their own packtrains, laden with peltries and with kegs of ginseng, and
accompanied by droves of loose horses. He either followed some
well-beaten mountain trail or opened a new road through the wilderness
as seemed to him best at the moment. [Footnote: _Do., passim._]

Boone's creed in matters of morality and religion was as simple and
straightforward as his own character. Late in life he wrote to one of
his kinsfolk: "All the religion I have is to love and fear God, believe
in Jesus Christ, do all the good to my neighbors and myself that I can,
and do as little harm as I can help, and trust on God's mercy for the
rest." The old pioneer always kept the respect of red man and white, of
friend and foe, for he acted according to his belief. Yet there was one
evil to which he was no more sensitive than the other men of his time.

Among his accounts there is an entry recording his purchase, for another
man, of a negro woman for the sum of ninety pounds. [Footnote: _3 Do_.,
March 7, 1786.] There was already a strong feeling in the western
settlements against negro slavery, [Footnote: See Journals of Rev. James
Smith.] because of its moral evil, and of its inconsistency with all
true standards of humanity and Christianity, a feeling which continued
to exist and which later led to resolute efforts to forbid or abolish
slave-holding. But the consciences of the majority were too dull, and,
from the standpoint of the white race, they were too shortsighted to
take action in the right direction. The selfishness and mental obliquity
which imperil the future of a race for the sake of the lazy pleasure of
two or three generations prevailed; and in consequence the white people
of the middle west, and therefore eventually of the southwest, clutched
the one burden under which they ever staggered, the one evil which has
ever warped their development, the one danger which has ever seriously
threatened their very existence. Slavery must of necessity exercise the