n's
father became an ardent friend of the slaves. In the Webster
meeting-house the boy attended a gathering at which a theological
student gave an address, using an illustration in the peroration which
made a lasting impression upon the youthful mind. At a country
barn-raising, the frame was partly up, but the strength of the raisers
was gone. "It won't go, it won't go," was the cry. An old man who was
making pins threw down his axe, and shouted, "It will go," and put his
shoulder to a post, and it did go. So would it be with anti-slavery.

The boy Carleton became an ardent abolitionist from this time forth.
He read the _Liberator_, _Herald of Freedom_, _Emancipator_, and all
the anti-slavery tracts and pamphlets which he could get hold of. In
his bedroom, he had hanging on the wall the picture of a negro in
chains. The last thing he saw at night, and the first that met his
eyes in the morning, was this picture, with the words, "Am I not a man
and a brother?"

With their usual conservatism, the churches generally were hostile to
the movement and methods of the anti-slavery agitation. There was an
intense prejudice against the blacks. The only negro in town was a
servant girl, who used to sit solitary and alone in the colored
people's pew in the gallery. When three families of black folks moved
into a deserted house in Boscawen, near Beaver Dam Brook, and their
children made their appearance in Corser Hill school, a great
commotion at once ensued in the town. After the Sunday evening
prayer-meeting, which was for "the conversion of the world," it was
agreed by the legal voters that "if the niggers persisted in attending
school," it should be discontinued. Accordingly the children left the
Corser Hill school, and went into what was, "religiously speaking," a
heathen district, where, however, the prejudice against black people
was not so strong, and there were received into the school.

Thereupon, out of pure devotion to principle, Carleton's father
protested against the action of the Corser Hill people, and, to show
his sympathy, gave employment to the negroes even when he did not need
their services. Society was against the Africans, and they needed
help. They were not particularly nice in their ways, nor were they
likely to improve while all the world was against them. Mr. Coffin's
idea was to improve them.

About this time Whittier's poems, especially those depicting slave
life, had a great influence upon young Ca