[Transcriber's note: This text contains five chapters of T. W. Higgison's'Travellers and Outlaws'. This collection is commonly referred to as'Black Rebellion: five slave revolts'. ]

TRAVELLERS AND OUTLAWS

Episodes In American History

by THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON

With An Appendix Of Authorities

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NOTE

The author would express his thanks to the proprietors and editors of the_Atlantic Monthly_, _Harper's Magazine_, and the _Century_, for theirpermission to reprint such portions of this volume as were originallypublished in those periodicals. 

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 

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CONTENTS. 

THE MAROONS OF JAMAICA

THE MAROONS OF SURINAM

GABRIEL'S DEFEAT

DENMARK VESEY

NAT TURNER'S INSURRECTION

APPENDIX

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THE MAROONS OF JAMAICA

The Maroons! it was a word of peril once; and terror spread along theskirts of the blue mountains of Jamaica when some fresh foray of thoseunconquered guerrillas swept down from the outlying plantations, startledthe Assembly from its order, Gen. Williamson from his billiards, and LordBalcarres from his diplomatic ease, --endangering, according to theofficial statement, "public credit, " "civil rights, " and "the prosperity, if not the very existence, of the country, " until they were "persuaded tomake peace" at last. They were the Circassians of the New World, but theywere black, instead of white; and as the Circassians refused to betransferred from the Sultan to the Czar, so the Maroons refused to betransferred from Spanish dominion to English, and thus their revoltbegan. The difference is, that while the white mountaineers numbered fourhundred thousand, and only defied Nicholas, the black mountaineersnumbered less than two thousand, and defied Cromwell; and while theCircassians, after years of revolt, were at last subdued, the Maroons, onthe other hand, who rebelled in 1655, were never conquered, but only madea compromise of allegiance, and exist as a separate race to-day. 

When Admirals Penn and Venables landed in Jamaica, in 1655, there was nota remnant left of the sixty thousand natives whom the Spaniards had foundthere a century and a half before. Their pitiful tale is told only bythose caves, still known among the mountains, where thousands of humanskeletons strew the ground. In their place dwelt two foreign races, --aneffeminate, ignorant, indolent white community of fifteen hundred, with ablack slave population quite as large and infinitely more hardy andenergetic. The Spaniards were readily subdued by the English: the negroesremained unsubdued. The slaveholders were banished from the island: theslaves only exiled themselves to the mountains; thence the English couldnot dislodge them, nor the buccaneers whom the English employed. And whenJamaica subsided into a British colony, and peace was made with Spain, and the children of Cromwell's Puritan soldiers were beginning to growrich by importing slaves for Roman-Catholic Spaniards, the Maroons stillheld their own wild empire in the mountains, and, being sturdy heathensevery one, practised Obeah rites in approved pagan fashion. 

The word Maroon is derived, according to one etymology, from the Spanishword _Marrano_, a wild boar, --these fugitives being all boar-hunters;according to another, from _Marony_, a river separating French and DutchGuiana, where a colony of them dwelt and still dwells; and by anotherstill, from _Cimarron_, a word meaning untamable, and used alike for apesand runaway slaves. But whether these rebel marauders were regarded asmonkeys or men, they made themselves equally formidable. As early as1663, the Governor and Council of Jamaica offered to each Maroon, whoshould surrender, his freedom and twenty acres of land; but not oneaccepted the terms. During forty years, forty-four Acts of Assembly werepassed in respect to them, and at least a quarter of a million poundssterling were expended in the warfare against them. In 1733, the forceemployed in this service consisted of two regiments of regular troops, and the whole militia of the island; but the Assembly said that "theMaroons had within a few years greatly increased, notwithstanding all themeasures that had been concerted for their suppression, " "to the greatterror of his Majesty's subjects, " and "to the manifest weakening andpreventing the further increase of strength and inhabitants of theisland. "

The special affair in progress, at the time of these statements, wascalled Cudjoe's War. Cudjoe was a gentleman of extreme brevity andblackness, whose full-length portrait can hardly be said to adornDallas's History of the Maroons; but he was as formidable a guerrilla asMarion. Under his leadership, the various bodies of fugitives wereconsolidated into one force, and thoroughly organized. Cudjoe, likeSchamyl, was religious as well as military head of his people; by Obeahinfluence he established a thorough freemasonry among both slaves andinsurgents; no party could be sent forth, by the government, but he knewit in time to lay an ambush, or descend with fire and sword on the regionleft unprotected. He was thus always supplied with arms and ammunition;and as his men were perfect marksmen, never wasted a shot, and neverrisked a battle, his forces naturally increased, while those of hisopponents were decimated. His men were never captured, and never took aprisoner; it was impossible to tell when they were defeated; in dealingwith them, as Pelissier said of the Arabs, "peace was not purchased byvictory;" and the only men who could obtain the slightest advantageagainst them were the imported Mosquito Indians, or the "Black Shot, " acompany of Government negroes. For nine full years this particular warcontinued unchecked, Gen. Williamson ruling Jamaica by day and Cudjoe bynight. 

The rebels had every topographical advantage, for they held possession ofthe "Cockpits. " Those highlands are furrowed through and through, as byan earthquake, with a series of gaps or ravines, resembling theCalifornia cañons, or those similar fissures in various parts of theAtlantic States, known to local fame either poetically as ice-glens, orsymbolically as purgatories. These Jamaica chasms vary from two hundredyards to a mile in length; the rocky walls are fifty or a hundred feethigh, and often absolutely inaccessible, while the passes at each endadmit but one man at a time. They are thickly wooded, wherever trees cangrow; water flows within them; and they often communicate with oneanother, forming a series of traps for an invading force. Tired andthirsty with climbing, the weary soldiers toil on, in single file, without seeing or hearing an enemy, up the steep and winding path theytraverse one "cockpit, " then enter another. Suddenly a shot is fired fromthe dense and sloping forest on the right, then another and another, eachdropping its man; the startled troops face hastily in that direction, when a more murderous volley is poured from the other side; the heightsabove flash with musketry, while the precipitous path by which they cameseems to close in fire behind them. By the time the troops have formed insome attempt at military order, the woods around them are empty, andtheir agile and noiseless foes have settled themselves into ambush again, farther up the defile, ready for a second attack, if needed. But one isusually sufficient; disordered, exhausted, bearing their wounded withthem, the soldiers retreat in panic, if permitted to escape at all, andcarry fresh dismay to the barracks, the plantations, and the GovernmentHouse. 

It is not strange, then, that high military authorities, at that period, should have pronounced the subjugation of the Maroons a thing moredifficult than to obtain a victory over any army in Europe. Moreover, these people were fighting for their liberty, with which aim no form ofwarfare seemed to them unjustifiable; and the description given byLafayette of the American Revolution was true of this one, --"the grandestof causes, won by contests of sentinels and outposts. " The utmost hope ofa British officer, ordered against the Maroons, was to lay waste aprovision-ground, or cut them off from water. But there was littlesatisfaction in this: the wild-pine leaves and the grapevine-withessupplied the rebels with water; and their plantation-grounds were thewild pineapple and the plantain-groves, and the forests, where the wildboars harbored, and the ringdoves were as easily shot as if they weremilitiamen. Nothing but sheer weariness of fighting seems to have broughtabout a truce at last, and then a treaty, between those high contractingparties, Cudjoe and Gen. Williamson. 

But how to execute a treaty between these wild Children of the Mist andrespectable diplomatic Englishmen? To establish any official relationswithout the medium of a preliminary bullet, required some ingenuity ofmanoeuvring. Cudjoe was willing, but inconveniently cautious: he wouldnot come halfway to meet any one; nothing would content him but aninterview in his own chosen cockpit. So he selected one of the mostdifficult passes, posting in the forests a series of outlying parties, tosignal with their horns, one by one, the approach of theplenipotentiaries, and then to retire on the main body. Through this lineof dangerous sentinels, therefore, Col. Guthrie and his handful of menbravely advanced; horn after horn they heard sounded, but there was noother human noise in the woods, and they had advanced till they saw thesmoke of the Maroon huts before they caught a glimpse of a human form. 

A conversation was at last opened with the invisible rebels. On theirpromise of safety, Dr. Russell advanced alone to treat with them; thenseveral Maroons appeared, and finally Cudjoe himself. The formidablechief was not highly military in appearance, being short, fat, humpbacked, dressed in a tattered blue coat without skirts or sleeves, and an old felt hat without a rim. But if he had blazed with regimentalscarlet, he could not have been treated with more distinguishedconsideration; indeed, in that case, "the exchange of hats" with whichDr. Russell finally volunteered, in Maroon fashion, to ratifynegotiations, might have been a less severe test of good fellowship. Thisfine stroke of diplomacy had its effect, however; the rebel captainsagreed to a formal interview with Col. Guthrie and Capt. Sadler, and atreaty was at last executed with all due solemnity, under a largecotton-tree at the entrance of Guthrie's Defile. This treaty recognizedthe military rank of "Capt. Cudjoe, " "Capt. Accompong, " and the rest;gave assurance that the Maroons should be "forever hereafter in a perfectstate of freedom and liberty;" ceded to them fifteen hundred acres ofland; and stipulated only that they should keep the peace, should harborno fugitive from justice or from slavery, and should allow two whitecommissioners to remain among them, simply to represent the BritishGovernment. 

During the following year a separate treaty was made with another largebody of insurgents, called the Windward Maroons. This was not effected, however, until after an unsuccessful military attempt, in which themountaineers gained a signal triumph. By artful devices, --a few firesleft burning with old women to watch them, --a few provision-groundsexposed by clearing away the bushes, --they lured the troops far up amongthe mountains, and then surprised them by an ambush. The militia allfled, and the regulars took refuge under a large cliff in a stream, wherethey remained four hours up to their waists in water, until finally theyforded the river, under full fire, with terrible loss. Three months afterthis, however, the Maroons consented to an amicable interview, exchanginghostages first. The position of the white hostage, at least, was not themost agreeable; he complained that he was beset by the women and childrenwith indignant cries of "Buckra, Buckra, " while the little boys pointedtheir fingers at him as if stabbing him, and that with evident relish. However, Capt. Quao, like Capt. Cudjoe, made a treaty at last; and hatswere interchanged, instead of hostages. 

Independence being thus won and acknowledged, there was a suspension ofhostilities for some years. Among the wild mountains of Jamaica, theMaroons dwelt in a savage freedom. So healthful and beautiful was thesituation of their chief town, that the English Government has erectedbarracks there of late years, as being the most salubrious situation onthe island. They breathed an air ten degrees cooler than that inhaled bythe white population below; and they lived on a daintier diet, so thatthe English epicures used to go up among them for good living. Themountaineers caught the strange land-crabs, plodding in companies ofmillions their sidelong path from mountain to ocean, and from ocean tomountain again. They hunted the wild boars, and prepared the flesh bysalting and smoking it in layers of aromatic leaves, the delicious"jerked hog" of buccaneer annals. They reared cattle and poultry, cultivated corn and yams, plantains and cocoas, guavas, and papaws andmameys, and avocados, and all luxurious West-Indian fruits; the veryweeds of their orchards had tropical luxuriance in their fragrance and intheir names; and from the doors of their little thatched huts they lookedacross these gardens of delight to the magnificent lowland forests, andover those again to the faint line of far-off beach, the fainterocean-horizon, and the illimitable sky. 

They had senses like those of American Indians; tracked each other by thesmell of the smoke of fires in the air, and called to each other byhorns, using a special note to designate each of their comrades, anddistinguishing it beyond the range of ordinary hearing. They spokeEnglish diluted with Spanish and African words, and practised Obeah ritesquite undiluted with Christianity. Of course they associated largely withthe slaves, without any very precise regard to treaty stipulations;sometimes brought in fugitives, and sometimes concealed them; left theirtowns and settled on the planters lands when they preferred them: butwere quite orderly and luxuriously happy. During the formidableinsurrection of the Koromantyn slaves, in 1760, they played a dubiouspart. When left to go on their own way, they did something towardssuppressing it; but when placed under the guns of the troops, and orderedto fire on those of their own color, they threw themselves on the groundwithout discharging a shot. Nevertheless, they gradually came up intoreputable standing; they grew more and more industrious and steady; andafter they had joined very heartily in resisting D'Estaing's threatenedinvasion of the island in 1779, it became the fashion to speak of "ourfaithful and affectionate Maroons. "

In 1795, their position was as follows: Their numbers had not materiallyincreased, for many had strayed off and settled on the outskirts ofplantations; nor materially diminished, for many runaway slaves hadjoined them; while there were also separate settlements of fugitives, whohad maintained their freedom for twenty years. The white superintendentshad lived with the Maroons in perfect harmony, without the slightestofficial authority, but with a great deal of actual influence. But therewas an "irrepressible conflict" behind all this apparent peace, and theslightest occasion might, at any moment, revive all the old terror. Thatoccasion was close at hand. 

Capt. Cudjoe and Capt. Accompong, and the other founders of Maroonindependence, had passed away; and "Old Montagu" reigned in their stead, in Trelawney Town. Old Montagu had all the pomp and circumstance ofMaroon majesty: he wore a laced red coat, and a hat superb with gold laceand plumes; none but captains could sit in his presence; he was helpedfirst at meals, and no woman could eat beside him; he presided atcouncils as magnificently as at table, though with less appetite; andpossessed, meanwhile, not an atom of the love or reverence of any humanbeing. The real power lay entirely with Major James, the whitesuperintendent, who had been brought up among the Maroons by his father(and predecessor), and who was the idol of this wild race. In an evilhour, the Government removed him, and put a certain unpopular Capt. Craskell in his place; and as there happened to be, about the same time, a great excitement concerning a hopeful pair of young Maroons, who hadbeen seized and publicly whipped on a charge of hog-stealing, theirkindred refused to allow the new superintendent to remain in the town. Afew attempts at negotiation only brought them to a higher pitch of wrath, which ended in their despatching the following peculiar diplomatic noteto the Earl of Balcarres: "The Maroons wishes nothing else from thecountry but battle, and they desires not to see Mr. Craskell up here atall. So they are waiting every moment for the above on Monday. Mr. DavidSchaw will see you on Sunday morning for an answer. They will wait tillMonday, nine o'clock, and if they don't come up, they will come downthemselves. " Signed, "Col. Montagu and all the rest. "

It turned out, at last, that only two or three of the Maroons wereconcerned in this remarkable defiance; but meanwhile it had its effect. Several ambassadors were sent among the insurgents, and were so favorablyimpressed by their reception as to make up a subscription of money fortheir hosts, on departing; only the "gallant Col. Gallimore, " a JamaicaCamillus, gave iron instead of gold, by throwing some bullets into thecontribution-box. And it was probably in accordance with his view of thesubject, that, when the Maroons sent ambassadors in return, they were atonce imprisoned, most injudiciously and unjustly; and when Old Montaguhimself and thirty-seven others, following, were seized and imprisonedalso, it is not strange that the Maroons, joined by many slaves, weresoon in open insurrection. 

Martial law was instantly proclaimed throughout the island. The fightingmen among the insurgents were not, perhaps, more than five hundred;against whom the Government could bring nearly fifteen hundred regulartroops and several thousand militiamen. Lord Balcarres himself took thecommand, and, eager to crush the affair, promptly marched a large forceup to Trelawney Town, and was glad to march back again as expeditiouslyas possible. In his very first attack, he was miserably defeated, and hadto fly for his life, amid a perfect panic of the troops, in which someforty or fifty were killed, --including Col. Sandford, commanding theregulars, and the bullet-loving Col. Gallimore, in command of themilitia, --while not a single Maroon was even wounded, so far as could beascertained. 

After this a good deal of bush-fighting took place. The troops graduallygot possession of several Maroon villages, but not till every hut hadbeen burnt by its owner. It was in the height of the rainy season; and, between fire and water, the discomfort of the soldiers was enormous. Meanwhile the Maroons hovered close around them in the woods, heard alltheir orders, picked off their sentinels, and, penetrating through theirlines at night, burned houses and destroyed plantations far below. Theonly man who could cope with their peculiar tactics was Major James, thesuperintendent just removed by Government; and his services were notemployed, as he was not trusted. On one occasion, however, he led avolunteer party farther into the mountains than any of the assailants hadyet penetrated, guided by tracks known to himself only, and by the smellof the smoke of Maroon fires. After a very exhausting march, including aclimb of a hundred and fifty feet up the face of a precipice, he broughtthem just within the entrance of Guthrie's Defile. "So far, " said he, pointing to the entrance, "you may pursue, but no farther; no force canenter here; no white man except myself, or some soldier of the Maroonestablishment, has ever gone beyond this. With the greatest difficulty Ihave penetrated four miles farther, and not ten Maroons have gone so faras that. There are two other ways of getting into the defile, practicablefor the Maroons, but not for any one of you. In neither of them can Iascend or descend with my arms, which must be handed to me, step by step, as practised by the Maroons themselves. One of the ways lies to theeastward, and the other to the westward; and they will take care to haveboth guarded, if they suspect that I am with you; which, from the routeyou have come to-day, they will. They now see you, and if you advancefifty paces more, they will convince you of it. " At this moment a Maroonhorn sounded the notes indicating his name; and, as he made no answer, avoice was heard, inquiring if he were among them. "If he is, " said thevoice, "let him go back, we do not wish to hurt him, but as for the restof you, come on and try battle if you choose. " But the gentlemen did notchoose. 

In September the House of Assembly met. Things were looking worse andworse. For five months a handful of negroes and mulattoes had defied thewhole force of the island, and they were defending their liberty byprecisely the same tactics through which their ancestors had won it. Halfa million pounds sterling had been spent within this time, besides theenormous loss incurred by the withdrawal of so many able-bodied men fromtheir regular employments. "Cultivation was suspended, " says aneye-witness; "the courts of law had long been shut up; and the island atlarge seemed more like a garrison under the power of law-martial, than acountry of agriculture and commerce, of civil judicature, industry, andprosperity. " Hundreds of the militia had died of fatigue, large numbershad been shot down, the most daring of the British officers had fallen;while the insurgents had been invariably successful, and not one of themwas known to have been killed. Capt. Craskell, the banishedsuperintendent, gave it to the Assembly as his opinion, that the wholeslave population of the island was in sympathy with the Maroons, andwould soon be beyond control. More alarming still, there were rumors ofFrench emissaries behind the scenes; and though these were explainedaway, the vague terror remained. Indeed, the lieutenant-governorannounced in his message that he had satisfactory evidence that theFrench Convention was concerned in the revolt. A French prisoner, namedMurenson, had testified that the French agent at Philadelphia (Fauchet)had secretly sent a hundred and fifty emissaries to the island, andthreatened to land fifteen hundred negroes. And though Murenson took itall back at last, yet the Assembly was moved to make a new offer of threehundred dollars for killing or taking a Trelawney Maroon, and a hundredand fifty dollars for killing or taking any fugitive slave who had joinedthem. They also voted five hundred pounds as a gratuity to the Accompongtribe of Maroons, who had thus far kept out of the insurrection; andvarious prizes and gratuities were also offered by the differentparishes, with the same object of self-protection. 

The commander-in-chief being among the killed, Col. Walpole was promotedin his stead, and brevetted as general, by way of incentive. He found apeople in despair, a soldiery thoroughly intimidated, and a treasury notempty, but useless. But the new general had not served against theMaroons for nothing, and was not ashamed to go to school to hisopponents. First, he waited for the dry season; then he directed all hisefforts towards cutting off his opponents from water, and, most effectualmove of all, he attacked each successive cockpit by dragging up ahowitzer, with immense labor, and throwing in shells. Shells were avisitation not dreamed of in Maroon philosophy, and their quaintcompliments to their new opponent remain on record. "Damn dat littlebuckra!" they said, "he cunning more dan dem toder. Dis here da newfashion for fight: him fire big ball arter you, and when big ball 'top, de damn sunting [something] fire arter you again. " With which Parthianarrows of rhetoric the mountaineers retreated. 

But this did not last long. The Maroons soon learned to keep out of theway of the shells, and the island relapsed into terror again. It wasdeliberately resolved at last, by a special council convoked for thepurpose, "to persuade the rebels to make peace. " But as they had not asyet shown themselves very accessible to softer influences, it was thoughtbest to combine as many arguments as possible, and a certain Col. Quarrell had hit upon a wholly new one. His plan simply was, since men, however well disciplined, had proved powerless against Maroons, to try aSpanish fashion against them, and use dogs. The proposition was met, insome quarters, with the strongest hostility. England, it was said, hadalways denounced the Spaniards as brutal and dastardly for hunting downthe natives of that very soil with hounds; and should England now followthe humiliating example? On the other side, there were plenty who eagerlyquoted all known instances of zoölogical warfare: all Oriental nations, for instance, used elephants in war, and, no doubt, would gladly uselions and tigers also, but for their extreme carnivorousness, and theirpainful indifference to the distinction between friend and foe; why not, then, use these dogs, comparatively innocent and gentle creatures? At anyrate, "something must be done;" the final argument always used, when abad or desperate project is to be made palatable. So it was voted at lastto send to Havana for an invoice of Spanish dogs, with their accompanyingchasseurs; and the efforts at persuading the Maroons were postponed tillthe arrival of these additional persuasives. And when Col. Quarrellfinally set sail as commissioner to obtain the new allies, all scruplesof conscience vanished in the renewal of public courage and the chorus ofpopular gratitude; a thing so desirable must be right; thrice they werearmed who knew their Quarrell just. 

But after the parting notes of gratitude died away in the distance, thecommissioner began to discover that he was to have a hard time of it. Hesailed for Havana in a schooner manned with Spanish renegadoes, whoinsisted on fighting every thing that came in their way, --first a Spanishschooner, then a French one. He landed at Batabano, struck across themountains towards Havana, stopped at Besucal to call on the wealthyMarquesa de San Felipe y San Jorge, grand patroness of dogs andchasseurs, and finally was welcomed to Havana by Don Luis de las Casas, who overlooked, for this occasion only, an injunction of his courtagainst admitting foreigners within his government; "the only accustomedexception being, " as Don Luis courteously assured him, "in favor offoreign traders who came with new negroes. " To be sure, the commissionerhad not brought any of these commodities; but then he had come to obtainthe means of capturing some, and so might pass for an irregularpractitioner of the privileged profession. 

Accordingly, Don Guillermo Dawes Quarrell (so ran his passport) found nodifficulty in obtaining permission from the governor to buy as many dogsas he desired. When, however, he carelessly hinted at the necessity oftaking, also, a few men who should have care of the dogs, --this being, after all, the essential part of his expedition, --Don Luis de las Casasput on instantly a double force of courtesy, and assured him of theentire impossibility of recruiting a single Spaniard for English service. Finally, however, he gave permission and passports for six chasseurs. Under cover of this, the commissioner lost no time in enlisting forty; hegot them safe to Batabano; but at the last moment, learning the state ofaffairs, they refused to embark on such very irregular authority. When hehad persuaded them, at length, the officer of the fort interposedobjections. This was not to be borne, so Don Guillermo bribed him andsilenced him; a dragoon was, however, sent to report to the governor; DonGuillermo sent a messenger after him, and bribed him too; and thus atlength, after myriad rebuffs, and after being obliged to spend the lastevening at a puppet-show in which the principal figure was a burlesque onhis own personal peculiarities, the weary Don Guillermo, with his crew ofrenegadoes, and his forty chasseurs and their one hundred and fourmuzzled dogs, set sail for Jamaica. 

These new allies were certainly something formidable, if we may trust thepictures and descriptions in Dallas's History. The chasseur was a tall, meagre, swarthy Spaniard or mulatto, lightly clad in cotton shirt anddrawers, with broad straw hat, and moccasins of raw-hide; his beltsustaining his long, straight, flat sword or _machete_, like an iron barsharpened at one end; and he wore by the same belt three cotton leashesfor his three dogs, sometimes held also by chains. The dogs were a fiercebreed, crossed between hound and mastiff, never unmuzzled but for attack, and accompanied by smaller dogs called _finders_. It is no wonder, whenthese wild and powerful creatures were landed at Montego Bay, that terrorran through the town, doors were everywhere closed, and windows crowded;not a negro dared to stir; and the muzzled dogs, infuriated byconfinement on shipboard, filled the silent streets with their noisybarking and the rattling of their chains. 

How much would have come of all this in actual conflict, does not appear. The Maroons had already been persuaded to make peace upon certainconditions and guaranties, --a decision probably accelerated by theterrible rumors of the bloodhounds, though they never saw them. It wasthe declared opinion of the Assembly, confirmed by that of Gen. Walpole, that "nothing could be clearer than that, if they had been off theisland, the rebels could not have been induced to surrender. "Nevertheless, a treaty was at last made, without the direct interventionof the quadrupeds. Again commissioners went up among the mountains totreat with negotiators at first invisible; again were hats and jacketsinterchanged, not without coy reluctance on the part of the well-dressedEnglishmen; and a solemn agreement was effected. The most essential partof the bargain was a guaranty of continued independence, demanded by thesuspicious Maroons. Gen. Walpole, however, promptly pledged himself thatno such unfair advantage should be taken of them as had occurred with thehostages previously surrendered, who were placed in irons; nor should anyattempt be made to remove them from the island. It is painful to add, that this promise was outrageously violated by the Colonial Government, to the lasting grief of Gen. Walpole, on the ground that the Maroons hadviolated the treaty by a slight want of punctuality in complying with itsterms, and by remissness in restoring the fugitive slaves who had takenrefuge among them. As many of the tribe as surrendered, therefore, wereat once placed in confinement, and ultimately shipped from Port Royal toHalifax, to the number of six hundred, on the 6th of June, 1796. For thecredit of English honor, we rejoice to know that Gen. Walpole not merelyprotested against this utter breach of faith, but indignantly declinedthe sword of honor which the Assembly had voted him, in its gratitude, and then retired from military service forever. 

The remaining career of this portion of the Maroons is easily told. Theywere first dreaded by the inhabitants of Halifax, then welcomed whenseen, and promptly set to work on the citadel, then in process ofreconstruction, where the "Maroon Bastion" still remains, --their onlyvisible memorial. Two commissioners had charge of them, one being theredoubtable Col. Quarrell; and twenty-five thousand pounds wereappropriated for their temporary support. Of course they did not prosper;pensioned colonists never do, for they are not compelled into habits ofindustry. After their delicious life in the mountains of Jamaica, itseemed rather monotonous to dwell upon that barren soil, --for theirs wassuch that two previous colonies had deserted it, --and in a climate wherewinter lasts seven months in the year. They had a schoolmaster, and hewas also a preacher; but they did not seem to appreciate that luxury ofcivilization, utterly refusing, on grounds of conscience, to forsakepolygamy, and, on grounds of personal comfort, to listen to the doctrinaldiscourses of their pastor, who was an ardent Sandemanian. They smokedtheir pipes during service time, and left Old Montagu, who stillsurvived, to lend a vicarious attention to the sermon. One discourse hebriefly reported as follows, very much to the point: "Massa parson say nomus tief, no mus meddle wid somebody wife, no mus quarrel, mus set downsoftly. " So they sat down very softly, and showed an extremeunwillingness to get up again. But, not being naturally an idle race, --atleast, in Jamaica the objection lay rather on the other side, --they soongrew tired of this inaction. Distrustful of those about them, suspiciousof all attempts to scatter them among the community at large, frozen bythe climate, and constantly petitioning for removal to a milder one, theyfinally wearied out all patience. A long dispute ensued between theauthorities of Nova Scotia and Jamaica, as to which was properlyresponsible for their support; and thus the heroic race, that for acentury and a half had sustained themselves in freedom in Jamaica, werereduced to the position of troublesome and impracticable paupers, shuttlecocks between two selfish parishes. So passed their unfortunatelives, until, in 1800, their reduced population was transported to SierraLeone, at a cost of six thousand pounds; since which they disappear fromhistory. 

It was judged best not to interfere with those bodies of Maroons whichhad kept aloof from the late outbreak, at the Accompong settlement, andelsewhere. They continued to preserve a qualified independence, andretain it even now. In 1835, two years after the abolition of slavery inJamaica, there were reported sixty families of Maroons as residing atAccompong Town, eighty families at Moore Town, one hundred and tenfamilies at Charles Town, and twenty families at Scott Hall, making twohundred and seventy families in all, --each station being, as of old, under the charge of a superintendent. But there can be little doubt, that, under the influences of freedom, they are rapidly interminglingwith the mass of colored population in Jamaica. 

The story of the exiled Maroons attracted attention in high quarters, inits time: the wrongs done to them were denounced in Parliament bySheridan, and mourned by Wilberforce; while the employment of bloodhoundsagainst them was vindicated by Dundas, and the whole conduct of theColonial Government defended, through thick and thin, by Bryan Edwards. This thorough partisan even had the assurance to tell Mr. Wilberforce, inParliament, that he knew the Maroons, from personal knowledge, to becannibals, and that, if a missionary were sent among them in Nova Scotia, they would immediately eat him; a charge so absurd that he did notventure to repeat it in his History of the West Indies, though hisinjustice to the Maroons is even there so glaring as to provoke theindignation of the more moderate Dallas. But, in spite of Mr. Edwards, the public indignation ran quite high in England, against the bloodhoundsand their employers, so that the home ministry found it necessary to senda severe reproof to the Colonial Government. For a few years the tales ofthe Maroons thus emerged from mere colonial annals, and found their wayinto annual registers and parliamentary debates; but they have long sincevanished from popular memory. Their record still retains its interest, however, as that of one of the heroic races of the world; and all themore, because it is with their kindred that the American nation has todeal, in solving one of the most momentous problems of its future career. 

THE MAROONS OF SURINAM. 

When that eccentric individual, Capt. John Gabriel Stedman, resigned hiscommission in the English Navy, took the oath of abjuration, and wasappointed ensign in the Scots brigade employed for two centuries byHolland, he little knew that "their High Mightinesses the States of theUnited Provinces" would send him out, within a year, to the forests ofGuiana, to subdue rebel negroes. He never imagined that the year 1773would behold him beneath the rainy season in a tropical country, wadingthrough marshes and splashing through lakes, exploring with his feet forsubmerged paths, commanding impracticable troops, and commanded by aninsufferable colonel, feeding on greegree worms and fed upon bymosquitos, howled at by jaguars, hissed at by serpents, and shot at bythose exceedingly unattainable gentlemen, "still longed for, never seen, "the Maroons of Surinam. 

Yet, as our young ensign sailed up the Surinam River, the world of tropicbeauty came upon him with enchantment. Dark, moist verdure was closearound him, rippling waters below; the tall trees of the jungle and thelow mangroves beneath were all hung with long vines and lianas, a maze ofcordage, like a fleet at anchor; lithe monkeys travelled ceaselessly upand down these airy paths, in armies, bearing their young, likeknapsacks, on their backs; macaws and humming-birds, winged jewels, flewfrom tree to tree. As they neared Paramaribo, the river became a smoothcanal among luxuriant plantations; the air was perfumed music, redolentof orange-blossoms and echoing with the songs of birds and the sweetplash of oars; gay barges came forth to meet them; "while groups of nakedboys and girls were promiscuously playing and flouncing, like so manytritons and mermaids, in the water. " And when the troopsdisembarked, --five hundred fine young men, the oldest not thirty, allarrayed in new uniforms and bearing orange-flowers in their caps, abridal wreath for beautiful Guiana, --it is no wonder that the Creoleladies were in ecstasy; and the boyish recruits little foresaw the day, when, reduced to a few dozens, barefooted and ragged as filibusters, their last survivors would gladly re-embark from a country beside whicheven Holland looked dry and even Scotland comfortable. 

For over all that earthly paradise there brooded not alone its terriblemalaria, its days of fever and its nights of deadly chill, but the worseshadows of oppression and of sin, which neither day nor night couldbanish. The first object which met Stedman's eye, as he stepped on shore, was the figure of a young girl stripped to receive two hundred lashes, and chained to a hundred-pound weight. And the few first days gave aglimpse into a state of society worthy of this exhibition, --men withoutmercy, women without modesty, the black man a slave to the white man'spassions, and the white man a slave to his own. The later West-Indiansociety in its worst forms is probably a mere dilution of the utterprofligacy of those early days. Greek or Roman decline produced nothingmore debilitating or destructive than the ordinary life of a Surinamplanter, and his one virtue of hospitality only led to more unbridledexcesses and completed the work of vice. No wonder that Stedman himself, who, with all his peculiarities, was essentially simple and manly, soonbecame disgusted, and made haste to get into the woods and cultivate thesociety of the Maroons. 

The rebels against whom this expedition was sent were not the originalMaroons of Surinam, but a later generation. The originals had long sinceestablished their independence, and their leaders were flourishing theirhonorary silver-mounted canes in the streets of Paramaribo. Fugitivenegroes had begun to establish themselves in the woods from the time whenthe colony was finally ceded by the English to the Dutch, in 1674. Thefirst open outbreak occurred in 1726, when the plantations on theSeramica River revolted; it was found impossible to subdue them, and thegovernment very imprudently resolved to make an example of elevencaptives, and thus terrify the rest of the rebels. They were tortured todeath, eight of the eleven being women: this drove the others to madness, and plantation after plantation was visited with fire and sword. After along conflict, their chief, Adoe, was induced to make a treaty, in 1749. The rebels promised to keep the peace, and in turn were promised freedom, money, tools, clothes, and, finally, arms and ammunition. 

But no permanent peace was ever made upon a barrel of gunpowder as abasis; and, of course, an explosion followed this one. The colonistsnaturally evaded the last item of the bargain; and the rebels, receivingthe gifts, and remarking the omission of the part of Hamlet, askedcontemptuously if the Europeans expected negroes to subsist on combs andlooking-glasses? New hostilities at once began; a new body of slaves onthe Ouca River revolted; the colonial government was changed inconsequence, and fresh troops shipped from Holland; and after fourdifferent embassies had been sent into the woods, the rebels began tolisten to reason. The black generals, Capt. Araby and Capt. Boston, agreed upon a truce for a year, during which the colonial governmentmight decide for peace or war, the Maroons declaring themselvesindifferent. Finally the government chose peace, delivered ammunition, and made a treaty, in 1761; the white and black plenipotentiariesexchanged English oaths and then negro oaths, each tasting a drop of theother's blood during the latter ceremony, amid a volley of remarkableincantations from the black _gadoman_ or priest. After some finalskirmishes, in which the rebels almost always triumphed, the treaty wasat length accepted by all the various villages of Maroons. Had they knownthat at this very time five thousand slaves in Berbice were just risingagainst their masters, and were looking to them for assistance, theresult might have been different; but this fact had not reached them, norhad the rumors of insurrection in Brazil among negro and Indian slaves. They consented, therefore, to the peace. "They write from Surinam, " saysthe "Annual Register" for Jan. 23, 1761, "that the Dutch governor, finding himself unable to subdue the rebel negroes of that country byforce, hath wisely followed the example of Gov. Trelawney at Jamaica, andconcluded an amicable treaty with them; in consequence of which, all thenegroes of the woods are acknowledged to be free, and all that is passedis buried in oblivion. " So ended a war of thirty-six years; and inStedman's day the original three thousand Ouca and Seramica Maroons hadmultiplied, almost incredibly, to fifteen thousand. 

But for those slaves not sharing in this revolt it was not so easy to"bury the whole past in oblivion. " The Maroons had told some very plaintruths to the white ambassadors, and had frankly advised them, if theywished for peace, to mend their own manners and treat their chattelshumanely. But the planters learned nothing by experience, --and, indeed, the terrible narrations of Stedman were confirmed by those of Alexander, so lately as 1831. Of course, therefore, in a colony comprising eightythousand blacks to four thousand whites, other revolts were stimulated bythe success of this one. They reached their highest point in 1772, whenan insurrection on the Cottica River, led by a negro named Baron, almostgave the finishing blow to the colony; the only adequate protection beingfound in a body of slaves liberated expressly for that purpose, --adangerous and humiliating precedent. "We have been obliged to set threeor four hundred of our stoutest negroes free to defend us, " says anhonest letter from Surinam, in the "Annual Register" for Sept. 5, 1772. Fortunately for the safety of the planters, Baron presumed too much uponhis numbers, and injudiciously built a camp too near the seacoast, in amarshy fastness, from which he was finally ejected by twelve hundredDutch troops, though the chief work was done, Stedman thinks, by the"black rangers" or liberated slaves. Checked by this defeat, he againdrew back into the forests, resuming his guerrilla warfare against theplantations. Nothing could dislodge him; blood-hounds were proposed, butthe moisture of the country made them useless: and thus matters stoodwhen Stedman came sailing, amid orange-blossoms and music, up the windingSurinam. 

Our young officer went into the woods in the condition of Falstaff, "heinously unprovided. " Coming from the unbounded luxury of theplantations, he found himself entering "the most horrid and impenetrableforests, where no kind of refreshment was to be had, "--he beingprovisioned only with salt pork and pease. After a wail of sorrow forthis inhuman neglect, he bursts into a gush of gratitude for the privategenerosity which relieved his wants at the last moment by the followinglist of supplies: "24 bottles best claret, 12 ditto Madeira, 12 dittoporter, 12 ditto cider, 12 ditto rum, 2 large loaves white sugar, 2gallons brandy, 6 bottles muscadel, 2 gallons lemon-juice, 2 gallonsground coffee, 2 large Westphalia hams, 2 salted bullocks' tongues, 1bottle Durham mustard, 6 dozen spermaceti candles. " The hams and tonguesseem, indeed, rather a poor halfpennyworth to this intolerable deal ofsack; but this instance of Surinam privation in those days may open someglimpse at the colonial standards of comfort. "From this specimen, "moralizes our hero, "the reader will easily perceive, that, if some ofthe inhabitants of Surinam show themselves the disgrace of the creationby their cruelties and brutality, others, by their social feelings, approve themselves an ornament to the human species. With this instanceof virtue and generosity I therefore conclude this chapter. "

But the troops soon had to undergo worse troubles than those of thecommissariat. The rainy season had just set in. "As for the negroes, "said Mr. Klynhaus, the last planter with whom they parted, "you maydepend on never seeing a soul of them, unless they attack you off guard;but the climate, the climate, will murder you all. " Bringing with themconstitutions already impaired by the fevers and dissipation ofParamaribo, the poor boys began to perish long before they began tofight. Wading in water all day, hanging their hammocks over water atnight, it seemed a moist existence, even compared with the climate ofEngland and the soil of Holland. It was a case of "Invent a shovel, andbe a magistrate, " even more than Andrew Marvell found it in the UnitedProvinces. In fact, Raynal evidently thinks that nothing but Dutchexperience in hydraulics could ever have cultivated Surinam. 

The two gunboats which held one division of the expedition were merelyold sugar-barges, roofed over with boards, and looking like coffins. Theywere pleasantly named the "Charon" and the "Cerberus, " but Stedmanthought that the "Sudden Death" and the "Wilful Murder" would have beentitles more appropriate. The chief duty of the troops consisted in lyingat anchor at the intersections of wooded streams, waiting for rebels whonever came. It was dismal work, and the raw recruits were full of thesame imaginary terrors which have haunted other heroes less severelytested: the monkeys never rattled the cocoa-nuts against the trees, butthey all heard the axes of Maroon wood-choppers; and when a sentineldeclared, one night, that he had seen a negro go down the river in acanoe, with his pipe lighted, the whole force was called to arms--againsta firefly. In fact, the insect race brought by far the most substantialdangers. The rebels eluded the military, but the chigres, locusts, scorpions, and bush-spiders were ever ready to come half-way to meetthem; likewise serpents and alligators proffered them the freedom of theforests, and exhibited a hospitality almost excessive. Snakes twenty feetlong hung their seductive length from the trees; jaguars volunteeredtheir society through almost impenetrable marshes; vampire bats perchedby night with lulling endearments upon the toes of the soldiers. WhenStedman describes himself as killing thirty-eight mosquitoes at onestroke, we must perhaps pardon something to the spirit of martyrdom. Butwhen we add to these the other woes of his catalogue, --prickly-heat, ringworm, putrid-fever, "the growling of Col. Fougeaud, dry sandysavannas, unfordable marshes, burning hot days, cold and damp nights, heavy rains, and short allowance, "--we can hardly wonder that threecaptains died in a month, and that in two months his detachment offorty-two was reduced to a miserable seven. 

Yet, through all this, Stedman himself kept his health. His theory of thematter almost recalls the time-honored prescription of "A light heart anda thin pair of breeches, " for he attributes his good condition to hiskeeping up his spirits and kicking off his shoes. Daily bathing in theriver had also something to do with it; and, indeed, hydropathy was firstlearned of the West-India Maroons, --who did their "packing" in wetclay, --and was carried by Dr. Wright to England. But his extraordinarypersonal qualities must have contributed most to his preservation. Neverdid a "meagre, starved, black, burnt, and ragged tatterdemalion, " as hecalls himself, carry about him such a fund of sentiment, philosophy, poetry, and art. He had a great faculty for sketching, as the engravingsin his volumes, with all their odd peculiarities, show; his deepest woeshe coined always into couplets, and fortified himself against hopelessdespair with Ovid and Valerius Flaccus, Pope's Homer and Thomson's"Seasons. " Above all reigned his passion for natural history, a readybalm for every ill. Here he was never wanting to the occasion; and, to dojustice to Dutch Guiana, the occasion never was wanting to him. Were hismen sickening, the peccaries were always healthy without the camp, andthe cockroaches within; just escaping from a she-jaguar, he satisfieshimself, ere he flees, that the print of her claws on the sand isprecisely the size of a pewter dinner-plate; bitten by a scorpion, hemakes sure of a scientific description in case he should expire of thebite; is the water undrinkable, there is at least some rational interestin the number of legs possessed by the centipedes which pre-occupy it. This is the highest triumph of man over his accidents, when he thus turnshis pains to gains, and becomes an entomologist in the tropics. 

Meanwhile the rebels kept their own course in the forests, andoccasionally descended upon plantations beside the very river on whoseupper waters the useless troops were sickening and dying. Stedman himselfmade several campaigns, with long intervals of illness, before he cameany nearer to the enemy than to burn a deserted village or destroy arice-field. Sometimes they left the "Charon" and the "Cerberus" moored bygrape-vines to the pine-trees, and made expeditions into the woods, single file. Our ensign, true to himself, gives the minutest schedule ofthe order of march, and the oddest little diagram of manikins with cockedhats, and blacker manikins bearing burdens. First, negroes withbill-hooks to clear the way; then the van-guard; then the main body, interspersed with negroes bearing boxes of ball-cartridges; then therear-guard, with many more negroes, bearing camp-equipage, provisions, and new rum, surnamed "kill-devil, " and appropriately followed by a sortof palanquin for the disabled. Thus arrayed, they marched valorouslyforth into the woods, to some given point; then they turned, marched backto the boats, then rowed back to camp, and straightway went into thehospital. Immediately upon this, the coast being clear, Baron and hisrebels marched out again, and proceeded to business. 

In the course of years, these Maroons had acquired their own peculiartactics. They built stockaded fortresses on marshy islands, accessible byfords which they alone could traverse. These they defended further bysharp wooden pins, or crows'-feet, concealed beneath the surface of themiry ground, --and, latterly, by the more substantial protection ofcannon, which they dragged into the woods, and learned to use. Theirbush-fighting was unique. Having always more men than weapons, theyarranged their warriors in threes, --one to use the musket, another totake his place if wounded or slain, and a third to drag away the body. They had Indian stealthiness and swiftness, with more than Indiandiscipline; discharged their fire with some approach to regularity, inthree successive lines, the signals being given by the captain's horn. They were full of ingenuity: marked their movements for each other byscattered leaves and blazed trees; ran zigzag, to dodge bullets; gavewooden guns to their unarmed men, to frighten the plantation negroes ontheir guerrilla expeditions; and borrowed the red caps of the blackrangers whom they slew, to bewilder the aim of the others. One of them, finding himself close to the muzzle of a ranger's gun, threw up his handhastily. "What!" he exclaimed, "will you fire on one of your own party?""God forbid!" cried the ranger, dropping his piece, and was instantlyshot through the body by the Maroon, who the next instant had disappearedin the woods. 

These rebels were no saints: their worship was obi-worship; the women hadnot far outgrown the plantation standard of chastity, and the men drank"kill-devil" like their betters. Stedman was struck with the differencebetween the meaning of the word "good" in rebellious circles and inreputable. "It must, however, be observed, that what we Europeans call agood character was by the Africans looked upon as detestable, especiallyby those born in the woods, whose only crime consisted in avenging thewrongs done to their forefathers. " But if martial virtues be virtues, such were theirs. Not a rebel ever turned traitor or informer, everflinched in battle or under torture, ever violated a treaty or even aprivate promise. But it was their power of endurance which was especiallyastounding; Stedman is never weary of paying tribute to this, or ofillustrating it in sickening detail; indeed, the records of the worldshow nothing to surpass it; "the lifted axe, the agonizing wheel, " provedpowerless to subdue it; with every limb lopped, every bone broken, thevictims yet defied their tormentors, laughed, sang, and died triumphant. 

Of course they repaid these atrocities in kind. If they had not, it wouldhave demonstrated the absurd paradox, that slavery educates highervirtues than freedom. It bewilders all the relations of humanresponsibility, if we expect the insurrectionary slave to commit nooutrages; if slavery has not depraved him, it has done him little harm. If it be the normal tendency of bondage to produce saints like Uncle Tom, let us all offer ourselves at auction immediately. It is Cassy and Dredwho are the normal protest of human nature against systems which degradeit. Accordingly, these poor, ignorant Maroons, who had seen theirbrothers and sisters flogged, burned, mutilated, hanged on iron hooks, broken on the wheel, and had been all the while solemnly assured thatthis was paternal government, could only repay the paternalism in thesame fashion, when they had the power. Stedman saw a negro chained to ared-hot distillery-furnace; he saw disobedient slaves, in repeatedinstances, punished by the amputation of a leg, and sent to boat-servicefor the rest of their lives; and of course the rebels borrowed thesesuggestions. They could bear to watch their captives expire under thelash, for they had previously watched their parents. If the governmentrangers received twenty-five florins for every rebel right-hand whichthey brought in, of course they risked their own right hands in thepursuit. The difference was, that the one brutality was that of a mightystate, and the other was only the retaliation of the victims. And afterall, Stedman never ventures to assert that the imitation equalled theoriginal, or that the Maroons had inflicted nearly so much as they hadsuffered. 

The leaders of the rebels, especially, were men who had each his ownstory of wrongs to tell. Baron, the most formidable, had been the slaveof a Swedish gentleman, who had taught him to read and write, taken himto Europe, promised to manumit him on his return--and then, breaking hisword, sold him to a Jew. Baron refused to work for his new master, waspublicly flogged under the gallows, fled to the woods next day, andbecame the terror of the colony. Joli Coeur, his first captain, wasavenging the cruel wrongs of his mother. Bonny, another leader, was bornin the woods, his mother having taken refuge there just previously, toescape from his father, who was also his master. Cojo, another, haddefended his master against the insurgents until he was obliged by illusage to take refuge among them; and he still bore upon his wrist, whenStedman saw him, a silver band, with the inscription, --"True to theEuropeans. " In dealing with wrongs like these, Mr. Carlyle would havefound the despised negroes quite as ready as himself to take thetotal-abstinence pledge against rose-water. 

In his first two-months' campaign, Stedman never saw the trace of aMaroon; in the second, he once came upon their trail; in the third, onecaptive was brought in, two surrendered themselves voluntarily, and alarge party was found to have crossed a river within a mile of the camp, ferrying themselves on palm-trunks, according to their fashion. Deepswamps and scorching sands, toiling through briers all day, and sleepingat night in hammocks suspended over stagnant water, with weaponssupported on sticks crossed beneath, --all this was endured for two yearsand a half, before Stedman personally came in sight of the enemy. 

On Aug. 20, 1775, the troops found themselves at last in the midst of therebel settlements. These villages and forts bore a variety of expressivenames, such as "Hide me, O thou surrounding verdure, " "I shall be taken, ""The woods lament for me, " "Disturb me, if you dare, " "Take a tasting, ifyou like it, " "Come, try me, if you be men, " "God knows me, and noneelse, " "I shall moulder before I shall be taken. " Some were onlyplantation-grounds with a few huts, and were easily laid waste; but allwere protected more or less by their mere situations. Quagmiressurrounded them, covered by a thin crust of verdure, sometimes brokenthrough by one man's weight, when the victim sank hopelessly into theblack and bottomless depths below. In other directions there was a solidbottom, but inconveniently covered by three or four feet of water, through which the troops waded breast-deep, holding their muskets high inthe air, unable to reload them when once discharged, and liable to bepicked off by rebel scouts, who ingeniously posted themselves in the topsof palm-trees. 

Through this delectable region Col. Fougeaud and his followers slowlyadvanced, drawing near the fatal shore where Capt. Meyland's detachmenthad just been defeated, and where their mangled remains still pollutedthe beach. Passing this point of danger without attack, they suddenly meta small party of rebels, each bearing on his back a beautifully wovenhamper of snow-white rice: these loads they threw down, and disappeared. Next appeared an armed body from the same direction, who fired upon themonce, and swiftly retreated; and in a few moments the soldiers came upona large field of standing rice, beyond which lay, like an amphitheatre, the rebel village. But between the village and the field had been piledsuccessive defences of logs and branches, behind which simple redoubtsthe Maroons lay concealed. A fight ensued, lasting forty minutes, duringwhich nearly every soldier and ranger was wounded; but, to their greatamazement, not one was killed. This was an enigma to them until after theskirmish, when the surgeon found that most of them had been struck, notby bullets, but by various substitutes, such as pebbles, coat-buttons, and bits of silver coin, which had penetrated only skin deep. "We alsoobserved that several of the poor rebel negroes, who had been shot, hadonly the shards of Spa-water cans instead of flints, which could seldomdo execution; and it was certainly owing to these circumstances that wecame off so well. "

The rebels at length retreated, first setting fire to their village; ahundred or more lightly built houses, some of them two stories high, weresoon in flames; and as this conflagration occupied the only neck of landbetween two impassable morasses, the troops were unable to follow, andthe Maroons had left nothing but rice-fields to be pillaged. That nightthe military force was encamped in the woods; their ammunition was almostgone, so they were ordered to lie flat on the ground, even in case ofattack; they could not so much as build a fire. Before midnight an attackwas made on them, partly with bullets, and partly with words. The Maroonswere all around them in the forest, but their object was a puzzle; theyspent most of the night in bandying compliments with the black rangers, whom they alternately denounced, ridiculed, and challenged to singlecombat. At last Fougeaud and Stedman joined in the conversation, andendeavored to make this midnight volley of talk the occasion for atreaty. This was received with inextinguishable laughter, which echoedthrough the woods like a concert of screech-owls, ending in a _charivari_of horns and hallooing. The colonel, persisting, offered them "life, liberty, victuals, drink, and all they wanted;" in return, they ridiculedhim unmercifully. He was a half-starved Frenchman, who had run away fromhis own country, and would soon run away from theirs; they profoundlypitied him and his soldiers; they would scorn to spend powder on suchscarecrows; they would rather feed and clothe them, as being poor whiteslaves, hired to be shot at, and starved for fourpence a day. But as forthe planters, overseers, and rangers, they should die, every one of them, and Bonny should be governor of the colony. "After this, they tinkledtheir bill-hooks, fired a volley, and gave three cheers; which, beinganswered by the rangers, the clamor ended, and the rebels dispersed withthe rising sun. "

Very aimless nonsense it certainly appeared. But the next day put a newaspect on it; for it was found, that, under cover of all this noise, theMaroons had been busily occupied all night, men, women, and children, inpreparing and filling great hampers of the finest rice, yams, andcassava, from the adjacent provision-grounds, to be used for subsistenceduring their escape, leaving only chaff and refuse for the hungrysoldiers. "This was certainly such a masterly trait of generalship in asavage people, whom we affected to despise, as would have done honor toany European commander. "

From this time the Maroons fulfilled their threats. Shooting down withoutmercy every black ranger who came within their reach, --one of theserangers being, in Stedman's estimate, worth six white soldiers, --theyleft Col. Fougeaud and his regulars to die of starvation and fatigue. Theenraged colonel, "finding himself thus foiled by a naked negro, swore hewould pursue Bonny to the world's end. " But he never got any nearer thanto Bonny's kitchen-gardens. He put the troops on half-allowance, sentback for provisions and ammunition, --and within ten days changed hismind, and retreated to the settlements in despair. Soon after, this verybody of rebels, under Bonny's leadership, plundered two plantations inthe vicinity, and nearly captured a powder-magazine, which was, however, successfully defended by some armed slaves. 

For a year longer these expeditions continued. The troops never gained avictory, and they lost twenty men for every rebel killed; but theygradually checked the plunder of plantations, destroyed villages andplanting-grounds, and drove the rebels, for the time at least, into thedeeper recesses of the woods, or into the adjacent province of Cayenne. They had the slight satisfaction of burning Bonny's own house, atwo-story wooden hut, built in the fashion of our frontier guardhouses. They often took single prisoners, --some child, born and bred in thewoods, and frightened equally by the first sight of a white man and of acow, --or some warrior, who, on being threatened with torture, stretchedforth both hands in disdain, and said, with Indian eloquence, "Thesehands have made tigers tremble. " As for Stedman, he still wentbarefooted, still quarrelled with his colonel, still sketched the sceneryand described the reptiles, still reared greegree worms for his privatekitchen, still quoted good poetry and wrote execrable, still pitied allthe sufferers around him, black, white, and red, until finally he and hiscomrades were ordered back to Holland in 1776. 

Among all that wasted regiment of weary and broken-down men, there wasprobably no one but Stedman who looked backward with longing as theysailed down the lovely Surinam. True, he bore all his preciouscollections with him, --parrots and butterflies, drawings on the backs ofold letters, and journals kept on bones and cartridges. But he had leftbehind him a dearer treasure; for there runs through all his eccentricnarrative a single thread of pure romance, in his love for his beautifulquadroon wife and his only son. 

Within a month after his arrival in the colony, our susceptible ensignfirst saw Joanna, a slave-girl of fifteen, at the house of an intimatefriend. Her extreme beauty and modesty first fascinated him, and then herpiteous narrative, --for she was the daughter of a planter, who had justgone mad and died in despair from the discovery that he could not legallyemancipate his own children from slavery. Soon after, Stedman wasdangerously ill, was neglected and alone; fruits and cordials wereanonymously sent to him, which proved at last to have come from Joanna;and she came herself, ere long, and nursed him, grateful for the visiblesympathy he had shown to her. This completed the conquest; the passionateyoung Englishman, once recovered, loaded her with presents which sherefused; talked of purchasing her, and educating her in Europe, which shealso declined as burdening him too greatly; and finally, amid theridicule of all good society in Paramaribo, surmounted all legalobstacles, and was united to the beautiful girl in honorable marriage. Heprovided a cottage for her, where he spent his furloughs, in perfecthappiness, for four years. 

The simple idyl of their loves was unbroken by any stain ordisappointment, and yet always shadowed with the deepest anxiety for thefuture. Though treated with the utmost indulgence, she was legally aslave, and so was the boy of whom she became the mother. Cojo, her uncle, was a captain among the rebels against whom her husband fought. And up tothe time when Stedman was ordered back to Holland, he was unable topurchase her freedom; nor could he, until the very last moment, procurethe emancipation of his boy. His perfect delight at this last triumph, when obtained, elicited some satire from his white friends. "While thewell-thinking few highly applauded my sensibility, many not only blamedbut publicly derided me for my paternal affection, which was called aweakness, a whim. " "Nearly forty beautiful boys and girls were left toperpetual slavery by their parents of my acquaintance, and many of themwithout being so much as once inquired after at all. "

But Stedman was a true-hearted fellow, if his sentiment did sometimes runto rodomontade; he left his Joanna only in the hope that a year or two inEurope would repair his ruined fortunes, and he could return to treathimself to the purchase of his own wedded wife. He describes, withunaffected pathos, their parting scene, --though, indeed, there wereseveral successive partings, --and closes the description in acharacteristic manner: "My melancholy having surpassed all description, Iat last determined to weather one or two painful years in her absence;and in the afternoon went to dissipate my mind at a Mr. Roux' cabinet ofIndian curiosities; where, as my eye chanced to fall on a rattlesnake, Iwill, before I leave the colony, describe this dangerous reptile. "

It was impossible to write the history of the Maroons of Surinam exceptthrough the biography of our ensign (at last promoted captain), becausenearly all we know of them is through his quaint and picturesquenarrative, with its profuse illustrations by his own hand. It is notfair, therefore, to end without chronicling his safe arrival in Holland, on June 3, 1777. It is a remarkable fact, that, after his life in thewoods, even the Dutch looked slovenly to his eyes. "The inhabitants, whocrowded about us, appeared but a disgusting assemblage of ill-formed andill-dressed rabble, --so much had my prejudices been changed by livingamong Indians and blacks: their eyes seemed to resemble those of a pig;their complexions were like the color of foul linen; they seemed to haveno teeth, and to be covered over with rags and dirt. This prejudice, however, was not against these people only, but against all Europeans ingeneral, when compared to the sparkling eyes, ivory teeth, shining skin, and remarkable cleanliness of those I had left behind me. " Yet, in spiteof these superior attractions, he never recrossed the Atlantic; for hisJoanna died soon after, and his promising son, being sent to the father, was educated in England, became a midshipman in the navy, and was lost atsea. With his elegy, in which the last depths of bathos are sadly soundedby a mourning parent, --who is induced to print them only by "the effectthey had on the sympathetic and ingenious Mrs. Cowley, "--the "Narrativeof a Five Years' Expedition" closes. 

The war, which had cost the government forty thousand pounds a year, wasended, and left both parties essentially as when it began. The Maroonsgradually returned to their old abodes, and, being unmolested themselves, left others unmolested thenceforward. Originally three thousand, --inStedman's time, fifteen thousand, --they were estimated at seventythousand by Capt. Alexander, who saw Guiana in 1831; and a later Americanscientific expedition, having visited them in their homes, reported themas still enjoying their wild freedom, and multiplying, while the Indianson the same soil decay. The beautiful forests of Surinam still make themorning gorgeous with their beauty, and the night deadly with theirchill; the stately palm still rears, a hundred feet in air, its straightgray shaft and its head of verdure; the mora builds its solid, buttressedtrunk, a pedestal for the eagle; the pine of the tropics holds out itsmyriad hands with water-cups for the rain and dews, where all the birdsand the monkeys may drink their fill; the trees are garlanded withepiphytes and convolvuli, and anchored to the earth by a thousand vines. High among their branches, the red and yellow mocking-birds still buildtheir hanging nests, uncouth storks and tree-porcupines cling above, andthe spotted deer and the tapir drink from the sluggish stream below. Thenight is still made noisy with a thousand cries of bird and beast; andthe stillness of the sultry noon is broken by the slow tolling of the_campañero_, or bell-bird, far in the deep, dark woods, like the chime ofsome lost convent. And as Nature is unchanged there, so apparently isman; the Maroons still retain their savage freedom, still shoot theirwild game and trap their fish, still raise their rice and cassava, yamsand plantains, --still make cups from the gourd-tree and hammocks from thesilk-grass plant, wine from the palm-tree's sap, brooms from its leaves, fishing-lines from its fibres, and salt from its ashes. Their life doesnot yield, indeed, the very highest results of spiritual culture; itsmental and moral results may not come up to the level of civilization, but they rise far above the level of slavery. In the changes of time, theMaroons may yet elevate themselves into the one, but they will neverrelapse into the other. 

GABRIEL'S DEFEAT

In exploring among dusty files of newspapers for the true records ofDenmark Vesey and Nat Turner, I have caught occasional glimpses of a plotperhaps more wide in its outlines than that of either, which has lainobscure in the darkness of half a century, traceable only in thepolitical events which dated from it, and the utter incorrectness of thescanty traditions which assumed to preserve it. And though researches inpublic libraries have only proved to me how rapidly the materials forAmerican history are vanishing, --since not one of our great institutionspossessed, a few years since, a file of any Southern newspaper of theyear 1800, --yet the little which I have gained may have an interest thatmakes it worth preserving. Three times, at intervals of thirty years, dida wave of unutterable terror sweep across the Old Dominion, bringingthoughts of agony to every Virginian master, and of vague hope to everyVirginian slave. Each time did one man's name become a spell of dismayand a symbol of deliverance. Each time did that name eclipse itspredecessor, while recalling it for a moment to fresher memory: JohnBrown revived the story of Nat Turner, as in his day Nat Turner recalledthe vaster schemes of Gabriel. 

On Sept. 8, 1800, a Virginia correspondent wrote thus to the Philadelphia_United-States Gazette:_--

 "For the week past, we have been under momentary expectation of a rising among the negroes, who have assembled to the number of nine hundred or a thousand, and threatened to massacre all the whites. They are armed with desperate weapons, and secrete themselves in the woods. God only knows our fate: we have strong guards every night under arms. "

It was no wonder, if there were foundation for such rumors. Liberty wasthe creed or the cant of the day. France was being disturbed byrevolution, and England by Clarkson. In America, slavery was habituallyrecognized as a misfortune and an error, only to be palliated by thenearness of its expected end. How freely anti-slavery pamphlets had beencirculated in Virginia, we know from the priceless volumes collected andannotated by Washington, and now preserved in the Boston Athenaeum. Jefferson's "Notes on Virginia, " itself an anti-slavery tract, had passedthrough seven editions. Judge St. George Tucker, law-professor in Williamand Mary College, had recently published his noble work, "A Dissertationon Slavery, with a Proposal for the Gradual Abolition of it in the Stateof Virginia. " From all this agitation, a slave insurrection was a merecorollary. With so much electricity in the air, a single flash oflightning foreboded all the terrors of the tempest. Let but a singlearmed negro be seen or suspected, and at once, on many a lonelyplantation, there were trembling hands at work to bar doors and windowsthat seldom had been even closed before, and there was shuddering when agray squirrel scrambled over the roof, or a shower of walnuts came downclattering from the overhanging boughs. 

Early in September, 1800, as a certain Mr. Moseley Sheppard, of HenricoCounty in Virginia, was one day sitting in his counting-room, two negroesknocked at the door, and were let in. They shut the door themselves, andbegan to unfold an insurrectionary plot, which was subsequently repeatedby one of them, named Ben Woodfolk or Woolfolk, in presence of the court, on the 15th of the same month. 

He stated, that about the first of the preceding June, he had been askedby a negro named Colonel George whether he would like to be made a Mason. He refused; but George ultimately prevailed on him to have an interviewwith a certain leading man among the blacks, named Gabriel. Arrived atthe place of meeting, he found many persons assembled, to whom apreliminary oath was administered, that they would keep secret all whichthey might hear. The leaders then began, to the dismay of this witness, to allude to a plan of insurrection, which, as they stated, was alreadyfar advanced toward maturity. Presently a man named Martin, Gabriel'sbrother, proposed religious services, caused the company to be dulyseated, and began an impassioned exposition of Scripture, bearing uponthe perilous theme. The Israelites were glowingly portrayed as a type ofsuccessful resistance to tyranny; and it was argued, that now, as then, God would stretch forth his arm to save, and would strengthen a hundredto overthrow a thousand. Thus passed, the witness stated, thispreparatory meeting. At a subsequent gathering the affair was brought toa point; and the only difficult question was, whether to rise inrebellion upon a certain Saturday, or upon the Sunday following. Gabrielsaid that Saturday was the day already fixed, and that it must not bealtered; but George was for changing it to Sunday, as being moreconvenient for the country negroes, who could travel on that day withoutsuspicion. Gabriel, however, said decisively that they had enough tocarry Richmond without them; and Saturday was therefore retained as themomentous day. 

This was the confession, so far as it is now accessible; and on thestrength of it, Ben Woolfolk was promptly pardoned by the court for allhis sins, past, present, or to come, and they proceeded with theirinvestigation. Of Gabriel little appeared to be known, except that he hadbeen the property of Thomas Prosser, a young man who had recentlyinherited a plantation a few miles from Richmond, and who had thereputation among his neighbors of "behaving with great barbarity to hisslaves. " Gabriel was, however, reported to be "a fellow of courage andintellect above his rank in life, " to be about twenty-five years of age, and to be guiltless of the alphabet. 

Further inquiry made it appear that the preparations of the insurgentswere hardly adequate to any grand revolutionary design, --at least, ifthey proposed to begin with open warfare. The commissariat may have beenwell organized, for black Virginians are apt to have a prudent eye to thelarder; but the ordnance department and the treasury were as low as ifSecretary Floyd had been in charge of them. A slave called "Prosser'sBen" testified that he went with Gabriel to see Ben Woolfolk, who wasgoing to Caroline County to enlist men, and that "Gabriel gave him threeshillings for himself and three other negroes, to be expended inrecruiting men. " Their arms and ammunition, so far as reported, consistedof a peck of bullets, ten pounds of powder, and twelve scythe-swords, made by Gabriel's brother Solomon, and fitted with handles by Gabrielhimself. "These cutlasses, " said subsequently a white eye-witness, "aremade of scythes cut in two and fixed into well-turned handles. I havenever seen arms so murderous. Those who still doubt the importance of theconspiracy which has been so fortunately frustrated would shudder withhorror at the sight of these instruments of death. " And as it presentlyappeared that a conspirator named Scott had astonished his master byaccidentally pulling ten dollars from a ragged pocket which seemedinadequate to the custody of ten cents, it was agreed that the plot mightstill be dangerous, even though the resources seemed limited. 

And indeed, as was soon discovered, the effective weapon of theinsurgents lay in the very audacity of their plan. If the currentstatements of all the Virginia letter-writers were true, "nothing couldhave been better contrived. " It was to have taken effect on the first dayof September. The rendezvous for the blacks was to be a brook six milesfrom Richmond. Eleven hundred men were to assemble there, and were to bedivided into three columns, their officers having been designated inadvance. All were to march on Richmond, --then a town of eight thousandinhabitants, --under cover of night. The right wing was instantly to seizeupon the penitentiary building, just converted into an arsenal; while theleft wing was to take possession of the powder-house. These two columnswere to be armed chiefly with clubs, as their undertaking depended forsuccess upon surprise, and was expected to prevail without hard fighting. But it was the central force, armed with muskets, cutlasses, knives, andpikes, upon which the chief responsibility rested; these men were toenter the town at both ends simultaneously, and begin a general carnage, none being excepted save the French inhabitants, who were supposed forsome reason to be friendly to the negroes. In a very few hours, it wasthought, they would have entire control of the metropolis. And that thishope was not in the least unreasonable, was shown by the subsequentconfessions of weakness from the whites. "They could scarcely have failedof success, " wrote the Richmond correspondent of the Boston _Chronicle_;"for, after all, we could only muster four or five hundred men, of whomnot more than thirty had muskets. "

For the insurgents, if successful, the penitentiary held several thousandstand of arms; the powder-house was well stocked; the Capitol containedthe State treasury; the mills would give them bread; the control of thebridge across James River would keep off enemies from beyond. Thussecured and provided, they planned to issue proclamations summoning totheir standard "their fellow-negroes and the friends of humanitythroughout the continent. " In a week, it was estimated, they would havefifty thousand men on their side, with which force they could easilypossess themselves of other towns; and, indeed, a slave named JohnScott--possibly the dangerous possessor of the ten dollars--was alreadyappointed to head the attack on Petersburg. But in case of final failure, the project included a retreat to the mountains, with their new-foundproperty. John Brown was therefore anticipated by Gabriel, sixty yearsbefore, in believing the Virginia mountains to have been "created, fromthe foundation of the world, as a place of refuge for fugitive slaves. "

These are the statements of the contemporary witnesses; they are repeatedin many newspapers of the year 1800, and are in themselves clear andconsistent. Whether they are on the whole exaggerated or under-stated, itis now impossible to say. It is certain that a Richmond paper of Sept. 12(quoted in the New-York _Gazette_ of Sept. 18) declares that "the plothas been entirely exploded, which was shallow; and, had the attempt beenmade to carry it into execution, but little resistance would have beenrequired to render the scheme entirely abortive. " But it is necessary toremember that this is no more than the Charleston newspapers said at thevery crisis of Denmark Vesey's formidable plot. "Last evening, " wrote alady from Charleston in 1822, "twenty-five hundred of our citizens wereunder arms to guard our property and lives. But it is a subject _not tobe mentioned_ [so underscored]; and unless you hear of it elsewhere, saynothing about it. " Thus it is always hard to know whether to assume thefacts of an insurrection as above or below the estimates. This Virginianexcitement also happened at a period of intense political agitation, andwas seized upon as a boon by the Federalists. The very article abovequoted is ironically headed "Holy Insurrection, " and takes its motto fromJefferson, with profuse capital letters: "The Spirit of the Master isabating, that of the Slave rising from the dust, his conditionmollifying. "

In view of the political aspect thus given to the plot, and of itsingenuity and thoroughness likewise, the Virginians were naturallydisposed to attribute to white men some share in it; and speculationpresently began to run wild. The newspapers were soon full of theories, no two being alike, and no one credible. The plot originated, some said, in certain handbills written by Jefferson's friend Callender, then inprison at Richmond on a charge of sedition; these were circulated by twoFrench negroes, aided by a "United Irishman" calling himself a Methodistpreacher, and it was in consideration of these services that no Frenchmanwas to be injured by the slaves. When Gabriel was arrested, the editor ofthe _United-States Gazette_ affected much diplomatic surprise that noletters were _yet_ found upon his person "from Fries, Gallatin, or Duane, nor was he at the time of his capture accompanied by any UnitedIrishman. " "He, however, acknowledges that there are others concerned, and that he is not the principal instigator. " All Federalists agreed thatthe Southern Democratic talk was constructive insurrection, --which itcertainly was, ---and they painted graphic pictures of noisy "Jacobins"over their wine, and eager dusky listeners behind their chairs. "It isevident that the French principles of liberty and equality have beeneffused into the minds of the negroes, and that the incautious andintemperate use of the words by some whites among us have inspired themwith hopes of success. " "While the fiery Hotspurs of the State vociferatetheir _French babble_ of the natural equality of man, the insulted negrowill be constantly stimulated to cast away his cords, and to sharpen hispike. " "It is, moreover, believed, though not positively known, that agreat many of our profligate and abandoned whites (who are distinguishedby the burlesque appellation of _Democrats_) are implicated with theblacks, and would have joined them if they had commenced theiroperations.... The Jacobin printers and their friends are panic-struck. Never was terror more strongly depicted in the countenances of men. "These extracts from three different Federalist newspapers show theamiable emotions of that side of the house; while Democratic Duane, inthe _Aurora_, could find no better repartee than to attribute the wholetrouble to the policy of the administration in renewing commercialintercourse with San Domingo. 

I have discovered in the Norfolk _Epitome of the Times_, for Oct. 9, 1800, a remarkable epistle written from Richmond Jail by the unfortunateCallender himself. He indignantly denies the charges against theDemocrats, of complicity in dangerous plots, boldly retorting them uponthe Federalists. "An insurrection at this critical moment by the negroesof the Southern States would have thrown every thing into confusion, andconsequently it was to have prevented the choice of electors in the wholeor the greater part of the States to the south of the Potomac. Such adisaster must have tended directly to injure the interests of Mr. Jefferson, and to promote the slender possibility of a second election ofMr. Adams. " And, to be sure, the _United-States Gazette_ followed up thething with a good, single-minded party malice which cannot be surpassedin these present days, ending in such altitudes of sublime coolness asthe following: "The insurrection of the negroes in the Southern States, which appears to be organized on the true French plan, must be decisive, with every reflecting man in those States, of the election of Mr. Adamsand Gen. Pinckney. The military skill and approved bravery of the generalmust be peculiarly valuable to his countrymen at these trying moments. "Let us have a military Vice-President, by all means, to meet thisformidable exigency of Gabriel's peck of bullets, and this unexplainedthree shillings in the pocket of "Prosser's Ben"!

But Gabriel's campaign failed, like that of the Federalists; and theappointed day brought disasters more fatal than even the sword of Gen. Pinckney. The affrighted negroes declared that "the stars in theircourses fought against Sisera. " The most furious tempest ever known inVirginia burst upon the land that day, instead of an insurrection. Roadsand plantations were submerged. Bridges were carried away. The fords, which then, as now, were the frequent substitutes for bridges in thatregion, were rendered wholly impassable. The Brook Swamp, one of the mostimportant strategic points of the insurgents, was entirely inundated, hopelessly dividing Prosser's farm from Richmond; the country negroescould not get in, nor those from the city get out. The thousand mendwindled to a few hundred, and these half paralyzed by superstition;there was nothing to do but to dismiss them, and before they couldre-assemble they were betrayed. 

That the greatest alarm was instantly created throughout the community, there is no question. All the city of Richmond was in arms, and in alllarge towns of the State the night-patrol was doubled. It is a littleamusing to find it formally announced, that "the Governor, impressed withthe magnitude of the danger, has appointed for himself threeaides-de-camp. " A troop of United-States cavalry was ordered to Richmond. Numerous arrests were made. Men were convicted on one day, and hanged onthe next, --five, six, ten, fifteen at a time, almost without evidence. Three hundred dollars were offered by Gov. Monroe for the arrest ofGabriel; as much more for another chief named Jack Bowler, _alias_Ditcher; whereupon Bowler _alias_ Ditcher surrendered himself, but ittook some weeks to get upon the track of Gabriel. He was finally capturedat Norfolk, on board a schooner just arrived from Richmond, in whose holdhe had concealed himself for eleven days, having thrown overboard abayonet and bludgeon, which were his only arms. Crowds of peoplecollected to see him, including many of his own color. He was arrested onSept. 24, convicted on Oct. 3, and executed on Oct. 7; and it is known ofhim further, only, that, like almost all leaders of slave insurrections, he showed a courage which his enemies could not gainsay. "When he wasapprehended, he manifested the greatest marks of firmness and confidence, showing not the least disposition to equivocate, or screen himself fromjustice, "--but making no confession that could implicate any one else. "The behavior of Gabriel under his misfortunes, " said the Norfolk_Epitome_ of Sept. 25, "was such as might be expected from a mind capableof forming the daring project which he had conceived. " The _United-StatesGazette_ for Oct. 9 states, more sarcastically, that "the general is saidto have manifested the utmost composure, and with the true spirit ofheroism seems ready to resign his high office, and even his life, ratherthan gratify the officious inquiries of the Governor. "

Some of these newspapers suggest that the authorities found it goodpolicy to omit the statement made by Gabriel, whatever it was. At anyrate, he assured them that he was by no means the sole instigator of theaffair; he could name many, even in Norfolk, who were more deeplyconcerned. To his brother Solomon he is said to have stated that the realhead of the plot was Jack Bowler. Still another leader was "Gen. JohnScott, " already mentioned, the slave of Mr. Greenhow, hired by Mr. McCrea. He was captured by his employer in Norfolk, just as he was boldlyentering a public conveyance to escape; and the Baltimore _Telegraphe_declared that he had a written paper directing him to apply to AlexanderBiddenhurst or Weddenhurst in Philadelphia, "corner of Coats Alley andBudd Street, who would supply his needs. " What became of this militaryindividual, or of his Philadelphia sympathizers, does not appear. But itwas noticed, as usually happens in such cases, that all the insurgentshad previously passed for saints. "It consists within my knowledge, " saysone letter-writer, "that many of these wretches who were or would havebeen partakers in the plot have been treated with the utmost tendernessby their masters, and were more like children than slaves. "

These appear to be all the details now accessible of this once famousplot. They were not very freely published, even at the time. "Theminutiae of the conspiracy have not been detailed to the public, " saidthe Salem (Mass. ) _Gazette_ of Oct. 7, "and perhaps, through a mistakennotion of prudence and policy, will not be detailed in the Richmondpapers. " The New-York _Commercial Advertiser_ of Oct. 13 was still moreexplicit. "The trials of the negroes concerned in the late insurrectionare suspended until the opinions of the Legislature can be had on thesubject. This measure is said to be owing to the immense numbers who areinterested in the plot, whose death, should they all be found guilty andbe executed, will nearly produce the annihilation of the blacks in thispart of the country. " And in the next issue of the same journal aRichmond correspondent makes a similar statement, with the followingaddition: "A conditional amnesty is perhaps expected. At the next sessionof the Legislature [of Virginia], they took into consideration thesubject referred to them, in secret session, with closed doors. The wholeresult of their deliberations has never yet been made public, as theinjunction of secrecy has never been removed. To satisfy the court, thepublic, and themselves, they had a task so difficult to perform, that itis not surprising that their deliberations were in secret. "

It is a matter of historical interest to know that in these mysterioussessions lay the germs of the American Colonization Society. Acorrespondence was at once secretly commenced between the Governor ofVirginia and the President of the United States, with a view to securinga grant of land whither troublesome slaves might be banished. Nothingcame of it then; but in 1801, 1802, and 1804, these attempts wererenewed. And finally, on Jan. 22, 1805, the following vote was passed, still in secret session: "_Resolved_, that the Senators of this State inthe Congress of the United States be instructed, and the Representativesbe requested, to use their best efforts for the obtaining from theGeneral Government a competent portion of territory in the State ofLouisiana, to be appropriated to the residence of such people of color ashave been or shall be emancipated, or hereafter may become dangerous tothe public safety, " etc. But of all these efforts nothing was known tilltheir record was accidentally discovered by Charles Fenton Mercer in1816. He at once brought the matter to light, and moved a similarresolution in the Virginia Legislature; it was almost unanimouslyadopted, and the first formal meeting of the Colonization Society, in1817, was called "in aid" of this Virginia movement. But the wholecorrespondence was never made public until the Nat Turner insurrection of1831 recalled the previous excitement; and these papers were demanded byMr. Summers, a member of the Legislature, who described them as "havingoriginated in a convulsion similar to that which had recently, but moreterribly, occurred. "

But neither these subsequent papers, nor any documents which now appearaccessible, can supply any authentic or trustworthy evidence as to thereal extent of the earlier plot. It certainly was not confined to themere environs of Richmond. The Norfolk _Epitome_ of Oct. 6 states that onthe 6th and 7th of the previous month one hundred and fifty blacks, including twenty from Norfolk, were assembled near Whitlock's Mills inSuffolk County, and remained in the neighborhood till the failure of theRichmond plan became known. Petersburg newspapers also had letterscontaining similar tales. Then the alarm spread more widely. NearEdenton, N. C. , there was undoubtedly a real insurrection, though promptlysuppressed; and many families ultimately removed from that vicinity inconsequence. In Charleston, S. C. , there was still greater excitement, ifthe contemporary press may be trusted; it was reported that thefreeholders had been summoned to appear in arms, on penalty of a fine offifteen pounds, which many preferred to pay rather than risk taking thefever which then prevailed. These reports were, however, zealouslycontradicted in letters from Charleston, dated Oct. 8; and the Charlestonnewspapers up to Sept. 17 had certainly contained no reference to anyespecial excitement. This alone might not settle the fact, for reasonsalready given. But the omission of any such affair from the valuablepamphlet published in 1822 by Edwin C. Holland, containing reminiscencesof insurrections in South Carolina, is presumptive evidence that no veryextended agitation occurred. 

But wherever there was a black population, slave or emancipated, men'sstartled consciences made cowards of them all, and recognized the negroas a dangerous man, because an injured one. In Philadelphia it wasseriously proposed to prohibit the use of sky-rockets for a time, becausethey had been employed as signals in San Domingo. "Even in Boston, " saidthe New-York _Daily Advertiser_ of Sept. 20, "fears are expressed, andmeasures of prevention adopted. " This probably refers to a singularadvertisement which appeared in some of the Boston newspapers on Sept. 16, and runs as follows:--

 "NOTICE TO BLACKS. 

 "The officers of the police having made returns to the subscriber of the names of the following persons who are Africans or negroes, not subjects of the Emperor of Morocco nor citizens of any of the United States, the same are hereby warned and directed to depart out of this Commonwealth before the tenth day of October next, as they would avoid the pains and penalties of the law in that case provided, which was passed by the Legislature March 26, 1788. 

 "CHARLES BULFINCH, Superintendent. 

 "By order and direction of the Selectmen. "

The names annexed are about three hundred, with the places of theirsupposed origin, and they occupy a column of the paper. So at leastasserts the _United-States Gazette_ of Sept. 23. "It seems probable, "adds the editor, "from the nature of the notice, that some suspicion ofthe design of the negroes is entertained; and we regret to say there istoo much cause. " The law of 1788 above mentioned was "An Act forsuppressing rogues, vagabonds, and the like, " which forbade all personsof African descent, unless citizens of some one of the United States orsubjects of the Emperor of Morocco, from remaining more than two monthswithin the Commonwealth, on penalty of imprisonment and hard labor. Thissingular statute remained unrepealed until 1834. 

Amid the general harmony in the contemporary narratives of Gabriel'sinsurrection, it would be improper to pass by one exceptional legend, which by some singular fatality has obtained more circulation than allthe true accounts put together. I can trace it no farther back than NatTurner's time, when it was published in the Albany _Evening Journal_;thence transferred to the _Liberator_ of Sept. 17, 1831, and many othernewspapers; then refuted in detail by the _Richmond Enquirer_ of Oct. 21;then resuscitated in the John-Brown epoch by the Philadelphia _Press_, and extensively copied. It is fresh, spirited, and full of graphic andinteresting details, nearly every one of which is altogether false. 

Gabriel in this narrative becomes a rather mythical being, of vastabilities and life-long preparations. He bought his freedom, it isstated, at the age of twenty-one, and then travelled all over theSouthern States, enlisting confederates and forming stores of arms. Atlength his plot was discovered, in consequence of three negroes havingbeen seen riding out of a stable-yard together; and the Governor offereda reward of ten thousand dollars for further information, to which aRichmond gentleman added as much more. Gabriel concealed himself on boardthe "Sally Ann, " a vessel just sailing for San Domingo, and was revealedby his little nephew, whom he had sent for a jug of rum. Finally, thenarrative puts an eloquent dying speech into Gabriel's mouth, and, togive a properly tragic consummation, causes him to be torn to death byfour wild horses. The last item is, however, omitted in the more recentreprints of the story. 

Every one of these statements appears to be absolutely erroneous. Gabriellived and died a slave, and was probably never out of Virginia. His plotwas voluntarily revealed by accomplices. The rewards offered for hisarrest amounted to three hundred dollars only. He concealed himself onboard the schooner "Mary, " bound to Norfolk, and was discovered by thepolice. He died on the gallows, with ten associates, having made noaddress to the court or the people. All the errors of the statement werecontradicted when it was first made public, but they have proved veryhard to kill. 

Some of these events were embodied in a song bearing the same title withthis essay, "Gabriel's Defeat, " and set to a tune of the same name, bothbeing composed by a colored man. Several witnesses have assured me ofhaving heard this sung in Virginia, as a favorite air at the dances ofthe white people, as well as in the huts of the slaves. It is surely oneof history's strange parallelisms, that this fatal enterprise, like thatof John Brown afterwards, should thus have embalmed itself in music. Andtwenty-two years after these events, their impression still remainedvivid enough for Benjamin Lundy, in Tennessee, to write: "So well hadthey matured their plot, and so completely had they organized theirsystem of operations, that nothing but a seemingly miraculousintervention of the arm of Providence was supposed to have been capableof saving the city from pillage and flames, and the inhabitants thereoffrom butchery. So dreadful was the alarm and so great the consternationproduced on this occasion, that a member of Congress from that State wassome time after heard to express himself in his place as follows: 'Thenight-bell is never heard to toll in the city of Richmond, but theanxious mother presses her infant more closely to her bosom. '" TheCongressman was John Randolph of Roanoke, and it was Gabriel who hadtaught him the lesson. 

And longer than the melancholy life of that wayward statesman, --down evento the beginning of the American civil war, --there lingered in Richmond amemorial of those days, most peculiar and most instructive. Before thedays of secession, when the Northern traveller in Virginia, aftertraversing for weary leagues its miry ways, its desolate fields, and itsflowery forests, rode at last into its metropolis, he was sure to beguided ere long to visit its stately Capitol, modelled by Jefferson, whenFrench minister, from the Maison Carrée. Standing before it, he mightadmire undisturbed the Grecian outline of its exterior; but he foundhimself forbidden to enter, save by passing an armed and uniformedsentinel at the doorway. No other State of the Union then found itnecessary to protect its State House by a permanent cordon of bayonets. Yet there for half a century stood sentinel the "Public Guard" ofVirginia; and when the traveller asked the origin of the precaution, hewas told that it was the lasting memorial of Gabriel's Defeat. 

DENMARK VESEY

On Saturday afternoon, May 25, 1822, a slave named Devany, belonging toCol. Prioleau of Charleston, S. C. , was sent to market by hismistress, --the colonel being absent in the country. After doing hiserrands, he strolled down upon the wharves in the enjoyment of thatmagnificent wealth of leisure which usually characterized the former"house-servant" of the South, when beyond hail of the street-door. Hepresently noticed a small vessel lying in the stream, with a peculiarflag flying; and while looking at it, he was accosted by a slave namedWilliam, belonging to Mr. John Paul, who remarked to him, "I have oftenseen a flag with the number 76, but never one with the number 96 upon itbefore. " After some further conversation on this trifling point, Williamsuddenly inquired, "Do you know that something serious is about to takeplace?" Devany disclaiming the knowledge of any graver impending crisisthan the family dinner, the other went on to inform him that many of theslaves were "determined to right themselves. " "We are determined, " headded, "to shake off our bondage, and for that purpose we stand on a goodfoundation; many have joined, and if you will go with me, I will show youthe man who has the list of names, and who will take yours down. "

This startling disclosure was quite too much for Devany: he was made ofthe wrong material for so daring a project; his genius was culinary, notrevolutionary. Giving some excuse for breaking off the conversation, hewent forthwith to consult a free colored man, named Pensil or Pencell, who advised him to warn his master instantly. So he lost no time intelling the secret to his mistress and her young son; and on the returnof Col. Prioleau from the country, five days afterward, it was at oncerevealed to him. Within an hour or two he stated the facts to Mr. Hamilton, the intendant, or, as he would now be called, mayor; Mr. Hamilton at once summoned the corporation, and by five o'clock Devany andWilliam were under examination. 

This was the first warning of a plot which ultimately filled Charlestonwith terror. And yet so thorough and so secret was the organization ofthe negroes, that a fortnight passed without yielding the slightestinformation beyond the very little which was obtained from these two. William Paul was, indeed, put in confinement, and soon gave evidenceinculpating two slaves as his employers, --Mingo Harth and Peter Poyas. But these men, when arrested, behaved with such perfect coolness, andtreated the charge with such entire levity;--their trunks and premises, when searched, were so innocent of all alarming contents;--that they weresoon discharged by the wardens. William Paul at length became alarmed forhis own safety, and began to let out further facts piecemeal, and toinculpate other men. But some of those very men came voluntarily to theintendant, on hearing that they were suspected, and indignantly offeredthemselves for examination. Puzzled and bewildered, the municipalgovernment kept the thing as secret as possible, placed the city guard inan efficient condition, provided sixteen hundred rounds of ballcartridges, and ordered the sentinels and patrols to be armed with loadedmuskets. "Such had been our fancied security, that the guard hadpreviously gone on duty without muskets, and with only sheathed bayonetsand bludgeons. "

It has since been asserted, though perhaps on questionable authority, that the Secretary of War was informed of the plot, even including somedetails of the plan and the leader's name, before it was known inCharleston. If so, he utterly disregarded it; and, indeed, so well didthe negroes play their part, that the whole report was eventuallydisbelieved, while--as was afterwards proved--they went on to completetheir secret organization, and hastened by a fortnight the appointed dayof attack. Unfortunately for their plans, however, another betrayal tookplace at the very last moment, from a different direction. A class-leaderin a Methodist church had been persuaded or bribed by his master toprocure further disclosures. He at length came and stated, that, aboutthree months before, a man named Rolla, slave of Gov. Bennett, hadcommunicated to a friend of his the fact of an intended insurrection, andhad said that the time fixed for the outbreak was the following Sundaynight, June 16. As this conversation took place on Friday, it gave but avery short time for the city authorities to act, especially as theywished neither to endanger the city nor to alarm it. 

Yet so cautiously was the game played on both sides that the whole thingwas still kept a secret from the Charleston public; and some members ofthe city government did not fully appreciate their danger till they hadpassed it. "The whole was concealed, " wrote the governor afterwards, "until the time came; but secret preparations were made. Saturday nightand Sunday morning passed without demonstrations; doubts were excited, and counter orders issued for diminishing the guard. " It afterwardsproved that these preparations showed to the slaves that their plot wasbetrayed, and so saved the city without public alarm. Newspapercorrespondence soon was full of the story, each informant of coursehinting plainly that he had been behind the scenes all along, and hadwithheld it only to gratify the authorities in their policy of silence. It was "now no longer a secret, " they wrote; adding, that, for five orsix weeks, but little attention had been paid by the community to theserumors, the city council having kept it carefully to themselves until anumber of suspicious slaves had been arrested. This refers to tenprisoners who were seized on June 18, an arrest which killed the plot, and left only the terrors of what might have been. The investigation, thus publicly commenced, soon revealed a free colored man named DenmarkVesey as the leader of the enterprise, --among his chief coadjutors beingthat innocent Peter and that unsuspecting Mingo who had been examined anddischarged nearly three weeks before. 

It is matter of demonstration, that, but for the military preparations onthe appointed Sunday night, the attempt would have been made. Theringleaders had actually met for their final arrangements, when, bycomparing notes, they found themselves foiled; and within another weekthey were prisoners on trial. Nevertheless, the plot which they had laidwas the most elaborate insurrectionary project ever formed by Americanslaves, and came the nearest to a terrible success. In boldness ofconception and thoroughness of organization there has been nothing tocompare with it; and it is worth while to dwell somewhat upon itsdetails, first introducing the _dramatis personae_. 

Denmark Vesey had come very near figuring as a revolutionist in Hayti, instead of South Carolina. Capt. Vesey, an old resident of Charleston, commanded a ship that traded between St. Thomas and Cape Français, duringour Revolutionary War, in the slave-transportation line. In the year 1781he took on board a cargo of three hundred and ninety slaves, and sailedfor the Cape. On the passage, he and his officers were much attracted bythe beauty and intelligence of a boy of fourteen, whom they unanimouslyadopted into the cabin as a pet. They gave him new clothes, and a newname, Télémaque, which was afterwards gradually corrupted into Telmak andDenmark. They amused themselves with him until their arrival at CapeFrançais, and then, "having no use for the boy, " sold their pet as if hehad been a macaw or a monkey. Capt. Vesey sailed for St. Thomas; and, presently making another trip to Cape Français, was surprised to hearfrom his consignee that Télémaque would be returned on his hands as being"unsound, "--not in theology nor in morals, but in body, --subject toepileptic fits, in fact. According to the custom of that place, the boywas examined by the city physician, who required Capt. Vesey to take himback; and Denmark served him faithfully, with no trouble from epilepsy, for twenty years, travelling all over the world with him, and learning tospeak various languages. In 1800 he drew a prize of fifteen hundreddollars in the East Bay-street Lottery, with which he bought his freedomfrom his master for six hundred dollars, --much less than his marketvalue. From that time, the official report says, he worked as a carpenterin Charleston, distinguished for physical strength and energy. "Amongthose of his color he was looked up to with awe and respect. His temperwas impetuous and domineering in the extreme, qualifying him for thedespotic rule of which he was ambitious. All his passions wereungovernable and savage; and to his numerous wives and children hedisplayed the haughty and capricious cruelty of an Eastern bashaw. "

"For several years before he disclosed his intentions to any one, heappears to have been constantly and assiduously engaged in endeavoring toimbitter the minds of the colored population against the white. Herendered himself perfectly familiar with all those parts of theScriptures which he thought he could pervert to his purpose, and wouldreadily quote them to prove that slavery was contrary to the laws of God;that slaves were bound to attempt their emancipation, however shockingand bloody might be the consequences; and that such efforts would notonly be pleasing to the Almighty, but were absolutely enjoined, and theirsuccess predicted, in the Scriptures. His favorite texts when headdressed those of his own color were Zech. Xiv. 1-3, and Josh. Vi. 21;and in all his conversations he identified their situation with that ofthe Israelites. The number of inflammatory pamphlets on slavery broughtinto Charleston from some of our sister States within the last four years(and once from Sierra Leone), and distributed amongst the coloredpopulation of the city, for which there was a great facility, inconsequence of the unrestricted intercourse allowed to persons of colorbetween the different States in the Union, and the speeches in Congressof those opposed to the admission of Missouri into the Union, perhapsgarbled and misrepresented, furnished him with ample means for inflamingthe minds of the colored population of the State; and by distortingcertain parts of those speeches, or selecting from them particularpassages, he persuaded but too many that Congress had actually declaredthem free, and that they were held in bondage contrary to the laws of theland. Even whilst walking through the streets in company with another, hewas not idle; for if his companion bowed to a white person, he wouldrebuke him, and observe that all men were born equal, and that he wassurprised that any one would degrade himself by such conduct; that hewould never cringe to the whites, nor ought any one who had the feelingsof a man. When answered, 'We are slaves, ' he would sarcastically andindignantly reply, 'You deserve to remain slaves;' and if he were furtherasked, 'What can we do?' he would remark, 'Go and buy a spelling-book, and read the fable of Hercules and the Wagoner, ' which he would thenrepeat, and apply it to their situation. He also sought every opportunityof entering into conversation with white persons, when they could beoverheard by negroes near by, especially in grog-shops, --during whichconversation he would artfully introduce some bold remark on slavery; andsometimes, when, from the character he was conversing with, he found hemight still be bolder, he would go so far, that, had not his declarationsin such situations been clearly proved, they would scarcely have beencredited. He continued this course until some time after the commencementof the last winter; by which time he had not only obtained incredibleinfluence amongst persons of color, but many feared him more than theirowners, and, one of them declared, even more than his God. "

It was proved against him, that his house had been the principal place ofmeeting for the conspirators, that all the others habitually referred tohim as the leader, and that he had shown great address in dealing withdifferent temperaments and overcoming a variety of scruples. One witnesstestified that Vesey had read to him from the Bible about the deliveranceof the children of Israel; another, that he had read to him a speechwhich had been delivered "in Congress by a Mr. King" on the subject ofslavery, and Vesey had said that "this Mr. King was the black man'sfriend; that he, Mr. King, had declared he would continue to speak, write, and publish pamphlets against slavery the longest day he lived, until the Southern States consented to emancipate their slaves, for thatslavery was a great disgrace to the country. " But among all the reportsthere are only two sentences which really reveal the secret soul ofDenmark Vesey, and show his impulses and motives. "He said he did not gowith Creighton to Africa, because he had not a will; he wanted to stayand see what he could do for his fellow-creatures. " The other takes usstill nearer home. Monday Gell stated in his confession, that Vesey, onfirst broaching the plan to him, said "he was satisfied with his owncondition, being free; but, as all his children were slaves, he wished tosee what could be done for them. "

It is strange to turn from this simple statement of a perhaps intelligentpreference, on the part of a parent, for seeing his offspring in acondition of freedom, to the _naïve_ astonishment of his judges. "It isdifficult to imagine, " says the sentence finally passed on Denmark Vesey, "what infatuation could have prompted you to attempt an enterprise sowild and visionary. You were a free man, comparatively wealthy, andenjoyed every comfort compatible with your situation. You had, therefore, much to risk and little to gain. " Yet one witness testified: "Vesey saidthe negroes were living such an abominable life, they ought to rise. Isaid, I was living well; he said, though I was, others were not, and that'twas such fools as I that were in the way and would not help them, andthat after all things were well he would mark me. " "His generalconversation, " said another witness, a white boy, "was about religion, which he would apply to slavery; as, for instance, he would speak of thecreation of the world, in which he would say all men had equal rights, blacks as well as whites, etc. ; all his religious remarks were mingledwith slavery. " And the firmness of this purpose did not leave him, evenafter the betrayal of his cherished plans. "After the plot wasdiscovered, " said Monday Gell, in his confession, "Vesey said it was allover, unless an attempt were made to rescue those who might be condemned, by rushing on the people and saving the prisoners, or all dyingtogether. "

The only person to divide with Vesey the claim of leadership was PeterPoyas. Vesey was the missionary of the cause, but Peter was theorganizing mind. He kept the register of "candidates, " and decided whoshould or should not be enrolled. "We can't live so, " he often remindedhis confederates; "we must break the yoke. " "God has a hand in it; wehave been meeting for four years, and are not yet betrayed. " Peter was aship-carpenter, and a slave of great value. He was to be the militaryleader. His plans showed some natural generalship: he arranged thenight-attack; he planned the enrolment of a mounted troop to scour thestreets; and he had a list of all the shops where arms and ammunitionwere kept for sale. He voluntarily undertook the management of the mostdifficult part of the enterprise, --the capture of the mainguard-house, --and had pledged himself to advance alone and surprise thesentinel. He was said to have a magnetism in his eyes, of which hisconfederates stood in great awe; if he once got his eye upon a man, therewas no resisting it. A white witness has since narrated, that, after hisarrest, he was chained to the floor in a cell, with another of theconspirators. Men in authority came, and sought by promises, threats, andeven tortures, to ascertain the names of other accomplices. Hiscompanion, wearied out with pain and suffering, and stimulated by thehope of saving his own life, at last began to yield. Peter raisedhimself, leaned upon his elbow, looked at the poor fellow, sayingquietly, "Die like a man, " and instantly lay down again. It was enough;not another word was extorted. 

One of the most notable individuals in the plot was a certain JackPurcell, commonly called Gullah Jack, --Gullah signifying Angola, theplace of his origin. A conjurer by profession and by lineal heritage inhis own country, he had resumed the practice of his vocation on this sidethe Atlantic. For fifteen years he had wielded in secret an immenseinfluence among a sable constituency in Charleston; and as he had thereputation of being invulnerable, and of teaching invulnerability as anart, he was very good at beating up recruits for insurrection. Over thoseof Angolese descent, especially, he was a perfect king, and made themjoin in the revolt as one man. They met him monthly at a place calledBulkley's Farm, selected because the black overseer on that plantationwas one of the initiated, and because the farm was accessible by water, thus enabling them to elude the patrol. There they prepared cartridgesand pikes, and had primitive banquets, which assumed a melodramaticcharacter under the inspiriting guidance of Jack. If a fowl was privatelyroasted, that mystic individual muttered incantations over it; and thenthey all grasped at it, exclaiming, "Thus we pull Buckra to pieces!" Hegave them parched corn and ground-nuts to be eaten as internal safeguardson the day before the outbreak, and a consecrated _cullah_, or crab'sclaw, to be carried in the mouth by each, as an amulet. These ratherquestionable means secured him a power which was very unquestionable; thewitnesses examined in his presence all showed dread of his conjurations, and referred to him indirectly, with a kind of awe, as "the little manwho can't be shot. "

When Gullah Jack was otherwise engaged, there seems to have been a sortof deputy seer employed in the enterprise, a blind man named Philip. Hewas a preacher; was said to have been born with a caul on his head, andso claimed the gift of second-sight. Timid adherents were brought to hishouse for ghostly counsel. "Why do you look so timorous?" he said toWilliam Garner, and then quoted Scripture, "Let not your heart betroubled. " That a blind man should know how he looked, was beyond thephilosophy of the visitor; and this piece of rather cheap ingenuitycarried the day. 

Other leaders were appointed also. Monday Gell was the scribe of theenterprise; he was a native African, who had learned to read and write. He was by trade a harness-maker, working chiefly on his own account. Heconfessed that he had written a letter to President Boyer of the newblack republic; "the letter was about the sufferings of the blacks, andto know if the people of St. Domingo would help them if they made aneffort to free themselves. " This epistle was sent by the black cook of aNorthern schooner, and the envelope was addressed to a relative of thebearer. 

Tom Russell was the armorer, and made pikes "on a very improved model, "the official report admits. Polydore Faber fitted the weapons withhandles. Bacchus Hammett had charge of the fire-arms and ammunition, notas yet a laborious duty. William Garner and Mingo Harth were to lead thehorse-company. Lot Forrester was the courier, and had done, no one everknew how much, in the way of enlisting country negroes, of whom NedBennett was to take command when enlisted. Being the governor's servant, Ned was probably credited with some official experience. These were theofficers: now for the plan of attack. 

It was the custom then, as later, for the country negroes to flocklargely into Charleston on Sunday. More than a thousand came, on ordinaryoccasions, and a far larger number might at any time make theirappearance without exciting any suspicion. They gathered in, especiallyby water, from the opposite sides of Ashley and Cooper Rivers, and fromthe neighboring islands; and they came in a great number of canoes ofvarious sizes, --many of which could carry a hundred men, --which wereordinarily employed in bringing agricultural products to the Charlestonmarket. To get an approximate knowledge of the number, the citygovernment once ordered the persons thus arriving to be counted, --andthat during the progress of the trials, at a time when the negroes wererather fearful of coming into town; and it was found, that, even then, there were more than five hundred visitors on a single Sunday. This fact, then, was the essential point in the plan of insurrection. Wholeplantations were found to have been enlisted among the "candidates, " asthey were termed; and it was proved that the city negroes, who livednearest the place of meeting, had agreed to conceal these confederates intheir houses to a large extent, on the night of the proposed outbreak. 

The details of the plan, however, were not rashly committed to the massof the confederates; they were known only to a few, and were finally tobe announced only after the evening prayer-meetings on the appointedSunday. But each leader had his own company enlisted, and his own workmarked out. When the clock struck twelve, all were to move. Peter Poyaswas to lead a party ordered to assemble at South Bay, and to be joined bya force from James's Island; he was then to march up and seize thearsenal and guard-house opposite St. Michael's Church, and detach asufficient number to cut off all white citizens who should appear at thealarm-posts. A second body of negroes, from the country and the Neck, headed by Ned Bennett, was to assemble on the Neck, and seize the arsenalthere. A third was to meet at Gov. Bennett's Mills, under command ofRolla, and, after putting the governor and intendant to death, to marchthrough the city, or be posted at Cannon's Bridge, thus preventing theinhabitants of Cannonsborough from entering the city. A fourth, partlyfrom the country, and partly from the neighboring localities in the city, was to rendezvous on Gadsden's Wharf, and attack the upper guard-house. Afifth, composed of country and Neck negroes, was to assemble at Bulkley'sFarm, two miles and a half from the city, seize the upperpowder-magazine, and then march down; and a sixth was to assemble atDenmark Vesey's, and obey his orders. A seventh detachment, under GullahJack, was to assemble in Boundary Street, at the head of King Street, tocapture the arms of the Neck company of militia, and to take anadditional supply from Mr. Duquercron's shop. The naval stores on Mey'sWharf were also to be attacked. Meanwhile, a horse-company, consisting ofmany draymen, hostlers, and butcher-boys, was to meet at Lightwood'sAlley, and then scour the streets to prevent the whites from assembling. Every white man coming out of his own door was to be killed; and, ifnecessary, the city was to be fired in several places, --slow-match forthis purpose having been purloined from the public arsenal, and placed inan accessible position. 

Beyond this, the plan of action was either unformed or undiscovered; someslight reliance seems to have been placed on English aid, --more onassistance from St. Domingo. At any rate, all the ships in the harborwere to be seized; and in these, if the worst came to the worst, thosemost deeply inculpated could set sail, bearing with them, perhaps, thespoils of shops and of banks. It seems to be admitted by the officialnarrative, that they might have been able, at that season of the year, and with the aid of the fortifications on the Neck and around the harbor, to retain possession of the city for some time. 

So unsuspicious were the authorities, so unprepared the citizens, so opento attack lay the city, that nothing seemed necessary to the success ofthe insurgents except organization and arms. Indeed, the plan oforganization easily covered a supply of arms. By their own contributionsthey had secured enough to strike the first blow, --a few hundred pikesand daggers, together with swords and guns for the leaders. But they hadcarefully marked every place in the city where weapons were to beobtained. On King-street Road, beyond the municipal limits, in a commonwooden shop, were left unguarded the arms of the Neck company of militia, to the number of several hundred stand; and these were to be secured byBacchus Hammett, whose master kept the establishment. In Mr. Duquercron'sshop there were deposited for sale as many more weapons; and they hadnoted Mr. Schirer's shop in Queen Street, and other gunsmiths'establishments. Finally, the State arsenal in Meeting Street, a buildingwith no defences except ordinary wooden doors, was to be seized early inthe outbreak. Provided, therefore, that the first moves provedsuccessful, all the rest appeared sure. 

Very little seems to have been said among the conspirators in regard toany plans of riot or debauchery, subsequent to the capture of the city. Either their imaginations did not dwell on them, or the witnesses did notdare to give testimony, or the authorities to print it. Death was to bedealt out, comprehensive and terrible; but nothing more is mentioned. Oneprisoner, Rolla, is reported in the evidence to have dropped hints inregard to the destiny of the women; and there was a rumor in thenewspapers of the time, that he or some other of Gov. Bennett's slaveswas to have taken the governor's daughter, a young girl of sixteen, forhis wife, in the event of success; but this is all. On the other hand, Denmark Vesey was known to be for a war of immediate and totalextermination; and when some of the company opposed killing "theministers and the women and children, " Vesey read from the Scripturesthat all should be cut off, and said that "it was for their safety not toleave one white skin alive, for this was the plan they pursued at St. Domingo. " And all this was not a mere dream of one lonely enthusiast, buta measure which had been maturing for four full years among severalconfederates, and had been under discussion for five months amongmultitudes of initiated "candidates. "

As usual with slave-insurrections, the best men and those most trustedwere deepest in the plot. Rolla was the only prominent conspirator whowas not an active church-member. "Most of the ringleaders, " says aCharleston letter-writer of that day, "were the rulers or class-leadersin what is called the African Society, and were considered faithful, honest fellows. Indeed, many of the owners could not be convinced, tillthe fellows confessed themselves, that they were concerned, and that thefirst object of all was to kill their masters. " And the first officialreport declares that it would not be difficult to assign a motive for theinsurrectionists, "if it had not been distinctly proved, that, withscarcely an exception, they had no individual hardship to complain of, and were among the most humanely treated negroes in the city. Thefacilities for combining and confederating in such a scheme were amplyafforded by the extreme indulgence and kindness which characterize thedomestic treatment of our slaves. Many slave-owners among us, notsatisfied with ministering to the wants of their domestics by all thecomforts of abundant food and excellent clothing, with a misguidedbenevolence have not only permitted their instruction, but lent to suchefforts their approbation and applause. "

"I sympathize most sincerely, " says the anonymous author of a pamphlet ofthe period, "with the very respectable and pious clergyman whose heartmust still bleed at the recollection that his confidential class-leader, but a week or two before his just conviction, had received the communionof the Lord's Supper from his hand. This wretch had been brought up inhis pastor's family, and was treated with the same Christian attention aswas shown to their own children. " "To us who are accustomed to the baseand proverbial ingratitude of these people, this ill return of kindnessand confidence is not surprising; but they who are ignorant of their realcharacter will read and wonder. "

One demonstration of this "Christian attention" had lately been theclosing of the African Church, --of which, as has been stated, most of theleading revolutionists were members, --on the ground that it tended tospread the dangerous infection of the alphabet. On Jan. 15, 1821, thecity marshal, John J. Lafar, had notified "ministers of the gospel andothers who keep night--and Sunday-schools for slaves, that the educationof such persons is forbidden by law, and that the city government feelimperiously bound to enforce the penalty. " So that there were somespecial as well as general grounds for disaffection among theseungrateful favorites of fortune, the slaves. Then there were fancieddangers. An absurd report had somehow arisen, --since you cannot keep menignorant without making them unreasonable also, --that on the ensuingFourth of July the whites were to create a false alarm, and that everyblack man coming out was to be killed, "in order to thin them;" thisbeing done to prevent their joining an imaginary army supposed to be onits way from Hayti. Others were led to suppose that Congress had endedthe Missouri Compromise discussion by making them all free, and that thelaw would protect their liberty if they could only secure it. Others, again, were threatened with the vengeance of the conspirators, unlessthey also joined; on the night of attack, it was said, the initiatedwould have a countersign, and all who did not know it would share thefate of the whites. Add to this the reading of Congressional speeches, and of the copious magazine of revolution to be found in the Bible, --andit was no wonder, if they for the first time were roused, under theenergetic leadership of Vesey, to a full consciousness of their owncondition. 

"Not only were the leaders of good character, and very much indulged bytheir owners; but this was very generally the case with all who wereconvicted, --many of them possessing the highest confidence of theirowners, and not one of bad character. " In one case it was proved thatVesey had forbidden his followers to trust a certain man, because he hadonce been seen intoxicated. In another case it was shown that a slavenamed George had made every effort to obtain their confidence, but wasconstantly excluded from their meetings as a talkative fellow who couldnot be trusted, --a policy which his levity of manner, when examined incourt, fully justified. They took no women into counsel, --not from anydistrust apparently, but in order that their children might not be leftuncared-for in case of defeat and destruction. House-servants were rarelytrusted, or only when they had been carefully sounded by the chiefleaders. Peter Poyas, in commissioning an agent to enlist men, gave himexcellent cautions: "Don't mention it to those waiting-men who receivepresents of old coats, etc. , from their masters, or they'll betray us; Iwill speak to them. " When he did speak, if he did not convince them, heat least frightened them. But the chief reliance was on those slaves whowere hired out, and therefore more uncontrolled, --and also upon thecountry negroes. 

The same far-sighted policy directed the conspirators to disarm suspicionby peculiarly obedient and orderly conduct. And it shows the precautionwith which the thing was carried on, that, although Peter Poyas wasproved to have had a list of some six hundred persons, yet not one of hisparticular company was ever brought to trial. As each leader kept tohimself the names of his proselytes, and as Monday Gell was the only oneof these leaders who turned traitor, any opinion as to the numbersactually engaged must be altogether conjectural. One witness said ninethousand; another, six thousand six hundred. These statements wereprobably extravagant, though not more so than Gov. Bennett's assertion, on the other side, that "all who were actually concerned had been broughtto justice, "--unless by this phrase he designates only the ringleaders. The avowed aim of the governor's letter, indeed, is to smooth the thingover, for the credit and safety of the city; and its evasive tonecontrasts strongly with the more frank and thorough statements of thejudges, made after the thing could no longer be hushed up. These highauthorities explicitly acknowledge that they had failed to detect morethan a small minority of those concerned in the project, and seem toadmit, that, if it had once been brought to a head, the slaves generallywould have joined in. 

"We cannot venture to say, " says the intendant's pamphlet, "to how manythe knowledge of the intended effort was communicated, who withoutsignifying their assent, or attending any of the meetings, were yetprepared to profit by events. That there are many who would not havepermitted the enterprise to have failed at a critical moment, for thewant of their co-operation, we have the best reason for believing. " Sobelieved the community at large; and the panic was in proportion, whenthe whole danger was finally made public. "The scenes I witnessed, " saysone who has since narrated the circumstances, "and the declaration of theimpending danger that met us at all times and on all occasions, forcedthe conviction that never were an entire people more thoroughly alarmedthan were the people of Charleston at that time.... During theexcitement, and the trial of the supposed conspirators, rumor proclaimedall, and doubtless more than all, the horrors of the plot. The city wasto be fired in every quarter; the arsenal in the immediate vicinity wasto be broken open, and the arms distributed to the insurgents, and auniversal massacre of the white inhabitants to take place. Nor did thereseem to be any doubt in the mind of the people, that such would actuallyhave been the result had not the plot fortunately been detected beforethe time appointed for the outbreak. It was believed, as a matter ofcourse, that every black in the city would join in the insurrection, andthat if the original design had been attempted, and the city taken bysurprise, the negroes would have achieved a complete and easy victory. Nor does it seem at all impossible that such might have been, or yet maybe, the case, if any well-arranged and resolute rising should takeplace. "

Indeed, this universal admission, that all the slaves were ready to takepart in any desperate enterprise, was one of the most startling aspectsof the affair. The authorities say that the two principal State'sevidence declared that "they never spoke to any person of color on thesubject, or knew of any one who had been spoken to by the other leaders, who had withheld his assent. " And the conspirators seem to have beenperfectly satisfied that all the remaining slaves would enter their ranksupon the slightest success. "Let us assemble a sufficient number tocommence the work with spirit, and we'll not want men; they'll fall inbehind us fast enough. " And as an illustration of this readiness, theofficial report mentions a slave who had belonged to one master forsixteen years, sustaining a high character for fidelity and affection, who had twice travelled with him through the Northern States, resistingevery solicitation to escape, and who yet was very deeply concerned inthe insurrection, though knowing it to involve the probable destructionof the whole family with whom he lived. 

One singular circumstance followed the first rumors of the plot. Severalwhite men, said to be of low and unprincipled character, at once began tomake interest with the supposed leaders among the slaves, either fromgenuine sympathy, or with the intention of betraying them for money, orby profiting by the insurrection, should it succeed. Four of these werebrought to trial; but the official report expresses the opinion that manymore might have been discovered but for the inadmissibility of slavetestimony against whites. Indeed, the evidence against even these fourwas insufficient for a capital conviction, although one was overheard, through stratagem, by the intendant himself, and arrested on the spot. This man was a Scotchman, another a Spaniard, a third a German, and thefourth a Carolinian. The last had for thirty years kept a shop in theneighborhood of Charleston; he was proved to have asserted that "thenegroes had as much right to fight for their liberty as the whitepeople, " had offered to head them in the enterprise, and had said that inthree weeks he would have two thousand men. But in no case, it appears, did these men obtain the confidence of the slaves; and the whole plot wasconceived and organized, so far as appears, without the slightestco-operation from any white man. 

The trial of the conspirators began on Wednesday, June 19. At the requestof the intendant, Justices Kennedy and Parker summoned five freeholders(Messrs. Drayton, Heyward, Pringle, Legaré, and Turnbull) to constitute acourt, under the provisions of the Act "for the better ordering andgoverning negroes and other slaves. " The intendant laid the case beforethem, with a list of prisoners and witnesses. By a vote of the court, allspectators were excluded, except the owners and counsel of the slavesconcerned. No other colored person was allowed to enter the jail, and astrong guard of soldiers was kept always on duty around the building. Under these general arrangements the trials proceeded with elaborateformality, though with some variations from ordinary usage, --as was, indeed, required by the statute. 

For instance, the law provided that the testimony of any Indian or slavecould be received, without oath, against a slave or free colored person, although it was not valid, even under oath, against a white. But it isbest to quote the official language in respect to the rules adopted: "Asthe court had been organized under a statute of a peculiar and localcharacter, and intended for the government of a distinct class of personsin the community, they were bound to conform their proceedings to itsprovisions, which depart in many essential features from the principlesof the common law and some of the settled rules of evidence. The court, however, determined to adopt those rules, whenever they were notrepugnant to nor expressly excepted by that statute, nor inconsistentwith the local situation and policy of the State; and laid down for theirown government the following regulations: First, that no slave should betried except in the presence of his owner or his counsel, and that noticeshould be given in every case at least one day before the trial; second, that the testimony of one witness, unsupported by additional evidence orby circumstances, should lead to no conviction of a capital nature;third, that the witnesses should be confronted with the accused and witheach other in every case, except where testimony was given under a solemnpledge that the names of the witnesses should not be divulged, --as theydeclared, in some instances, that they apprehended being murdered by theblacks, if it was known that they had volunteered their evidence; fourth, that the prisoners might be represented by counsel, whenever this wasrequested by the owners of the slaves, or by the prisoners themselves iffree; fifth, that the statements or defences of the accused should beheard in every case, and they be permitted themselves to examine anywitness they thought proper. "

It is singular to observe how entirely these rules seem to concede that aslave's life has no sort of value to himself, but only to his master. Hismaster, not he himself, must choose whether it be worth while to employcounsel. His master, not his mother or his wife, must be present at thetrial. So far is this carried, that the provision to exclude "persons whohad no particular interest in the slaves accused" seems to have excludedevery acknowledged relative they had in the world, and admitted onlythose who had invested in them so many dollars. And yet the very firstsection of that part of the statute under which they were tried lays downan explicit recognition of their humanity: "And whereas natural justiceforbids that any _person_, of what condition soever, should be condemnedunheard. " So thoroughly, in the whole report, are the ideas of person andchattel intermingled, that when Gov. Bennett petitions for mitigation ofsentence in the case of his slave Batteau, and closes, "I ask this, gentlemen, as an individual incurring a severe and distressing loss, " itis really impossible to decide whether the predominant emotion beaffectional or financial. 

It is a matter of painful necessity to acknowledge that the proceedingsof most slave-tribunals have justified the honest admission of Gov. Adamsof South Carolina, in his legislative message of 1855: "Theadministration of our laws, in relation to our colored population, by ourcourts of magistrates and freeholders, as these courts are at presentconstituted, calls loudly for reform. Their decisions are rarely inconformity with justice or humanity. " This trial, as reported by thejustices themselves, seems to have been no worse than theaverage, --perhaps better. In all, thirty-five were sentenced to death, thirty-four to transportation, twenty-seven acquitted by the court, andtwenty-five discharged without trial, by the Committee ofVigilance, --making in all one hundred and twenty-one. 

The sentences pronounced by Judge Kennedy upon the leading rebels, whilepaying a high tribute to their previous character, of course bring alllaw and all Scripture to prove the magnitude of their crime. "It is amelancholy fact, " he says, "that those servants in whom we reposed themost unlimited confidence have been the principal actors in this wickedscheme. " Then he rises into earnest appeals. "Are you incapable of theheavenly influence of that gospel, all whose paths are peace? It was toreconcile us to our destiny on earth, and to enable us to discharge withfidelity all our duties, whether as master or servant, that thoseinspired precepts were imparted by Heaven to fallen man. "

To these reasonings the prisoners had, of course, nothing to say; but theofficial reports bear the strongest testimony to their fortitude. "Rolla, when arraigned, affected not to understand the charge against him, and, when it was at his request further explained to him, assumed, withwonderful adroitness, astonishment and surprise. He was remarkable, throughout his trial, for great presence and composure of mind. When hewas informed he was convicted, and was advised to prepare for death, though he had previously (but after his trial) confessed his guilt, heappeared perfectly confounded, but exhibited no signs of fear. In Ned'sbehavior there was nothing remarkable; but his countenance was stern andimmovable, even whilst he was receiving the sentence of death: from hislooks it was impossible to discover or conjecture what were his feelings. Not so with Peter: for in his countenance were strongly markeddisappointed ambition, revenge, indignation, and an anxiety to know howfar the discoveries had extended; and the same emotions were exhibited inhis conduct. He did not appear to fear personal consequences, for hiswhole behavior indicated the reverse; but exhibited an evident anxietyfor the success of their plan, in which his whole soul was embarked. Hiscountenance and behavior were the same when he received his sentence; andhis only words were, on retiring, 'I suppose you'll let me see my wifeand family before I die?' and that not in a supplicating tone. When hewas asked, a day or two after, if it was possible he could wish to seehis master and family murdered, who had treated him so kindly, he onlyreplied to the question by a smile. Monday's behavior was not peculiar. When he was before the court, his arms were folded; he heard thetestimony given against him, and received his sentence, with the utmostfirmness and composure. But no description can accurately convey toothers the impression which the trial, defence, and appearance of GullahJack made on those who witnessed the workings of his cunning and rudeaddress. When arrested and brought before the court, in company withanother African named Jack, the property of the estate of Pritchard, heassumed so much ignorance, and looked and acted the fool so well, thatsome of the court could not believe that this was the necromancer who wassought after. This conduct he continued when on his trial, until he sawthe witnesses and heard the testimony as it progressed against him; when, in an instant, his countenance was lighted up as if by lightning, and hiswildness and vehemence of gesture, and the malignant glance with which heeyed the witnesses who appeared against him, all indicated the savage, who indeed had been _caught_, but not _tamed_. His courage, however, soonforsook him. When he received sentence of death, he earnestly imploredthat a fortnight longer might be allowed him, and then a week longer, which he continued earnestly to solicit until he was taken from thecourt-room to his cell; and when he was carried to execution, he gave uphis spirit without firmness or composure. "

Not so with Denmark Vesey. The plans of years were frustrated; his ownlife and liberty were thrown away; many others were sacrificed throughhis leadership; and one more was added to the list of unsuccessfulinsurrections. All these disastrous certainties he faced calmly, and gavehis whole mind composedly to the conducting of his defence. With his armstightly folded, and his eyes fixed on the floor, he attentively followedevery item of the testimony. He heard the witnesses examined by thecourt, and cross-examined by his own counsel; and it is evident from thenarrative of the presiding judge, that he showed no small skill andpolicy in the searching cross-examination which he then applied. Thefears, the feelings, the consciences, of those who had betrayed him, allwere in turn appealed to; but the facts were quite overpowering, and itwas too late to aid his comrades or himself. Then turning to the court, he skilfully availed himself of the point which had so much impressed thecommunity: the intrinsic improbability that a man in his position offreedom and prosperity should sacrifice every thing to free other people. If they thought it so incredible, why not give him the benefit of theincredibility? The act being, as they stated, one of infatuation, whyconvict him of it on the bare word of men who, by their own showing, hadnot only shared the infatuation, but proved traitors to it? An ingeniousdefence, --indeed, the only one which could by any possibility besuggested, anterior to the days of Choate and somnambulism; but in vain. He was sentenced; and it was not, apparently, till the judge reproachedhim for the destruction he had brought on his followers, that he showedany sign of emotion. Then the tears came into his eyes. But he said notanother word. 

The executions took place on five different days; and, bad as they were, they might have been worse. After the imaginary Negro Plot of New York, in 1741, thirteen negroes had been judicially burned alive; two hadsuffered the same sentence at Charleston in 1808; and it was undoubtedlysome mark of progress, that in this case the gallows took the place ofthe flames. Six were hanged on July 2, upon Blake's lands, nearCharleston, --Denmark Vesey, Peter Poyas, Jesse, Ned, Rolla, andBatteau, --the last three being slaves of the governor himself. GullahJack and John were executed "on the Lines, " near Charleston, on July 12;and twenty-two more on July 26. Four others suffered their fate on July30; and one more, William Garner, effected a temporary escape, wascaptured, and tried by a different court, and was finally executed onAug. 9. 

The self-control of these men did not desert them at their execution. When the six leaders suffered death, the report says, Peter Poyasrepeated his charge of secrecy: "Do not open your lips; die silent, asyou shall see me do;" and all obeyed. And though afterwards, as theparticulars of the plot became better known, there was less inducement toconceal, yet every one of the thirty-five seems to have met his fatebravely, except the conjurer. Gov. Bennett, in his letter, expresses muchdissatisfaction at the small amount learned from the participators. "Tothe last hour of the existence of several who appeared to be conspicuousactors in the drama, they were pressingly importuned to make furtherconfessions, "--this "importuning" being more clearly defined in a letterof Mr. Ferguson, owner of two of the slaves, as "having them severelycorrected. " Yet so little was obtained, that the governor was compelledto admit at last that the really essential features of the plot were notknown to any of the informers. 

It is to be remembered, that the plot failed because a man unauthorizedand incompetent, William Paul, undertook to make enlistments on his ownaccount. He happened on one of precisely that class of men, --favoredhouse-servants, --whom his leaders had expressly reserved for more skilfulmanipulations. He being thus detected, one would have supposed that thediscovery of many accomplices would at once have followed. The numberenlisted was counted by thousands; yet for twenty-nine days after thefirst treachery, and during twenty days of official examination, onlyfifteen of the conspirators were ferreted out. Meanwhile the informers'names had to be concealed with the utmost secrecy; they were in peril oftheir lives from the slaves, --William Paul scarcely dared to go beyondthe doorstep, --and the names of important witnesses examined in June werestill suppressed in the official report published in October. That aconspiracy on so large a scale should have existed in embryo during fouryears, and in an active form for several months, and yet have been sowell managed, that, after actual betrayal, the authorities were againthrown off their guard, and the plot nearly brought to a headagain, --this certainly shows extraordinary ability in the leaders, and atalent for concerted action on the part of slaves generally, with whichthey have hardly been credited. 

And it is also to be noted, that the range of the conspiracy extended farbeyond Charleston. It was proved that Frank, slave of Mr. Ferguson, living nearly forty miles from the city, had boasted of having enlistedfour plantations in his immediate neighborhood. It was in evidence thatthe insurgents "were trying all round the country, from Georgetown andSantee round about to Combahee, to get people;" and, after the trials, itwas satisfactorily established that Vesey "had been in the country as farnorth as South Santee, and southwardly as far as the Euhaws, which isbetween seventy and eighty miles from the city. " Mr. Ferguson himselftestified that the good order of any gang was no evidence of theirignorance of the plot, since the behavior of his own initiated slaves hadbeen unexceptionable, in accordance with Vesey's directions. 

With such an organization and such materials, there was nothing in theplan which could be pronounced incredible or impracticable. There is noreason why they should not have taken the city. After all the governor'sentreaties as to moderate language, the authorities were obliged to admitthat South Carolina had been saved from a "horrible catastrophe. " "For, although success could not possibly have attended the conspirators, yet, before their suppression, Charleston would probably have been wrapped inflames, many valuable lives would have been sacrificed, and an immenseloss of property sustained by the citizens, even though no otherdistressing occurrences were experienced by them; while the plantationsin the lower country would have been disorganized, and the agriculturalinterests have sustained an enormous loss. " The Northern journals hadalready expressed still greater anxieties. "It appears, " said theNew-York _Commercial Advertiser_, "that, but for the timely disclosure, the whole of that State would in a few days have witnessed the horridspectacle once witnessed in St. Domingo. "

My friend, David Lee Child, has kindly communicated to me a few memorandaof a conversation held long since with a free colored man who had workedin Vesey's shop during the time of the insurrection; and these generallyconfirm the official narratives. "I was a young man then, " he said; "and, owing to the policy of preventing communication between free coloredpeople and slaves, I had little opportunity of ascertaining how theslaves felt about it. I know that several of them were abused in thestreet, and some put in prison, for appearing in sackcloth. There was anordinance of the city, that any slave who wore a badge of mourning shouldbe imprisoned and flogged. They generally got the law, which isthirty-nine lashes; but sometimes it was according to the decision of thecourt. " "I heard, at the time, of arms being buried in coffins atSullivan's Island. " "In the time of the insurrection, the slaves weretried in a small room in the jail where they were confined. No coloredperson was allowed to go within two squares of the prison. Those twosquares were filled with troops, five thousand of whom were on duty dayand night. I was told, Vesey said to those that tried him, that the workof insurrection would go on; but as none but white persons were permittedto be present, I cannot tell whether he said it. "

During all this time there was naturally a silence in the Charlestonjournals, which strongly contrasts with the extreme publicity at lastgiven to the testimony. Even the _National Intelligencer_, at Washington, passed lightly over the affair, and deprecated the publication ofparticulars. The Northern editors, on the other hand, eager for items, were constantly complaining of this reserve, and calling for furtherintelligence. "The Charleston papers, " said the Hartford _Courant_ ofJuly 16, "have been silent on the subject of the insurrection; butletters from this city state that it has created much alarm, and that twobrigades of troops were under arms for some time to suppress any risingsthat might have taken place. " "You will doubtless hear, " wrote aCharleston correspondent of the same paper, just before, "many reports, and some exaggerated ones. " "There was certainly a disposition to revolt, and some preparations made, principally by the plantation negroes, totake the city. " "We hoped they would progress so far as to enable us toascertain and punish the ringleaders. " "Assure my friends that we feel inperfect security, although the number of nightly guards, and otherdemonstrations, may induce a belief among strangers to the contrary. "

The strangers would have been very blind strangers, if they had not beenmore influenced by the actions of the Charleston citizens than by theirwords. The original information was given on May 25, 1822. The timepassed, and the plot failed on June 16. A plan for its revival on July 2proved abortive. Yet a letter from Charleston, in the Hartford _Courant_of Aug. 6, represented the panic as unabated: "Great preparations aremaking, and all the military are put in preparation to guard against anyattempt of the same kind again; but we have no apprehension of its beingrepeated. " On Aug. 10, Gov. Bennett wrote the letter already mentioned, which was printed and distributed as a circular, its object being todeprecate undue alarm. "Every individual in the State is interested, whether in regard to his own property, or the reputation of the State, ingiving no more importance to the transaction than it justly merits. " Yet, five days after this, --two months after the first danger had passed, --are-enforcement of United-States troops arrived at Fort Moultrie; and, during the same month, several different attempts were made by smallparties of armed negroes to capture the mails between Charleston andSavannah, and a reward of two hundred dollars was offered for theirdetection. 

The first official report of the trials was prepared by the intendant, byrequest of the city council. It passed through four editions in a fewmonths, --the first and fourth being published in Charleston, and thesecond and third in Boston. Being, however, but a brief pamphlet, it didnot satisfy the public curiosity; and in October of the same year (1822), a larger volume appeared at Charleston, edited by the magistrates whopresided at the trials, --Lionel H. Kennedy and Thomas Parker. It containsthe evidence in full, and a separate narrative of the whole affair, morecandid and lucid than any other which I have found in the newspapers orpamphlets of the day. It exhibits that rarest of all qualities in aslave-community, a willingness to look facts in the face. This narrativehas been faithfully followed, with the aid of such cross-lights as couldbe secured from many other quarters, in preparing the present history. 

The editor of the first official report racked his brains to discover thespecial causes of the revolt, and never trusted himself to allude to thegeneral one. The negroes rebelled because they were deluded byCongressional eloquence; or because they were excited by a churchsquabble; or because they had been spoilt by mistaken indulgences, suchas being allowed to learn to read, --"a misguided benevolence, " as hepronounces it. So the Baptist Convention seems to have thought it wasbecause they were not Baptists; and an Episcopal pamphleteer, becausethey were not Episcopalians. It never seems to occur to any of thesespectators, that these people rebelled simply because they were slaves, and wished to be free. 

No doubt, there were enough special torches with which a man so skilfulas Denmark Vesey could kindle up these dusky powder-magazines; but, afterall, the permanent peril lay in the powder. So long as that existed, every thing was incendiary. Any torn scrap in the street might contain aMissouri-Compromise speech, or a report of the last battle in St. Domingo, or one of those able letters of Boyer's which were winning thepraise of all, or one of John Randolph's stirring speeches in Englandagainst the slave-trade. The very newspapers which reported the happyextinction of the insurrection by the hanging of the last conspirator, William Garner, reported also, with enthusiastic indignation, themassacre of the Greeks at Constantinople and at Scio; and then theNorthern editors, breaking from their usual reticence, pointed out theinconsistency of Southern journals in printing, side by side, denunciations of Mohammedan slave-sales, and advertisements of those ofChristians. 

Of course the insurrection threw the whole slavery question open to thepublic. "We are sorry to see, " said the _National Intelligencer_ of Aug. 31, "that a discussion of the hateful Missouri question is likely to berevived, in consequence of the allusions to its supposed effect inproducing the late servile insurrection in South Carolina. " A member ofthe Board of Public Works of South Carolina published in the Baltimore_American Farmer_ an essay urging the encouragement of white laborers, and hinting at the ultimate abolition of slavery "if it should ever bethought desirable. " More boldly still, a pamphlet appeared in Charleston, under the signature of "Achates, " arguing with remarkable sagacity andforce against the whole system of slave-labor _in towns_; and proposingthat all slaves in Charleston should be sold or transferred to theplantations, and their places supplied by white labor. It is interestingto find many of the facts and arguments of Helper's "Impending Crisis"anticipated in this courageous tract, written under the pressure of acrisis which had just been so narrowly evaded. The author is described inthe preface as "a soldier and patriot of the Revolution, whose name, didwe feel ourselves at liberty to use it, would stamp a peculiar weight andvalue on his opinions. " It was commonly attributed to Gen. ThomasPinckney. 

Another pamphlet of the period, also published in Charleston, recommendedas a practical cure for insurrection the copious administration ofEpiscopal-Church services, and the prohibition of negroes from attendingFourth-of-July celebrations. On this last point it is more consistentthan most pro-slavery arguments. "The celebration of the Fourth of Julybelongs _exclusively_ to the white population of the United States. TheAmerican Revolution was _a family quarrel among equals_. In this thenegroes had no concern; their condition remained, and must remain, unchanged. They have no more to do with the celebration of that day thanwith the landing of the Pilgrims on the rock at Plymouth. It thereforeseems to me improper to allow these people to be present on theseoccasions. In our speeches and orations, much, and sometimes more than ispolitically necessary, is said about personal liberty, which negroauditors know not how to apply except by running the parallel with theirown condition. They therefore imbibe false notions of their own personalrights, and give reality in their minds to what has no real existence. The peculiar state of our community must be steadily kept in view. This, I am gratified to learn, will in some measure be promoted by theinstitution of the South Carolina Association. "

On the other hand, more stringent laws became obviously necessary to keepdown the advancing intelligence of the Charleston slaves. Dangerousknowledge must be excluded from without and from within. For the firstpurpose the South Carolina Legislature passed, in December, 1822, the Actfor the imprisonment of Northern colored seamen, which afterwardsproduced so much excitement. For the second object, the Grand Jury, aboutthe same time, presented as a grievance "the number of schools which arekept within the city by persons of color, " and proposed theirprohibition. This was the encouragement given to the intellectualprogress of the slaves; while, as a reward for betraying them, Pensil, the free colored man who advised with Devany, received a present of onethousand dollars; and Devany himself had what was rightly judged to bethe higher gift of freedom, and was established in business, with liberalmeans, as a drayman. He lived long in Charleston, thriving greatly in hisvocation, and, according to the newspapers, enjoyed the privilege ofbeing the only man of property in the State whom a special statuteexempted from taxation. 

More than half a century has passed since the incidents of this truestory closed. It has not vanished from the memories of South Carolinians, though the printed pages which once told it have gradually disappearedfrom sight. The intense avidity which at first grasped at every incidentof the great insurrectionary plot was succeeded by a prolonged distastefor the memory of the tale; and the official reports which told whatslaves had once planned and dared have now come to be among the rarest ofAmerican historical documents. In 1841, a friend of the writer, thenvisiting South Carolina, heard from her hostess, for the first time, theevents which are recounted here. On asking to see the reports of thetrials, she was cautiously told that the only copy in the house, afterbeing carefully kept for years under lock and key, had been burnt atlast, lest it should reach the dangerous eyes of the slaves. The samething had happened, it was added, in many other families. This partiallyaccounts for the great difficulty now to be found in obtaining a singlecopy of either publication; and this is why, to the readers of Americanhistory, Denmark Vesey and Peter Poyas have commonly been but the shadowsof names. 

NAT TURNER'S INSURRECTION

During the year 1831, up to the 23d of August, the Virginia newspapersseem to have been absorbed in the momentous problems which then occupiedthe minds of intelligent American citizens: What Gen. Jackson should dowith the scolds, and what with the disreputables? should South Carolinabe allowed to nullify? and would the wives of cabinet ministers call onMrs. Eaton? It is an unfailing opiate to turn over the drowsy files ofthe Richmond _Enquirer_, until the moment when those dry and dusty pagesare suddenly kindled into flame by the torch of Nat Turner. Then theterror flared on increasing, until the remotest Southern States werefound shuddering at nightly rumors of insurrection; until far-offEuropean colonies--Antigua, Martinique, Caraccas, Tortola--recognized bysome secret sympathy the same epidemic alarms; until the very boldestwords of freedom were reported as uttered in the Virginia House ofDelegates with unclosed doors; until an obscure young man named Garrisonwas indicted at common law in North Carolina, and had a price set uponhis head by the Legislature of Georgia. 

Near the south-eastern border of Virginia, in Southampton County, thereis a neighborhood known as "The Cross Keys. " It lies fifteen miles fromJerusalem, the county-town, or "court-house, " seventy miles from Norfolk, and about as far from Richmond. It is some ten or fifteen miles fromMurfreesborough in North Carolina, and about twenty-five from the GreatDismal Swamp. Up to Sunday, the 21st of August, 1831, there was nothingto distinguish it from any other rural, lethargic, slipshod Virginianeighborhood, with the due allotment of mansion-houses and log huts, tobacco-fields and "old-fields, " horses, dogs, negroes, "poor whitefolks, " so called, and other white folks, poor without being called so. One of these last was Joseph Travis, who had recently married the widowof one Putnam Moore, and had unfortunately wedded to himself her negroesalso. 

In the woods on the plantation of Joseph Travis, upon the Sunday justnamed, six slaves met at noon for what is called in the Northern States apicnic, and in the Southern a barbecue. The bill of fare was to besimple: one brought a pig, and another some brandy, giving to the meetingan aspect so cheaply convivial that no one would have imagined it to bethe final consummation of a conspiracy which had been for six months inpreparation. In this plot four of the men had been alreadyinitiated--Henry, Hark or Hercules, Nelson, and Sam. Two others werenovices, Will and Jack by name. The party had remained together fromtwelve to three o'clock, when a seventh man joined them, --a short, stout, powerfully built person, of dark mulatto complexion, and strongly markedAfrican features, but with a face full of expression and resolution. Thiswas Nat Turner. 

He was at this time nearly thirty-one years old, having been born on the2d of October, 1800. He had belonged originally to Benjamin Turner, --fromwhom he took his last name, slaves having usually no patronymic;--hadthen been transferred to Putnam Moore, and then to his present owner. Hehad, by his own account, felt himself singled out from childhood for somegreat work; and he had some peculiar marks on his person, which, joinedto his mental precocity, were enough to occasion, among his youthfulcompanions, a superstitious faith in his gifts and destiny. He had somemechanical ingenuity also; experimentalized very early in making paper, gunpowder, pottery, and in other arts, which, in later life, he was foundthoroughly to understand. His moral faculties appeared strong, so thatwhite witnesses admitted that he had never been known to swear an oath, to drink a drop of spirits, or to commit a theft. And, in general, somarked were his early peculiarities that people said "he had too muchsense to be raised; and, if he was, he would never be of any use as aslave. " This impression of personal destiny grew with his growth: hefasted, prayed, preached, read the Bible, heard voices when he walkedbehind his plough, and communicated his revelations to the awe-struckslaves. They told him, in return, that, "if they had his sense, theywould not serve any master in the world. "

The biographies of slaves can hardly be individualized; they belong tothe class. We know bare facts; it is only the general experience of humanbeings in like condition which can clothe them with life. The outlinesare certain, the details are inferential. Thus, for instance, we knowthat Nat Turner's young wife was a slave; we know that she belonged to adifferent master from himself; we know little more than this, but this ismuch. For this is equivalent to saying, that, by day or by night, herhusband had no more power to protect her than the man who lies bound upona plundered vessel's deck has power to protect his wife on board thepirate schooner disappearing in the horizon. She may be well treated, shemay be outraged; it is in the powerlessness that the agony lies. Thereis, indeed, one thing more which we do know of this young woman: theVirginia newspapers state that she was tortured under the lash, after herhusband's execution, to make her produce his papers: this is all. 

What his private experiences and special privileges or wrongs may havebeen, it is therefore now impossible to say. Travis was declared to be"more humane and fatherly to his slaves than any man in the county;" butit is astonishing how often this phenomenon occurs in the contemporaryannals of slave insurrections. The chairman of the county court alsostated, in pronouncing sentence, that Nat Turner had spoken of his masteras "only too indulgent;" but this, for some reason, does not appear inhis printed Confession, which only says, "He was a kind master, andplaced the greatest confidence in me. " It is very possible that it mayhave been so, but the printed accounts of Nat Turner's person looksuspicious: he is described in Gov. Floyd's proclamation as having a scaron one of his temples, also one on the back of his neck, and a large knoton one of the bones of his right arm, produced by a blow; and althoughthese were explained away in Virginia newspapers as having been producedby fights with his companions, yet such affrays are entirely foreign tothe admitted habits of the man. It must therefore remain an openquestion, whether the scars and the knot were produced by black hands orby white. 

Whatever Nat Turner's experiences of slavery might have been, it iscertain that his plans were not suddenly adopted, but that he had broodedover them for years. To this day there are traditions among the Virginiaslaves of the keen devices of "Prophet Nat. " If he was caught with limeand lampblack in hand, conning over a half-finished county-map on thebarn-door, he was always "planning what to do if he were blind"; or, "studying how to get to Mr. Francis's house. " When he had called ameeting of slaves, and some poor whites came eavesdropping, the poorwhites at once became the subjects for discussion: he incidentallymentioned that the masters had been heard threatening to drive them away;one slave had been ordered to shoot Mr. Jones's pigs, another to teardown Mr. Johnson's fences. The poor whites, Johnson and Jones, ran hometo see to their homesteads, and were better friends than ever to ProphetNat. 

He never was a Baptist preacher, though such vocation has often beenattributed to him. The impression arose from his having immersed himself, during one of his periods of special enthusiasm, together with a poorwhite man named Brantley. "About this time, " he says in his Confession, "I told these things to a white man, on whom it had a wonderful effect;and he ceased from his wickedness, and was attacked immediately with acutaneous eruption, and the blood oozed from the pores of his skin, andafter praying and fasting nine days he was healed. And the Spiritappeared to me again, and said, as the Saviour had been baptized, soshould we be also; and when the white people would not let us be baptizedby the church, we went down into the water together, in the sight of manywho reviled us, and were baptized by the Spirit. After this I rejoicedgreatly, and gave thanks to God. "

The religious hallucinations narrated in his Confession seem to have beenas genuine as the average of such things, and are very well expressed. The account reads quite like Jacob Behmen. He saw white spirits and blackspirits contending in the skies; the sun was darkened, the thunderrolled. "And the Holy Ghost was with me, and said, 'Behold me as I standin the heavens!' And I looked, and saw the forms of men in differentattitudes. And there were lights in the sky, to which the children ofdarkness gave other names than what they really were; for they were thelights of the Saviour's hands, stretched forth from east to west, even asthey were extended on the cross on Calvary, for the redemption ofsinners. " He saw drops of blood on the corn: this was Christ's blood, shed for man. He saw on the leaves in the woods letters and numbers andfigures of men, --the same symbols which he had seen in the skies. On May12, 1828, the Holy Spirit appeared to him, and proclaimed that the yokeof Jesus must fall on him, and he must fight against the serpent when thesign appeared. Then came an eclipse of the sun in February, 1831: thiswas the sign; then he must arise and prepare himself, and slay hisenemies with their own weapons; then also the seal was removed from hislips, and then he confided his plans to four associates. 

When he came, therefore, to the barbecue on the appointed Sunday, andfound not these four only, but two others, his first question to theintruders was, how they came thither. To this Will answered manfully, that his life was worth no more than the others, and "his liberty was asdear to him. " This admitted him to confidence; and as Jack was known tobe entirely under Hark's influence, the strangers were no bar to theirdiscussion. Eleven hours they remained there, in anxious consultation:one can imagine those dusky faces, beneath the funereal woods, and amidthe flickering of pine-knot torches, preparing that stern revenge whoseshuddering echoes should ring through the land so long. Two things wereat last decided: to begin their work that night; and to begin it with amassacre so swift and irresistible as to create in a few days more terrorthan many battles, and so spare the need of future bloodshed. "It wasagreed that we should commence at home on that night, and, until we hadarmed and equipped ourselves and gained sufficient force, neither age norsex was to be spared: which was invariably adhered to. "

John Brown invaded Virginia with nineteen men, and with the avowedresolution to take no life but in self-defence. Nat Turner attackedVirginia from within, with six men, and with the determination to spareno life until his power was established. John Brown intended to passrapidly through Virginia, and then retreat to the mountains. Nat Turnerintended to "conquer Southampton County as the white men did in theRevolution, and then retreat, if necessary, to the Dismal Swamp. " Eachplan was deliberately matured; each was in its way practicable; but eachwas defeated by a single false step, as will soon appear. 

We must pass over the details of horror, as they occurred during the nexttwenty-four hours. Swift and stealthy as Indians, the black men passedfrom house to house, --not pausing, not hesitating, as their terrible workwent on. In one thing they were humaner than Indians, or than white menfighting against Indians: there was no gratuitous outrage beyond thedeath-blow itself, no insult, no mutilation; but in every house theyentered, that blow fell on man, woman, and child, --nothing that had awhite skin was spared. From every house they took arms and ammunition, and from a few money. On every plantation they found recruits: thosedusky slaves, so obsequious to their master the day before, so prompt tosing and dance before his Northern visitors, were all swift to transformthemselves into fiends of retribution now; show them sword or musket, andthey grasped it, though it were an heirloom from Washington himself. Thetroop increased from house to house, --first to fifteen, then to forty, then to sixty. Some were armed with muskets, some with axes, some withscythes, some came on their masters' horses. As the numbers increased, they could be divided, and the awful work was carried on more rapidlystill. The plan then was for an advanced guard of horsemen to approacheach house at a gallop, and surround it till the others came up. Meanwhile, what agonies of terror must have taken place within, sharedalike by innocent and by guilty! what memories of wrongs inflicted onthose dusky creatures, by some, --what innocent participation, by others, in the penance! The outbreak lasted for but forty-eight hours; but, during that period, fifty-five whites were slain, without the loss of asingle slave. 

One fear was needless, which to many a husband and father must haveintensified the last struggle. These negroes had been systematicallybrutalized from childhood; they had been allowed no legalized orpermanent marriage; they had beheld around them an habituallicentiousness, such as can scarcely exist except under slavery; some ofthem had seen their wives and sisters habitually polluted by the husbandsand the brothers of these fair white women who were now absolutely intheir power. Yet I have looked through the Virginia newspapers of thattime in vain for one charge of an indecent outrage on a woman againstthese triumphant and terrible slaves. Wherever they went, there wentdeath, and that was all. It is reported by some of the contemporarynewspapers, that a portion of this abstinence was the result ofdeliberate consultation among the insurrectionists; that some of themwere resolved on taking the white women for wives, but were overruled byNat Turner. If so, he is the only American slave-leader of whom we knowcertainly that he rose above the ordinary level of slave vengeance; andMrs. Stowe's picture of Dred's purposes is then precisely typical of his:"Whom the Lord saith unto us, 'Smite, ' them will we smite. We will nottorment them with the scourge and fire, nor defile their women as theyhave done with ours. But we will slay them utterly, and consume them fromoff the face of the earth. "

When the number of adherents had increased to fifty or sixty, Nat Turnerjudged it time to strike at the county-seat, Jerusalem. Thither a fewwhite fugitives had already fled, and couriers might thence be despatchedfor aid to Richmond and Petersburg, unless promptly intercepted. Besides, he could there find arms, ammunition, and money; though they had alreadyobtained, it is dubiously reported, from eight hundred to one thousanddollars. On the way it was necessary to pass the plantation of Mr. Parker, three miles from Jerusalem. Some of the men wished to stop hereand enlist some of their friends. Nat Turner objected, as the delay mightprove dangerous; he yielded at last, and it proved fatal. 

He remained at the gate with six or eight men; thirty or forty went tothe house, half a mile distant. They remained too long, and he went aloneto hasten them. During his absence a party of eighteen white men came upsuddenly, dispersing the small guard left at the gate; and when the mainbody of slaves emerged from the house, they encountered, for the firsttime, their armed masters. The blacks halted; the whites advancedcautiously within a hundred yards, and fired a volley; on its beingreturned, they broke into disorder, and hurriedly retreated, leaving somewounded on the ground. The retreating whites were pursued, and were savedonly by falling in with another band of fresh men from Jerusalem, withwhose aid they turned upon the slaves, who in their turn fell intoconfusion. Turner, Hark, and about twenty men on horseback retreated insome order; the rest were scattered. The leader still planned to reachJerusalem by a private way, thus evading pursuit; but at last decided tostop for the night, in the hope of enlisting additional recruits. 

During the night the number increased again to forty, and they encampedon Major Ridley's plantation. An alarm took place during thedarkness, --whether real or imaginary, does not appear, --and the menbecame scattered again. Proceeding to make fresh enlistments with thedaylight, they were resisted at Dr. Blunt's house, where his slaves, under his orders, fired upon them; and this, with a later attack from aparty of white men near Capt. Harris's, so broke up the whole force thatthey never re-united. The few who remained together agreed to separatefor a few hours to see if any thing could be done to revive theinsurrection, and meet again that evening at their original rendezvous. But they never reached it. 

Gloomily came Nat Turner at nightfall into those gloomy woods whereforty-eight hours before he had revealed the details of his terrible plotto his companions. At the outset all his plans had succeeded; every thingwas as he predicted: the slaves had come readily at his call; the mastershad proved perfectly defenceless. Had he not been persuaded to pause atParker's plantation, he would have been master before now of the arms andammunition at Jerusalem; and with these to aid, and the Dismal Swamp fora refuge, he might have sustained himself indefinitely against hispursuers. 

Now the blood was shed, the risk was incurred, his friends were killed orcaptured, and all for what? Lasting memories of terror, to be sure, forhis oppressors; but, on the other hand, hopeless failure for theinsurrection, and certain death for him. What a watch he must have keptthat night! To that excited imagination, which had always seen spirits inthe sky and blood-drops on the corn and hieroglyphic marks on the dryleaves, how full the lonely forest must have been of signs and solemnwarnings! Alone with the fox's bark, the rabbit's rustle, and thescreech-owl's scream, the self-appointed prophet brooded over hisdespair. Once creeping to the edge of the wood, he saw men stealthilyapproach on horseback. He fancied them some of his companions; but beforehe dared to whisper their ominous names, "Hark" or "Dred, "--for thelatter was the name, since famous, of one of his more recentrecruits, --he saw them to be white men, and shrank back stealthilybeneath his covert. 

There he waited two days and two nights, --long enough to satisfy himselfthat no one would rejoin him, and that the insurrection had hopelesslyfailed. The determined, desperate spirits who had shared his plans werescattered forever, and longer delay would be destruction for him also. Hefound a spot which he judged safe, dug a hole under a pile of fence-railsin a field, and lay there for six weeks, only leaving it for a fewmoments at midnight to obtain water from a neighboring spring. Food hehad previously provided, without discovery, from a house near by. 

Meanwhile an unbounded variety of rumors went flying through the State. The express which first reached the governor announced that the militiawere retreating before the slaves. An express to Petersburg further fixedthe number of militia at three hundred, and of blacks at eight hundred, and invented a convenient shower of rain to explain the dampened ardor ofthe whites. Later reports described the slaves as making three desperateattempts to cross the bridge over the Nottoway between Cross Keys andJerusalem, and stated that the leader had been shot in the attempt. Otheraccounts put the number of negroes at three hundred, all well mounted andarmed, with two or three white men as leaders. Their intention wassupposed to be to reach the Dismal Swamp, and they must be hemmed in fromthat side. 

Indeed, the most formidable weapon in the hands of slave insurgents isalways this blind panic they create, and the wild exaggerations whichfollow. The worst being possible, every one takes the worst for granted. Undoubtedly a dozen armed men could have stifled this insurrection, evenafter it had commenced operations; but it is the fatal weakness of arural slaveholding community, that it can never furnish men promptly forsuch a purpose. "My first intention was, " says one of the mostintelligent newspaper narrators of the affair, "to have attacked themwith thirty or forty men; but those who had families here were stronglyopposed to it. "

As usual, each man was pinioned to his own hearth-stone. As usual, aidhad to be summoned from a distance; and, as usual, the United-Statestroops were the chief reliance. Col. House, commanding at Fort Monroe, sent at once three companies of artillery under Lieut. -Col. Worth, andembarked them on board the steamer "Hampton" for Suffolk. These werejoined by detachments from the United States ships "Warren" and"Natchez, " the whole amounting to nearly eight hundred men. Two volunteercompanies went from Richmond, four from Petersburg, one from Norfolk, onefrom Portsmouth, and several from North Carolina. The militia of Norfolk, Nansemond, and Princess Anne Counties, and the United States troops atOld Point Comfort, were ordered to scour the Dismal Swamp, where it wasbelieved that two or three thousand fugitives were preparing to join theinsurgents. It was even proposed to send two companies from New York andone from New London to the same point. 

When these various forces reached Southampton County, they found alllabor paralyzed and whole plantations abandoned. A letter from Jerusalem, dated Aug. 24, says, "The oldest inhabitant of our county has neverexperienced such a distressing time as we have had since Sunday nightlast.... Every house, room, and corner in this place is full of women andchildren, driven from home, who had to take the woods until they couldget to this place. " "For many miles around their track, " says another"the county is deserted by women and children. " Still another writes, "Jerusalem is full of women, most of them from the other side of theriver, --about two hundred at Vix's. " Then follow descriptions of thesufferings of these persons, many of whom had lain night after night inthe woods. But the immediate danger was at an end, the short-livedinsurrection was finished, and now the work of vengeance was to begin. Inthe frank phrase of a North Carolina correspondent, "The massacre of thewhites was over, and the white people had commenced the destruction ofthe negroes, which was continued after our men got there, from time totime, as they could fall in with them, all day yesterday. " A postscriptadds, that "passengers by the Fayetteville stage say, that, by the latestaccounts, one hundred and twenty negroes had been killed, "--this beinglittle more than one day's work. 

These murders were defended as Nat Turner defended his: a fearful blowmust be struck. In shuddering at the horrors of the insurrection, we haveforgotten the far greater horrors of its suppression. 

The newspapers of the day contain many indignant protests against thecruelties which took place. "It is with pain, " says a correspondent ofthe _National Intelligencer_, Sept. 7, 1831, "that we speak of anotherfeature of the Southampton Rebellion; for we have been most unwilling tohave our sympathies for the sufferers diminished or affected by theirmisconduct. We allude to the slaughter of many blacks without trial andunder circumstances of great barbarity.... We met with an individual ofintelligence who told us that he himself had killed between ten andfifteen.... We [the Richmond troop] witnessed with surprise thesanguinary temper of the population, who evinced a strong disposition toinflict immediate death on every prisoner. "

There is a remarkable official document from Gen. Eppes, the officer incommand, to be found in the Richmond _Enquirer_ for Sept. 6, 1831. It isan indignant denunciation of precisely these outrages; and though herefuses to give details, he supplies their place by epithets:"revolting, "--"inhuman and not to be justified, "--"acts of barbarity andcruelty, "--"acts of atrocity, "--"this course of proceeding dignifies therebel and the assassin with the sanctity of martyrdom. " And he ends bythreatening martial law upon all future transgressors. Such generalorders are not issued except in rather extreme cases. And in the parallelcolumns of the newspaper the innocent editor prints equally indignantdescriptions of Russian atrocities in Lithuania, where the Poles wereengaged in active insurrection, amid profuse sympathy from Virginia. 

The truth is, it was a Reign of Terror. Volunteer patrols rode in alldirections, visiting plantations. "It was with the greatest difficulty, "said Gen. Brodnax before the House of Delegates, "and at the hazard ofpersonal popularity and esteem, that the coolest and most judicious amongus could exert an influence sufficient to restrain an indiscriminateslaughter of the blacks who were suspected. " A letter from the Rev. G. W. Powell declares, "There are thousands of troops searching in everydirection, and many negroes are killed every day: the exact number willnever be ascertained. " Petition after petition was subsequently presentedto the Legislature, asking compensation for slaves thus assassinatedwithout trial. 

Men were tortured to death, burned, maimed, and subjected to namelessatrocities. The overseers were called on to point out any slaves whomthey distrusted, and if any tried to escape they were shot down. Nay, worse than this. "A party of horsemen started from Richmond with theintention of killing every colored person they saw in Southampton County. They stopped opposite the cabin of a free colored man, who was hoeing inhis little field. They called out, 'Is this Southampton County?' Hereplied, 'Yes, sir, you have just crossed the line, by yonder tree. ' Theyshot him dead, and rode on. " This is from the narrative of the editor ofthe Richmond _Whig_, who was then on duty in the militia, and protestedmanfully against these outrages. "Some of these scenes, " he adds, "arehardly inferior in barbarity to the atrocities of the insurgents. "

These were the masters' stories. If even these conceded so much, it wouldbe interesting to hear what the slaves had to report. I am indebted to myhonored friend, Lydia Maria Child, for some vivid recollections of thisterrible period, as noted down from the lips of an old colored woman, once well known in New York, Charity Bowery. "At the time of the oldProphet Nat, " she said, "the colored folks was afraid to pray loud; forthe whites threatened to punish 'em dreadfully, if the least noise washeard. The patrols was low drunken whites; and in Nat's time, if theyheard any of the colored folks praying, or singing a hymn, they wouldfall upon 'em and abuse 'em, and sometimes kill 'em, afore master ormissis could get to 'em. The brightest and best was killed in Nat's time. The whites always suspect such ones. They killed a great many at a placecalled Duplon. They killed Antonio, a slave of Mr. J. Stanley, whom theyshot; then they pointed their guns at him, and told him to confess aboutthe insurrection. He told 'em he didn't know any thing about anyinsurrection. They shot several balls through him, quartered him, and puthis head on a pole at the fork of the road leading to the court. " (Thisis no exaggeration, if the Virginia newspapers may be taken as evidence. )"It was there but a short time. He had no trial. They never do. In Nat'stime, the patrols would tie up the free colored people, flog 'em, and tryto make 'em lie against one another, and often killed them before anybodycould interfere. Mr. James Cole, high sheriff, said, if any of thepatrols came on his plantation, he would lose his life in defence of hispeople. One day he heard a patroller boasting how many niggers he hadkilled. Mr. Cole said, 'If you don't pack up, as quick as God Almightywill let you, and get out of this town, and never be seen in it again, I'll put you where dogs won't bark at you. ' He went off, and wasn't seenin them parts again. "

These outrages were not limited to the colored population; but otherinstances occurred which strikingly remind one of more recent times. AnEnglishman, named Robinson, was engaged in selling books at Petersburg. An alarm being given, one night, that five hundred blacks were marchingtowards the town, he stood guard, with others, on the bridge. After thepanic had a little subsided, he happened to remark, that "the blacks, asmen, were entitled to their freedom, and ought to be emancipated. " Thisled to great excitement, and he was warned to leave town. He took passagein the stage, but the stage was intercepted. He then fled to a friend'shouse; the house was broken open, and he was dragged forth. The civilauthorities, being applied to, refused to interfere. The mob strippedhim, gave him a great number of lashes, and sent him on foot, naked, under a hot sun, to Richmond, whence he with difficulty found a passageto New York. 

Of the capture or escape of most of that small band who met with NatTurner in the woods upon the Travis plantation, little can now be known. All appear among the list of convicted, except Henry and Will. Gen. Moore, who occasionally figures as second in command, in the newspapernarratives of that day, was probably the Hark or Hercules beforementioned; as no other of the confederates had belonged to Mrs. Travis, or would have been likely to bear her previous name of Moore. As usual, the newspapers state that most, if not all the slaves, were "the propertyof kind and indulgent masters. "

The subordinate insurgents sought safety as they could. A free coloredman, named Will Artist, shot himself in the woods, where his hat wasfound on a stake and his pistol lying by him; another was found drowned;others were traced to the Dismal Swamp; others returned to their homes, and tried to conceal their share in the insurrection, assuring theirmasters that they had been forced, against their will, to join, --theusual defence in such cases. The number shot down at random must, by allaccounts, have amounted to many hundreds, but it is past all humanregistration now. The number who had a formal trial, such as it was, isofficially stated at fifty-five; of these, seventeen were convicted andhanged, twelve convicted and transported, twenty acquitted, and four freecolored men sent on for further trial and finally acquitted. "Not one ofthose known to be concerned escaped. " Of those executed, one only was awoman, "Lucy, slave of John T. Barrow. "

There is one touching story, in connection with these terribleretaliations, which rests on good authority, that of the Rev. M. B. Cox, a Liberian missionary, then in Virginia. In the hunt which followed themassacre, a slaveholder went into the woods, accompanied by a faithfulslave, who had been the means of saving his life during the insurrection. When they had reached a retired place in the forest, the man handed hisgun to his master, informing him that he could not live a slave anylonger, and requesting him either to free him or shoot him on the spot. The master took the gun, in some trepidation, levelled it at the faithfulnegro, and shot him through the heart. It is probable that thisslaveholder was a Dr. Blunt, --his being the only plantation where theslaves were reported as thus defending their masters. "If this be true, "said the Richmond _Enquirer_, when it first narrated this instance ofloyalty, "great will be the desert of these noble-minded Africans. "

Meanwhile the panic of the whites continued; for, though all others mightbe disposed of, Nat Turner was still at large. We have positive evidenceof the extent of the alarm, although great efforts were afterwards madeto represent it as a trifling affair. A distinguished citizen of Virginiawrote, three months later, to the Hon. W. B. Seabrook of South Carolina, "From all that has come to my knowledge during and since that affair, Iam convinced most fully that every black preacher in the country east ofthe Blue Ridge was in the secret. " "There is much reason to believe, "says the Governor's Message on Dec. 6, "that the spirit of insurrectionwas not confined to Southampton. Many convictions have taken placeelsewhere, and some few in distant counties. " The withdrawal of theUnited States troops, after some ten days' service, was a signal forfresh excitement; and an address, numerously signed, was presented to theUnited States Government, imploring their continued stay. More than threeweeks after the first alarm, the governor sent a supply of arms intoPrince William, Fauquier, and Orange Counties. "From examinations whichhave taken place in other counties, " says one of the best newspaperhistorians of the affair (in the Richmond _Enquirer_ of Sept. 6), "I fearthat the scheme embraced a wider sphere than I at first supposed. " NatTurner himself, intentionally or otherwise, increased the confusion bydenying all knowledge of the North Carolina outbreak, and declaring thathe had communicated his plans to his four confederates within six months;while, on the other hand, a slave-girl, sixteen or seventeen years old, belonging to Solomon Parker, testified that she had heard the subjectdiscussed for eighteen months, and that at a meeting held during theprevious May some eight or ten had joined the plot. 

It is astonishing to discover, by laborious comparison of newspaperfiles, how vast was the immediate range of these insurrectionary alarms. Every Southern State seems to have borne its harvest of terror. On theeastern shore of Maryland, great alarm was at once manifested, especiallyin the neighborhood of Easton and Snowhill; and the houses of colored menwere searched for arms even in Baltimore. In Delaware, there were similarrumors through Sussex and Dover Counties; there were arrests andexecutions; and in Somerset County great public meetings were held, todemand additional safeguards. On election-day in Seaford, Del. , someyoung men, going out to hunt rabbits, discharged their guns in sport; themen being absent, all the women in the vicinity took to flight; the alarmspread like the "Ipswich Fright"; soon Seaford was thronged with armedmen; and when the boys returned from hunting, they found cannon drawn outto receive them. 

In North Carolina, Raleigh and Fayetteville were put under militarydefence, and women and children concealed themselves in the swamps formany days. The rebel organization was supposed to include two thousand. Forty-six slaves were imprisoned in Union County, twenty-five in SampsonCounty, and twenty-three at least in Duplin County, some of whom wereexecuted. The panic also extended into Wayne, New Hanover, and LenoirCounties. Four men were shot without trial in Wilmington, --Nimrod, Abraham, Prince, and "Dan the Drayman, " the latter a man of seventy, --andtheir heads placed on poles at the four corners of the town. Nearly twomonths afterwards the trials were still continuing; and at a still laterday, the governor in his proclamation recommended the formation ofcompanies of volunteers in every county. 

In South Carolina, Gen. Hayne issued a proclamation "to prove thegroundlessness of the existing alarms, "--thus implying that seriousalarms existed. In Macon, Ga. , the whole population were roused fromtheir beds at midnight by a report of a large force of armed negroes fivemiles off. In an hour, every woman and child was deposited in the largestbuilding of the town, and a military force hastily collected in front. The editor of the Macon _Messenger_ excused the poor condition of hispaper, a few days afterwards, by the absorption of his workmen in patrolduties and describes "dismay and terror" as the condition of the peopleof "all ages and sexes. " In Jones, Twiggs, and Monroe Counties, the samealarms were reported; and in one place "several slaves were tied to atree, while a militia captain hacked at them with his sword. "

In Alabama, at Columbus and Fort Mitchell, a rumor was spread of a jointconspiracy of Indians and negroes. At Claiborne the panic was stillgreater: the slaves were said to be thoroughly organized through thatpart of the State, and multitudes were imprisoned; the whole alarm beingapparently founded on one stray copy of the Boston _Liberator_. 

In Tennessee, the Shelbyville _Freeman_ announced that an insurrectionaryplot had just been discovered, barely in time for its defeat, through thetreachery of a female slave. In Louisville, Ky. , a similar organizationwas discovered or imagined, and arrests were made in consequence. "Thepapers, from motives of policy, do not notice the disturbance, " wrote onecorrespondent to the Portland _Courier_. "Pity us!" he added. 

But the greatest bubble burst in Louisiana. Capt. Alexander, an Englishtourist, arriving in New Orleans at the beginning of September, found thewhole city in tumult. Handbills had been issued, appealing to the slavesto rise against their masters, saying that all men were born equal, declaring that Hannibal was a black man, and that they also might havegreat leaders among them. Twelve hundred stand of weapons were said tohave been found in a black man's house; five hundred citizens were underarms, and four companies of regulars were ordered to the city, whosebarracks Alexander himself visited. 

If such was the alarm in New Orleans, the story, of course, lost nothingby transmission to other slave States. A rumor reached Frankfort, Ky. , that the slaves already had possession of the coast, both above and belowNew Orleans. But the most remarkable circumstance is, that all this seemsto have been a mere revival of an old terror once before excited andexploded. The following paragraph had appeared in the Jacksonville, Ga. , _Observer_, during the spring previous:--

 "FEARFUL DISCOVERY. --We were favored, by yesterday's mail, with a letter from New Orleans, of May 1, in which we find that an important discovery had been made a few days previous in that city. The following is an extract: 'Four days ago, as some planters were digging under ground, they found a square room containing eleven thousand stand of arms and fifteen thousand cartridges, each of the cartridges containing a bullet. ' It is said the negroes intended to rise as soon as the sickly season began, and obtain possession of the city by massacring the white population. The same letter states that the mayor had prohibited the opening of Sunday schools for the instruction of blacks, under a penalty of five hundred dollars for the first offence, and, for the second, death. "

Such were the terrors that came back from nine other slave States, as theecho of the voice of Nat Turner. And when it is also known that thesubject was at once taken up by the legislatures of other States, wherethere was no public panic, as in Missouri and Tennessee; and when, finally, it is added that reports of insurrection had been arriving allthat year from Rio Janeiro, Martinique, St. Jago, Antigua, Caraccas, andTortola, --it is easy to see with what prolonged distress the accumulatedterror must have weighed down upon Virginia during the two months thatNat Turner lay hid. 

True, there were a thousand men in arms in Southampton County, to inspiresecurity. But the blow had been struck by only seven men before; andunless there were an armed guard in every house, who could tell but anyhouse might at any moment be the scene of new horrors? They might kill orimprison negroes by day, but could they resist their avengers by night?"The half cannot be told, " wrote a lady from another part of Virginia, atthis time, "of the distresses of the people. In Southampton County, thescene of the insurrection, the distress beggars description. A gentlemanwho has been there says that even here, where there has been great alarm, we have no idea of the situation of those in that county.... I do nothesitate to believe that many negroes around us would join in a massacreas horrible as that which has taken place, if an opportunity shouldoffer. "

Meanwhile the cause of all this terror was made the object of desperatesearch. On Sept. 17 the governor offered a reward of five hundred dollarsfor his capture; and there were other rewards, swelling the amount toeleven hundred dollars, --but in vain. No one could track or trap him. OnSept. 30 a minute account of his capture appeared in the newspapers, butit was wholly false. On Oct. 7 there was another, and on Oct. 18 another;yet all without foundation. Worn out by confinement in his little cave, Nat Turner grew more adventurous, and began to move about stealthily bynight, afraid to speak to any human being, but hoping to obtain someinformation that might aid his escape. Returning regularly to his retreatbefore daybreak, he might possibly have continued this mode of life untilpursuit had ceased, had not a dog succeeded where men had failed. Thecreature accidentally smelt out the provisions hid in the cave, andfinally led thither his masters, two negroes, one of whom was namedNelson. On discovering the formidable fugitive, they fled precipitately, when he hastened to retreat in an opposite direction. This was on Oct. 15; and from this moment the neighborhood was all alive with excitement, and five or six hundred men undertook the pursuit. 

It shows a more than Indian adroitness in Nat Turner to have escapedcapture any longer. The cave, the arms, the provisions, were found; and, lying among them, the notched stick of this miserable Robinson Crusoe, marked with five weary weeks and six days. But the man was gone. For tendays more he concealed himself among the wheat-stacks on Mr. Francis'splantation, and during this time was reduced almost to despair. Once hedecided to surrender himself, and walked by night within two miles ofJerusalem before his purpose failed him. Three times he tried to get outof that neighborhood, but in vain: travelling by day was of course out ofthe question, and by night he found it impossible to elude the patrol. Again and again, therefore, he returned to his hiding-place; and, duringhis whole two months' liberty, never went five miles from the Cross Keys. On the 25th of October, he was at last discovered by Mr. Francis as hewas emerging from a stack. A load of buckshot was instantly discharged athim, twelve of which passed through his hat as he fell to the ground. Heescaped even then; but his pursuers were rapidly concentrating upon him, and it is perfectly astonishing that he could have eluded them for fivedays more. 

On Sunday, Oct. 30, a man named Benjamin Phipps, going out for the firsttime on patrol duty, was passing at noon a clearing in the woods where anumber of pine-trees had long since been felled. There was a motion amongtheir boughs; he stopped to watch it; and through a gap in the brancheshe saw, emerging from a hole in the earth beneath, the face of NatTurner. Aiming his gun instantly, Phipps called on him to surrender. Thefugitive, exhausted with watching and privation, entangled in thebranches, armed only with a sword, had nothing to do but toyield, --sagaciously reflecting, also, as he afterwards explained, thatthe woods were full of armed men, and that he had better trust fortunefor some later chance of escape, instead of desperately attempting itthen. He was correct in the first impression, since there were fiftyarmed scouts within a circuit of two miles. His insurrection ended whereit began; for this spot was only a mile and a half from the house ofJoseph Travis. 

Tom, emaciated, ragged, "a mere scarecrow, " still wearing the hatperforated with buckshot, with his arms bound to his sides, he was drivenbefore the levelled gun to the nearest house, that of a Mr. Edwards. Hewas confined there that night; but the news had spread so rapidly thatwithin an hour after his arrival a hundred persons had collected, and theexcitement became so intense "that it was with difficulty he could beconveyed alive to Jerusalem. " The enthusiasm spread instantly throughVirginia; M. Trezvant, the Jerusalem postmaster, sent notices of it farand near; and Gov. Floyd himself wrote a letter to the Richmond_Enquirer_ to give official announcement of the momentous capture. 

When Nat Turner was asked by Mr. T. R. Gray, the counsel assigned him, whether, although defeated, he still believed in his own Providentialmission, he answered, as simply as one who came thirty years after him, "Was not Christ crucified?" In the same spirit, when arraigned before thecourt, "he answered, 'Not guilty, ' saying to his counsel that he did notfeel so. " But apparently no argument was made in his favor by hiscounsel, nor were any witnesses called, --he being convicted on thetestimony of Levi Waller, and upon his own confession, which was put inby Mr. Gray, and acknowledged by the prisoner before the six justicescomposing the court, as being "full, free, and voluntary. " He wastherefore placed in the paradoxical position of conviction by his ownconfession, under a plea of "Not guilty. " The arrest took place on the30th of October, 1831, the confession on the 1st of November, the trialand conviction on the 5th, and the execution on the following Friday, the11th of November, precisely at noon. He met his death with perfectcomposure, declined addressing the multitude assembled, and told thesheriff in a firm voice that he was ready. Another account says that he"betrayed no emotion, and even hurried the executioner in the performanceof his duty. " "Not a limb nor a muscle was observed to move. His body, after his death, was given over to the surgeons for dissection. "

The confession of the captive was published under authority of Mr. Gray, in a pamphlet, at Baltimore. Fifty thousand copies of it are said to havebeen printed; and it was "embellished with an accurate likeness of thebrigand, taken by Mr. John Crawley, portrait-painter, and lithographed byEndicott & Swett, at Baltimore. " The newly established _Liberator_ saidof it, at the time, that it would "only serve to rouse up other leaders, and hasten other insurrections, " and advised grand juries to indict Mr. Gray. I have never seen a copy of the original pamphlet; it is not easilyto be found in any of our public libraries; and I have heard of but oneas still existing, although the Confession itself has been repeatedlyreprinted. Another small pamphlet, containing the main features of theoutbreak, was published at New York during the same year, and this is inmy possession. But the greater part of the facts which I have given weregleaned from the contemporary newspapers. 

Who now shall go back thirty years, and read the heart of thisextraordinary man, who, by the admission of his captors, "never was knownto swear an oath, or drink a drop of spirits"; who, on the sameauthority, "for natural intelligence and quickness of apprehension wassurpassed by few men, " "with a mind capable of attaining any thing"; whoknew no book but his Bible, and that by heart; who devoted himself souland body to the cause of his race, without a trace of personal hope orfear; who laid his plans so shrewdly that they came at last with lesswarning than any earthquake on the doomed community around; and who, whenthat time arrived, took the life of man, woman, and child, without athrob of compunction, a word of exultation, or an act of superfluousoutrage? Mrs. Stowe's "Dred" seems dim and melodramatic beside the actualNat Turner, and De Quincey's "Avenger" is his only parallel inimaginative literature. Mr. Gray, his counsel, rises into a sort ofbewildered enthusiasm with the prisoner before him. "I shall not attemptto describe the effect of his narrative, as told and commented on byhimself, in the condemned-hole of the prison. The calm, deliberatecomposure with which he spoke of his late deeds and intentions, theexpression of his fiend-like face when excited by enthusiasm, stillbearing the stains of the blood of helpless innocence about him, clothedwith rags and covered with chains, yet daring to raise his manacled handsto heaven, with a spirit soaring above the attributes of man, --I lookedon him, and the blood curdled in my veins. "

But, the more remarkable the personal character of Nat Turner, thegreater the amazement felt that he should not have appreciated theextreme felicity of his position as a slave. In all insurrections, thestanding wonder seems to be that the slaves most trusted and best usedshould be most deeply involved. So in this case, as usual, men resortedto the most astonishing theories of the origin of the affair. Oneattributed it to Free-Masonry, and another to free whiskey, --libertyappearing dangerous, even in these forms. The poor whites charged it uponthe free colored people, and urged their expulsion; forgetting that inNorth Carolina the plot was betrayed by one of this class, and that inVirginia there were but two engaged, both of whom had slave wives. Theslaveholding clergymen traced it to want of knowledge of the Bible, forgetting that Nat Turner knew scarcely any thing else. On the otherhand, "a distinguished citizen of Virginia" combined in one sweepingdenunciation "Northern incendiaries, tracts, Sunday schools, religion, reading, and writing. "

But whether the theories of its origin were wise or foolish, theinsurrection made its mark; and the famous band of Virginiaemancipationists, who all that winter made the House of Delegates ringwith unavailing eloquence, --till the rise of slave-exportation to newcotton regions stopped their voices, --were but the unconsciousmouthpieces of Nat Turner. In January, 1832, in reply to a member who hadcalled the outbreak a "petty affair, " the eloquent James McDowell thusdescribed the impression it left behind:--

 "Now, sir, I ask you, I ask gentlemen in conscience to say, was that a 'petty affair' which startled the feelings of your whole population; which threw a portion of it into alarm, a portion of it into panic; which wrung out from an affrighted people the thrilling cry, day after day, conveyed to your executive, '_We are in peril of our lives; send us an army for defence_'? Was that a 'petty affair' which drove families from their homes, --which assembled women and children in crowds, without shelter, at places of common refuge, in every condition of weakness and infirmity, under every suffering which want and terror could inflict, yet willing to endure all, willing to meet death from famine, death from climate, death from hardships, preferring any thing rather than the horrors of meeting it from a domestic assassin? Was that a 'petty affair' which erected a peaceful and confiding portion of the State into a military camp; which outlawed from pity the unfortunate beings whose brothers had offended; which barred every door, penetrated every bosom with fear or suspicion; which so banished every sense of security from every man's dwelling, that, let but a hoof or horn break upon the silence of the night, and an aching throb would be driven to the heart, the husband would look to his weapon, and the mother would shudder and weep upon her cradle? Was it the fear of Nat Turner, and his deluded, drunken handful of followers, which produced such effects? Was it this that induced distant counties, where the very name of Southampton was strange, to arm and equip for a struggle? No, sir: it was the suspicion eternally attached to the slave himself, --the suspicion that a Nat Turner might be in every family; that the same bloody deed might be acted over at any time and in any place; that the materials for it were spread through the land, and were always ready for a like explosion. Nothing but the force of this withering apprehension, --nothing but the paralyzing and deadening weight with which it falls upon and prostrates the heart of every man who has helpless dependants to protect, --nothing but this could have thrown a brave people into consternation, or could have made any portion of this powerful Commonwealth, for a single instant, to have quailed and trembled. "

While these things were going on, the enthusiasm for the PolishRevolution was rising to its height. The nation was ringing with a pealof joy, on hearing that at Frankfort the Poles had killed fourteenthousand Russians. The _Southern Religious Telegraph_ was publishing animpassioned address to Kosciuszko; standards were being consecrated forPoland in the larger cities; heroes like Skrzynecki, Czartoryski, Rozyski, Raminski, were choking the trump of Fame with their complicatedpatronymics. These are all forgotten now; and this poor negro, who didnot even possess a name, beyond one abrupt monosyllable, --for even thename of Turner was the master's property, --still lives, a memory ofterror, and a symbol of wild retribution. 

APPENDIX OF AUTHORITIES

THE MAROONS OF JAMAICA

1. Dallas, R. C. "The History of the Maroons, from their origin to theestablishment of their chief tribe at Sierra Leone: including theexpedition to Cuba, for the purpose of procuring Spanish chasseurs; andthe state of the Island of Jamaica for the last ten years, with asuccinct history of the island previous to that period. " In two volumes. London, 1803. [8vo. ]

2. Edwards, Bryan. "The History, Civil and Commercial, of the BritishColonies in the West Indies. To which is added a general description ofthe Bahama Islands, by Daniel M'Kinnen, Esq. " In four volumes. Philadelphia, 1806. [8vo. ]

3. Edwards, Bryan. "Proceedings of the Governor and Associates of Jamaicain regard to the Maroon Negroes, with an account of the Maroons. " London, 1796. 8vo. 

4. Edwards, Bryan. "Historical Survey of St. Domingo, with an account ofthe Maroon Negroes, a history of the war in the West Indies, 1793-94"[etc. ]. London, 1801. 4to. 

5. _Edinburgh Review_, ii. 376. [Review of Dallas and Edwards, by HenryLord Brougham. ]

Also Annual Register, Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, etc. 

[There appeared in _Once a Week_ (1865) a paper entitled "The Maroons ofJamaica, " and reprinted in _Every Saturday_ (i. 50, Jan. 31, 1866), inwhich Gov. Eyre is quoted as having said, in the London _Times_, "To thefidelity and loyalty of the Maroons it is due that the negroes did notcommit greater devastation" in the recent insurrection; thus curiouslyrepeating the encomium given by Lord Balcarres seventy years before. ]

 * * * * *

THE MAROONS OF SURINAM

1. "Narrative of a Five Years' Expedition against the revolted negroes ofSurinam, in Guiana, on the wild coast of South America, from the year1772 to 1777 ... By Capt. J. G. Stedman. " London. Printed for J. Johnson, St. Paul's Churchyard, and J. Edwards, Pall Mall. 1790. [2 vols. 4to. ]

2. "Transatlantic Sketches, comprising visits to the most interestingscenes in North and South America and the West Indies. With notes onnegro slavery and Canadian emigration. By Capt. J. E. Alexander, 42 RoyalHighlanders. " London: Richard Bentley, New Burlington St. , 1833. [2 vols. 8vo. ]

Also Annual Register, etc. 

[The best account of the present condition of the Maroons, or, as theyare now called, bush-negroes, of Surinam, is to be found in a graphicnarrative of a visit to Dutch Guiana, by W. G. Palgrave, in the_Fortnightly Review_, xxiv. 801; xxv. 194, 536. These papers arereprinted in _Littell's Living Age_, cxxviii. 154, cxxix. 409. Heestimates the present numbers of these people as approaching thirtythousand. The "Encyclopaedia Britannica" gives the names of severalpublications relating to their peculiar dialect, popularly known asNegro-English, but including many Dutch words. ]

 * * * * *

GABRIEL'S DEFEAT

The materials for the history of Gabriel's revolt are still veryfragmentary, and must be sought in the contemporary newspapers. Nocontinuous file of Southern newspapers for the year 1800 was to be found, when this narrative was written, in any Boston or New-York library, though the Harvard-College Library contained a few numbers of theBaltimore _Telegraphe_ and the Norfolk _Epitome of the Times_. My chiefreliance has therefore been the Southern correspondence of the Northernnewspapers, with the copious extracts there given from Virginianjournals. I am chiefly indebted to the Philadelphia _United-StatesGazette_, the Boston _Independent Chronicle_, the Salem _Gazette_ and_Register_, the New-York _Daily Advertiser_, and the Connecticut_Courant_. The best continuous narratives that I have found are in the_Courant_ of Sept. 29, 1800, and the Salem _Gazette_ of Oct. 7, 1800; buteven these are very incomplete. Several important documents I have beenunable to discover, --the official proclamation of the governor, thedescription of Gabriel's person, and the original confession of theslaves as given to Mr. Sheppard. The discovery of these would no doubthave enlarged, and very probably corrected, my narrative. 

 * * * * *

DENMARK VESEY

1. "Negro Plot. An Account of the late intended insurrection among aportion of the blacks of the city of Charleston, S. C. Published by theAuthority of the Corporation of Charleston. " Second edition. Boston:printed and published by Joseph W. Ingraham. 1822. 8vo, pp. 50. 

[A third edition was printed at Boston during the same year, a copy ofwhich is in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Thefirst and fourth editions, which were printed at Charleston, S. C. , I havenever seen. ]

2. "An Official Report of the trials of sundry negroes, charged with anattempt to raise an insurrection in the State of South Carolina: precededby an introduction and narrative; and in an appendix, a report of thetrials of four white persons, on indictments for attempting to excite theslaves to insurrection. Prepared and published at the request of thecourt. By Lionel H. Kennedy and Thomas Parker, members of the Charlestonbar, and the presiding magistrates of the court. " Charleston: printed byJames R. Schenck, 23 Broad St. 1822. 8vo, pp. 188x4. 

3. "Reflections occasioned by the late disturbances in Charleston, byAchates. " Charleston: printed and sold by A. E. Miller, No. 4 Broad St. 1822. 8vo, pp. 30. 

4. "A Refutation of the Calumnies circulated against the Southern andWestern States, respecting the institution and existence of slavery amongthem. To which is added a minute and particular account of the actualstate and condition of their Negro Population, together with HistoricalNotices of all the Insurrections that have taken place since thesettlement of the country. --Facts are stubborn things. --_Shakspeare_. Bya South Carolinian. " [Edwin C. Holland. ] Charleston: printed by A. E. Miller, No. 4 Broad St. 1822. 8vo, pp. 86. 

5. "Rev. Dr. Richard Furman's Exposition of the views of the Baptistsrelative to the colored population in the United States, in acommunication to the Governor of South Carolina. " Second edition. Charleston: printed by A. E. Miller, No. 4 Broad St. 1833. 8vo, pp. 16. 

[The first edition appeared in 1823. It relates to a petition offered bya Baptist Convention for a day of thanksgiving and humiliation, inreference to the insurrection, and to a violent hurricane which had justoccurred. ]

6. "Practical Considerations, founded on the Scriptures, relative to theSlave Population of South Carolina. Respectfully dedicated to the SouthCarolina Association. By a South Carolinian. " Charleston: printed andsold by A. E. Miller, No. 4 Broad St. 1823. 8vo, pp. 38. 

7. [The letter of Gov. Bennett, dated Aug. 10, 1822, was evidentlyprinted originally as a pamphlet or circular, though I have not been ableto find it in that form. It may be found reprinted in the _ColumbianCentinel_ (Aug. 31, 1822), _Connecticut Courant_ (Sept. 3), and Worcester_Spy_ (Sept. 18). It is also printed in Lundy's _Genius of UniversalEmancipation_ for September, 1822 (ii. 42), and reviewed in subsequentnumbers (pp. 81, 131, 142). ]

8. "The Liberty Bell, by Friends of Freedom. Boston: Anti-Slavery Bazaar. 1841. 12mo. " [This contains an article on p. 158, entitled "ServileInsurrections, " by Edmund Jackson, including brief personal reminiscencesof the Charleston insurrection, during which he resided in that city. ]

[Of the above-named pamphlets, all now rare, Nos. 1 and 2 are in my ownpossession. Nos. 3, 4, 5, 6, are in the Wendell Phillips collection ofpamphlets in the Boston Public Library. ]

 * * * * *

NAT TURNER'S INSURRECTION

1. "The Confessions of Nat Turner, the leader of the late Insurrection inSouthampton, Va. , as fully and voluntarily made to Thomas R. Gray, in theprison where he was confined, and acknowledged by him to be such whenread before the Court of Southampton, with the certificate under seal ofthe court convened at Jerusalem, Nov. 5, 1831, for this trial. Also anauthentic account of the whole insurrection, with lists of the whites whowere murdered, and of the negroes brought before the Court ofSouthampton, and there sentenced, etc. " New York: printed and publishedby C. Brown, 211 Water Street, 1831. 

[This pamphlet was reprinted in the _Anglo-African Magazine_ (New York), December, 1859. Whether it is identical with the work said by thenewspapers of the period to have been published at Baltimore, I have beenunable to ascertain. But if, as was alleged, forty thousand copies of theBaltimore pamphlet were issued, it seems impossible that they should havebecome so scarce. The first reprint of the Confession, so far as I know, was a partial one in Abdy's "Journal in the United States. " London. 1835. 3 vols. 8vo. ]

2. "Authentic and Impartial Narrative of the Tragical Scene which waswitnessed in Southhampton County (Va. ), on Monday, the 22d of Augustlast, when Fifty-five of its inhabitants (mostly women and children) wereinhumanly massacred by the blacks! Communicated by those who wereeye-witnesses of the bloody scene, and confirmed by the confessions ofseveral of the Blacks, while under Sentence of Death. " [By Samuel Warner, New York. ] Printed for Warner & West. 1831. 12mo, pp. 36 [or more, copyincomplete. With a frontispiece]. Among the Wendell Phillips tracts inthe Boston Public Library. 

3. "Slave Insurrection in 1831, in Southampton County, Va. , headed by NatTurner. Also a conspiracy of slaves in Charleston, S. C. , in 1822. " NewYork: compiled and published by Henry Bibb, 9 Spruce St. 1849. 12mo, pp. 12. 

[The contemporary newspaper narratives may be found largely quoted in thefirst volume of the _Liberator_ (1831), and in Lundy's _Genius ofUniversal Emancipation_ (September, 1831). The files of the Richmond_Enquirer_ have also much information on the subject. ]