Note C — Chapter III
Reading edition
The Southern blacks, like all ignorant people, are intensely fanatical on religious subjects. The most trifling occurrences have to their minds a hidden significance, and they believe the Lord speaks to them in signs and dreams, and in almost every event of nature. This superstition, which has been handed down from their savage ancestry, has absolute sway over them, and one readily sees what immense power it would give to some leading, adroit mind, that knew how to use it. By means of it they might be led to the most desperate deeds, fully believing all the while that they were "led ob de Lord."