CHAPTER VI.
JOIN CHURCH AND MAKE NEW ENDEAVORS TO KEEP SABBATH .-- AGE, 15.
In the year 1800, the Covenanter church of this country said in her synod: "Slavery and Christianity are incompatible," and never relaxed her discipline which forbade fellowship with slave-holders--so I was brought up an abolitionist.

I was still a child when I went through Wilkins' township collecting names to a petition for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.

Here, in a strictly orthodox Presbyterian community, I was everywhere met by the objections: "Niggers have no souls," "The Jews held slaves," "Noah cursed Canaan," and these points I argued from house to house, occasionally for three years, and made that acquaintance which led to my being sent for in cases of sickness and death, before I had completed my sixteenth year.

In this, I in some measure took the place long filled by mother, who was often a substitute for doctor and preacher.
Looking back at her life, I think how little those know of Calvinists who regard them merely as a class of autocrats, conscious of their own election to glory, and rejoicing in the reprobation of all others; for I have never known such humble, self-distrustful people as I have found in that faith.

Mother, whose life was full of wisdom and good works, doubted, even to the last, her own acceptance with God.