
ministers were slave owners; Daille--the French Huguenot, Dr. Hopkins,
Dr. Williams, Ezra Stiles, and Jonathan Edwards being noted examples.
The ministers from Eliot down were kind to the blacks, preaching special
sermons to them, and forming religious associations for them. A negro
school for reading, writing, and catechizing was established in Boston
in 1728.

Cotton Mather had a negro worth fifty pounds given him by his
congregation, and that "most notorious benefactor," with his
never-ceasing "essay to doe good," at once, in gratitude for the gift,
devoted the negro to God's service, and made many a noble resolve to
save, through God's grace, his bondsman's soul. It is painful to read at
a later date that he found his unregenerate slave "horribly arrested by
spirits," by which he did not mean captured by the dreaded emissaries of
the devil who pervaded the air of Boston and Salem at that time, but
simply very drunk.

Slaves were more plentiful in Connecticut and Rhode Island than in
Massachusetts. Madam Knight gives a glimpse of Connecticut slave life in
1704, and of awkward table traits in both master and slave as well, when
she says that the negroes were too familiar, were permitted to sit at
the table with the master, and "into the Dish goes the black Hoof as
freely as the white Hand." Hawthorne says of New England slaves:

"They were not excluded from the domestic affections; in families
of middling rank, they had their places at the board; and when the
circle closed around the evening hearth its blaze glowed on their
dark shining faces, intermixed familiarly with their master's
children. It must have contributed to reconcile them to their lot,
that they saw white men and women imported from Europe as they had
been from Africa, and sold, though only for a term of years, yet as
actual slaves to the highest bidder."

In the main, New England slaves were not unhappy, for they were well
treated; and the race has the gift to be merry in the worst of
circumstances. Occasionally one would be brought to the northern land,
one