"Now let us praise the Lord,
With body, soul and spirit,
Who doth such wondrous things,
Beyond our sense and merit."
The singing was frequently interrupted with the tears and sobbings of the melted people, until finally it was wholly arrested, and a tumult of emotion overwhelmed the congregation.
During the day, repeated meetings were held. At eleven o'clock, the people assembled in vast numbers. There were at least a thousand persons around the chapel, who could not get in. For once the house of God suffered violence, and the violent took it by force. After all the services of the day, the people went again to the missionaries in a body, and petitioned to have a meeting in the evening.
At Grace Bay, the people, all dressed in white, assembled in a spacious court in front of the Moravian chapel. They formed a procession and walked arm in arm into the chapel. Similar scenes occurred at all the chapels and at the churches also. We were told by the missionaries that the dress of the negroes on that occasion was uncommonly simple and modest. There was not the least disposition of gaiety.
We were also informed by planters and missionaries in every part of the island, that there was not a single dance known of, either day or night, nor so much as a fiddle played. There were no riotous assemblies, no drunken carousals. It was not in such channels that the excitement of the emancipated flowed. They were as far from dissipation and debauchery, as they were from violence and carnage. GRATITUDE was the absorbing emotion. From the hill-tops, and the valleys, the cry of a disenthralled people went upward like the sound of many waters, "Glory to God, glory to God."
The testimony of the planters corresponds fully with that of the missionaries.
Said R.B. Eldridge, Esq., after speaking of the number emancipated, "Yet this vast body, (30,000,) glided out of slavery into freedom with the utmost tranquillity."
Dr. Daniell observed, that after so prodigious a revolution in the condition of the negroes, he expected that some irregularities would ensue; but he had been entirely disappointed. He also said that he anticipated some relaxation from labour during the week following emancipation. But he found his hands in the field early on Monday morning, and not one missing. The same day he received word from another estate, of which he was proprietor,[[A]] that the negroes had to a man refused to go to the field. He immediately rode to the estate and found the people standing with their hoes in their hands doing nothing. He accosted them in a friendly manner: "What does this mean, my fellows, that you are not at work this morning?" They immediately replied, "It's not because we don't want to work, massa, but we wanted to see you first and foremost to know what the bargain would be." As soon as that matter was settled, the whole body of negroes turned out cheerfully, without a moment's cavil.
[Footnote [A]: It is not unusual in the West Indies for proprietors to commit their own estates into the hands of managers; and be themselves, the managers of other men's estates.]
Mr. Bourne, of Millar's, informed us that the largest gang he had ever seen in the field on his property, turned out the week after emancipation.