character, he was conservative enough to cling to the good of the past
and radical enough to give hospitality to every new idea which was
calculated to benefit and make life noble and better. Mr. Thomas, in
laying the foundation of his education, was thoughtful enough to enter
a manual labor school, where he had the double advantage of getting
an education and learning a trade, through which he was enabled to
rely on himself without asking aid from any one, which in itself was
an education in manliness, self-respect and self-reliance, that he
could not have obtained had he been the protege of the wealthiest
philanthropist in the land. As he had fine mechanical skill and
ingenuity, he became an excellent carpenter. But it is one thing to have
a trade and another thing to have an opportunity to exercise that trade.
It was a time when a number of colored churches were being erected. To
build large and even magnificent churches seemed to be a ruling passion
with the colored people. Their homes might be very humble, their walls
bare of pictured grace, but by united efforts they could erect large and
handsome churches in which they had a common possession and it was one
of the grand satisfactions of freedom that they were enabled to build
their own churches and carry on their own business without being
interfered with, and overlooked by a class of white ecclesiastics whose
presence was a reminder of their implied inferiority. The church of
which Mr. Thomas was a member was about to erect a costly edifice. The
trustees would probably have willingly put the work in the hands of a
colored man, had there been a sufficient number to have done the work,
but they did not seem to remember that white prejudice had barred the
Northern workshops against the colored man, that slavery, by degrading
and monopolizing labor had been the means of educating colored men in
the South to be good mechanics, and that a little pains and search on
their part might have brought to light colored carpenters in the South
who would have done the work as efficiently as those whom they employed,