John Morrison Davidson

“ As a politician he might hope to climb the ladder of power and dignity in the republic easily and rapidly; but the lion of slavery crouched in the way. His father was, unfortunately, a large slave-owner,—a humane man, it is time, but still, like his neighbors, an owner of scores of human chattels. "Few," says Mr. Conway in his "Testimonies concerning Slavery," "are the really peaceful days that I remember having smiled on in my old Virginian home. The outbreaks of the negroes among themselves; the disobediences which the necessary discipline can never suffer to be overlooked ”

“ MR. CONWAY'S inspiration may be questioned, but none will gainsay his total heterodoxy. If he is not a prophet, it is not his fault: he is the least orthodox preacher in London. "His faith has centre everywhere, nor cares to fix itself to form."
The congregation of South-place Chapel, Finsbury, are Nonconformists who non-conform very much. Their Bible is called "The Sacred Anthology,"—a book of ethnical Scriptures, collected and edited by Mr. Conway. The purpose of the work is simply moral. ”

“ The mean whites, like the servile blacks, must be kept in ignorance. It is not, however, so long since representatives of our own "agricultural interests" were in the habit of giving expression to views equally enlightened. But Mr. Conway was not thus to be put down. ”

“ The whole atmosphere of the chapel is "advanced" to such a degree that Unitarians of the older school, when they occasionally enter it, are almost as puzzled as orthodox Trinitarians what to make of it. The average intellectual level of the congregation is, I should imagine, the highest in London. Men and women who could not be induced to listen to any other preacher go readily to hear Mr. Conwa3^ Nowhere will you find a finer collection of human heads; and yet Mr. Conway is not an orator in any sense of the word. ”

“ I have often heard my parents say that the care of slaves had made them prematurely old."
Conway's early education was the best that the neighborhood afforded. As a child he attended several private schools, and subsequently he became a pupil of the Classical and Mathematical Academy in Fredricksburg. Here he made rapid progress, and in due course was entered as an undergraduate of Dickinson College, Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1849. The students were mostly from Maryland and Virginia, with strong pro-slavery sympathies ”