Late in life he wrote to one of his kinsfolk: "All the religion I have is to love and fear God, believe in Jesus Christ, do all the good to my neighbors and myself that I can, and do as little harm as I can help, and trust on God's mercy for the rest." The old pioneer always kept the respect of red man and white, of friend and foe, for he acted according to his belief.

Yet there was one evil to which he was no more sensitive than the other men of his time.
Among his accounts there is an entry recording his purchase, for another man, of a negro woman for the sum of ninety pounds.

[Footnote: _3 Do_., March 7, 1786.] There was already a strong feeling in the western settlements against negro slavery, [Footnote: See Journals of Rev.James Smith.] because of its moral evil, and of its inconsistency with all true standards of humanity and Christianity, a feeling which continued to exist and which later led to resolute efforts to forbid or abolish slave-holding.

But the consciences of the majority were too dull, and, from the standpoint of the white race, they were too shortsighted to take action in the right direction.

The selfishness and mental obliquity which imperil the future of a race for the sake of the lazy pleasure of two or three generations prevailed; and in consequence the white people of the middle west, and therefore eventually of the southwest, clutched the one burden under which they ever staggered, the one evil which has ever warped their development, the one danger which has ever seriously threatened their very existence.