THE CONSPIRATORS.
We owe our readers now some words of explanation respecting the new
personage who has been introduced into our history; therefore we must go
back somewhat, and allude to certain historical events of painful
significance.
It has been a problem to many, how the system of slavery in America
should unite the two apparent inconsistencies of a code of slave-laws
more severe than that of any other civilized nation, with an average
practice at least as indulgent as any other; for, bad as slavery is at
the best, it may yet be admitted that the practice, as a whole, has been
less cruel in this country than in many. An examination into history
will show us that the cruelty of the laws resulted from the effects of
indulgent practice. During the first years of importation of slaves into
South Carolina, they enjoyed many privileges. Those who lived in
intelligent families, and had any desire to learn, were instructed in
reading and writing. Liberty was given them to meet in assemblies of
worship, in class-meetings, and otherwise, without the presence of white
witnesses; and many were raised to situations of trust and consequence.
The result of this was the development of a good degree of intelligence
and manliness among the slaves. There arose among them grave,
thoughtful, energetic men, with their ears and eyes open, and their
minds constantly awake to compare and reason.
When minds come into this state, in a government professing to be
founded on principles of universal equality, it follows that almost
every public speech, document, or newspaper, becomes an incendiary
publication.
Of this fact the southern slave states have ever exhibited the most
singular unconsciousness. Documents containing sentiments most dangerous
for slaves to hear have been publicly read and applauded among them.
The slave has heard, amid shouts, on the Fourth of July, that his
masters held the truth to be self-evident that all men were born equal,
and had an _inalienable right_ to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness; and that all governments derive their just power from the
consent of the governed. Even the mottoes of newspapers have embodied
sentiments of the most insurrectionary character.
Such inscriptions as "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God" stand,
to this day, in large letters, at the head of southern newspapers; while
speeches of senators and public men, in which the principles of
universal democracy are asserted, are constant matters of discussion.
Under such circumstances, it is difficult to induce the servant, who
feels that he is a man, to draw those lines which seem so obvious to
masters, by whom this fact has been forgotten. Accordingly we find that
when the discussions for the admission of Missouri as a slave state
produced a wave whose waters undulated in every part of the Union, there
were found among the slaves men of unusual thought and vigor, who were
no inattentive witnesses and listeners. The discussions were printed in
the newspapers; and what was printed in the newspapers was further
discussed at the post-office door, in the tavern, in the bar-room, at
the dinner-party, where black servants were listening behind the chairs.
A free colored man in the city of Charleston, named Denmark Vesey, was
the one who had the hardihood to seek to use the electric fluid in the
cloud thus accumulated. He conceived the hopeless project of imitating
the example set by the American race, and achieving independence for the
blacks.
Our knowledge of this man is derived entirely from the printed reports
of the magistrates who gave an account of the insurrection, of which he
was the instigator, and who will not, of course, be supposed to be
unduly prejudiced in his favor. They state that he was first brought to
the country by one Captain Vesey, a young lad, distinguished for
personal beauty and great intelligence, and that he proved, for twenty
years, a most faithful slave; but, on drawing a prize of fifteen hundred
dollars in the lottery, he purchased his freedom of his master, and
worked as a carpenter in the city of Charleston. He was distinguished
for strength and activity, and, as the accounts state, maintained such
an irreproachable character, and enjoyed so much the confidence of the
whites, that when he was accused, the charge was not only discredited,
but he was not even arrested for several days after, and not till the
proof of his guilt had become too strong to be doubted. His historians
go on, with considerable _naïveté_, to remark:--
"It is difficult to conceive _what motive he had to enter into such a
plot_, unless it was the one mentioned by one of the witnesses, who said
that Vesey had _several children who were slaves_, and that he said, on
one occasion, _he wished he could see them free_, as he himself artfully
remarked in his defence on his trial."
It appears that the project of rousing and animating the blacks to this
enterprise occupied the mind of Vesey for more than four years, during
which time he was continually taking opportunities to animate and
inspire the spirits of his countrymen. The account states that the
speeches in Congress of those opposed to the admission of Missouri into
the Union, perhaps garbled and misrepresented, furnished him with ample
means for inflaming the minds of the colored population.
"Even while walking in the street," the account goes on to say, "he was
not idle; for, if his companion bowed to a white person, as slaves
universally do, he would rebuke him, and observe, 'that all men were
born equal, and that he was surprised that any one would degrade himself
by such conduct; that he would never cringe to the whites nor ought any
one to, who had the feelings of a man.'[1] When answered, 'We are
slaves,' he would say, sarcastically and indignantly, 'You deserve to
remain slaves!' And, if he were further asked, 'What can we do?' he
would remark, 'Go and buy a spelling-book, and read the fable of
"Hercules and the Wagoner."' He also sought every opportunity of
entering into conversation with white persons, during which conversation
he would artfully introduce some bold remark on slavery; and sometimes,
when, from the character he was conversing with, he found he might be
still bolder, he would go so far that, had not his declarations been
clearly proved, they would scarcely have been credited."
But his great instrument of influence was a book that has always been
prolific of insurrectionary movements, under all systems of despotism.
"He rendered himself perfectly familiar with all those parts of
Scripture which he thought he could pervert to his purpose, and would
readily quote them to prove that slavery was contrary to the laws of
God, and that slaves were bound to attempt their emancipation, however
shocking and bloody might be the consequences; that such efforts would
not only be pleasing to the Almighty, but were absolutely enjoined."
Vesey, in the course of time, associated with himself five slavemen of
marked character--Rolla, Ned, Peter, Monday, and Gullah Jack. Of these,
the account goes on to say:--
"In the selection of his leaders, Vesey showed great penetration and
sound judgment. Rolla was plausible, and possessed uncommon
self-possession; bold and ardent, he was not to be deterred from his
purpose by danger. Ned's appearance indicated that he was a man of firm
nerves and desperate courage. Peter was intrepid and resolute, true to
his engagements, and cautious in observing secrecy where it was
necessary; he was not to be daunted nor impeded by difficulties, and,
though confident of success, was careful in providing against any
obstacles or casualties which might arise, and intent upon discovering
every means which might be in their power, if thought of beforehand.
Gullah Jack was regarded as a sorcerer, and, as such, feared by the
natives of Africa, who believed in witchcraft. He was not only
considered invulnerable, but that he could make others so by his charms,
and that he could, and certainly would, provide all his followers with
arms. He was artful, cruel, bloody; his disposition, in short, was
diabolical. His influence among the Africans was inconceivable. Monday
was firm, resolute, discreet, and intelligent."
"It is a melancholy truth that the general good conduct of all the
leaders, except Gullah Jack, was such as rendered them objects least
liable to suspicion. Their conduct had secured them, not only the
unlimited confidence of their owners, but they had been indulged in
every comfort, and allowed every privilege compatible with their
situation in the community; and, though Gullah Jack was not remarkable
for the correctness of his deportment, he by no means sustained a bad
character. But," adds the report, "not only were the leaders of good
character, and very much indulged by their owners, but this was very
generally the case with all who were convicted, many of them possessing
the highest confidence of their owners, _and not one a bad character_."
"The conduct and behavior of Vesey and his five leaders during their
trial and imprisonment may be interesting to many. When Vesey was tried,
he folded his arms, and seemed to pay great attention to the testimony
given against him, but with his eyes fixed on the floor. In this
situation he remained immovable until the witnesses had been examined by
the court, and cross-examined by his counsel, when he requested to be
allowed to examine the witnesses himself, which he did. The evidence
being closed, he addressed the court at considerable length. When he
received his sentence, tears trickled down his cheeks.
"Rolla, when arraigned, affected not to understand the charge against
him; and when, at his request, it was explained to him, assumed, with
wonderful adroitness, astonishment and surprise. He was remarkable
throughout his trial for composure and great presence of mind. When he
was informed that he was convicted, and was advised to prepare for
death, he appeared perfectly confounded, but exhibited no signs of fear.
"In Ned's behavior there was nothing remarkable. His countenance was
stern and immovable, even while he was receiving sentence of death. From
his looks it was impossible to discover or conjecture what were his
feelings. Not so with Peter Poyes. In his countenance were strongly
marked disappointed ambition, revenge, indignation, and an anxiety to
know how far the discoveries had extended. He did not appear to fear
personal consequences, for his whole behavior indicated the reverse, but
exhibited an evident anxiety for the success of their plan, in which his
whole soul was embarked. His countenance and behavior were the same when
he received his sentence, and his only words were, on retiring, 'I
suppose you'll let me see my wife and family before I die,' and that in
no supplicating tone. When he was asked, a day or two after, 'If it was
possible that he could see his master and family murdered, who had
treated him so kindly?' he replied to the question only by a smile. In
their prison, the convicts resolutely refused to make any confessions or
communications which might implicate others; and Peter Poyes sternly
enjoined it upon them to maintain this silence,--'_Do not open your
lips; die silent, as you will see me do!_' and in this resolute silence
they met their fate. Twenty-two of the conspirators were executed upon
one gallows."
The account says, "That Peter Poyes was one of the most active of the
recruiting agents. All the principal conspirators kept a list of those
who had consented to join them, and Peter was said, by one of the
witnesses, to have had six hundred names on his list; but, so resolutely
to the last did he observe his pledge of secrecy to his associates,
that, of the whole number arrested and tried, not one of them belonged
to his company. In fact, in an insurrection in which thousands of
persons were supposed to have been implicated, only thirty-six were
convicted."
Among the children of Denmark Vesey was a boy by a Mandingo slave-woman,
who was his father's particular favorite. The Mandingos are one of the
finest of African tribes, distinguished for intelligence, beauty of
form, and an indomitable pride and energy of nature. As slaves, they are
considered particularly valuable by those who have tact enough to govern
them, because of their great capability and their proud faithfulness;
but they resent a government of brute force, and under such are always
fractious and dangerous.
This boy received from his mother the name of Dred; a name not unusual
among the slaves, and generally given to those of great physical force.
The development of this child's mind was so uncommon as to excite
astonishment among the negroes. He early acquired the power of reading,
by an apparent instinctive faculty, and would often astonish those
around him with things which he had discovered in books. Like other
children of a deep and fervent nature, he developed great religious
ardor, and often surprised the older negroes by his questions and
replies on this subject. A son so endowed could not but be an object of
great pride and interest to a father like Denmark Vesey. The impression
seemed to prevail universally among the negroes that this child was born
for extraordinary things; and perhaps it was the yearning to acquire
liberty for the development of such a mind which first led Denmark Vesey
to reflect on the nature of slavery, and the terrible weights which it
lays on the human intellect, and to conceive the project of liberating a
race.
The Bible, of which Vesey was an incessant reader, stimulated this
desire. He likened his own position of comparative education,
competence, and general esteem among the whites, to that of Moses among
the Egyptians; and nourished the idea that, like Moses, he was sent as a
deliverer. During the process of the conspiracy, this son, though but
ten years of age, was his father's confidant; and he often charged him,
though he should fail in the attempt, never to be discouraged. He
impressed it upon his mind that he should never submit tamely to the
yoke of slavery; and nourished the idea already impressed, that some
more than ordinary destiny was reserved for him. After the discovery of
the plot, and the execution of its leaders, those more immediately
connected with them were sold from the state, even though not proved to
have participated. With the most guarded caution, Vesey had exempted
this son from suspicion. It had been an agreed policy with them both,
that in the presence of others they should counterfeit alienation and
dislike. Their confidential meetings with each other had been stolen and
secret. At the time of his father's execution, Dred was a lad of
fourteen. He could not be admitted to his father's prison, but he was a
witness of the undaunted aspect with which he and the other conspirators
met their doom. The memory dropped into the depths of his soul, as a
stone drops into the desolate depths of a dark mountain lake.
Sold to a distant plantation, he became noted for his desperate,
unsubduable disposition. He joined in none of the social recreations and
amusements of the slaves, labored with proud and silent assiduity, but,
on the slightest rebuke or threat, flashed up with a savage fierceness,
which, supported by his immense bodily strength, made him an object of
dread among overseers. He was one of those of whom they gladly rid
themselves; and, like a fractious horse, was sold from master to master.
Finally, an overseer, hardier than the rest, determined on the task of
subduing him. In the scuffle that ensued Dred struck him to the earth, a
dead man, made his escape to the swamps, and was never afterwards heard
of in civilized life.
The reader who consults the map will discover that the whole eastern
shore of the southern states, with slight interruptions, is belted by an
immense chain of swamps, regions of hopeless disorder, where the
abundant growth and vegetation of nature, sucking up its forces from the
humid soil, seems to rejoice in a savage exuberance, and bid defiance to
all human efforts either to penetrate or subdue. These wild regions are
the homes of the alligator, the moccasin, and the rattle-snake.
Evergreen trees, mingling freely with the deciduous children of the
forest, form here dense jungles, verdant all the year round, and which
afford shelter to numberless birds, with whose warbling the leafy
desolation perpetually resounds. Climbing vines, and parasitic plants,
of untold splendor and boundless exuberance of growth, twine and
interlace, and hang from the heights of the highest trees pennons of
gold and purple,--triumphant banners, which attest the solitary majesty
of nature. A species of parasitic moss wreaths its abundant draperies
from tree to tree, and hangs in pearly festoons, through which shine the
scarlet berry and green leaves of the American holly.
What the mountains of Switzerland were to the persecuted Vaudois, this
swampy belt has been to the American slave. The constant effort to
recover from thence fugitives has led to the adoption, in these states,
of a separate profession, unknown at this time in any other Christian
land--hunters, who train and keep dogs for the hunting of men, women,
and children. And yet, with all the convenience of this profession, the
reclaiming of the fugitives from these fastnesses of nature has been a
work of such expense and difficulty, that the near proximity of the
swamp has always been a considerable check on the otherwise absolute
power of the overseer. Dred carried with him to the swamp but one
solitary companion--the Bible of his father. To him it was not the
messenger of peace and good-will, but the herald of woe and wrath!
As the mind, looking on the great volume of nature, sees there a
reflection of its own internal passions, and seizes on that in it which
sympathizes with itself,--as the fierce and savage soul delights in the
roar of torrents, the thunder of avalanches, and the whirl of
ocean-storms,--so is it in the great answering volume of revelation.
There is something there for every phase of man's nature; and hence its
endless vitality and stimulating force. Dred had heard read in the
secret meetings of conspirators the wrathful denunciations of ancient
prophets against oppression and injustice. He had read of kingdoms
convulsed by plagues; of tempest, and pestilence, and locusts; of the
sea cleft in twain, that an army of slaves might pass through, and of
their pursuers whelmed in the returning waters. He had heard of prophets
and deliverers, armed with supernatural powers, raised up for oppressed
people; had pondered on the nail of Jael, the goad of Shamgar, the
pitcher and lamp of Gideon; and thrilled with fierce joy as he read how
Samson, with his two strong arms, pulled down the pillars of the festive
temple, and whelmed his triumphant persecutors in one grave with
himself.
In the vast solitudes which he daily traversed, these things entered
deep into his soul. Cut off from all human companionship, often going
weeks without seeing a human face, there was no recurrence of every-day
and prosaic ideas to check the current of the enthusiasm thus kindled.
Even in the soil of the cool Saxon heart the Bible has thrown out its
roots with an all-pervading energy, so that the whole frame-work of
society may be said to rest on soil held together by its fibres. Even in
cold and misty England, armies have been made defiant and invincible by
the incomparable force and deliberate valor which it breathes into men.
But, when this oriental seed, an exotic among us, is planted back in the
fiery soil of a tropical heart, it bursts forth with an incalculable
ardor of growth.
A stranger cannot fail to remark the fact that, though the slaves of the
south are unable to read the Bible for themselves, yet most completely
have its language and sentiment penetrated among them, giving a
Hebraistic coloring to their habitual mode of expression. How much
greater, then, must have been the force of the solitary perusal of this
volume on so impassioned a nature!--a nature, too, kindled by memories
of the self-sacrificing ardor with which a father and his associates had
met death at the call of freedom; for, none of us may deny that, wild
and hopeless as this scheme was, it was still the same in kind with the
more successful one which purchased for our fathers a national
existence.
A mind of the most passionate energy and vehemence, thus awakened, for
years made the wild solitudes of the swamp its home. That book, so full
of startling symbols and vague images, had for him no interpreter but
the silent courses of nature. His life passed in a kind of dream.
Sometimes, traversing for weeks these desolate regions, he would compare
himself to Elijah traversing for forty days and nights the solitudes of
Horeb; or to John the Baptist in the wilderness, girding himself with
camel's hair, and eating locusts and wild honey. Sometimes he would fast
and pray for days; and then voices would seem to speak to him, and
strange hieroglyphics would be written upon the leaves. In less elevated
moods of mind, he would pursue, with great judgment and vigor, those
enterprises necessary to preserve existence. The negroes lying out in
the swamps are not so wholly cut off from society as might at first be
imagined. The slaves of all the adjoining plantations, whatever they may
pretend, to secure the good-will of their owners, are at heart secretly
disposed, from motives both of compassion and policy, to favor the
fugitives. They very readily perceive that, in the event of any
difficulty occurring to themselves, it might be quite necessary to have
a friend and protector in the swamp; and therefore they do not hesitate
to supply these fugitives, so far as they are able, with anything which
they may desire. The poor whites, also, who keep small shops in the
neighborhood of plantations, are never particularly scrupulous, provided
they can turn a penny to their own advantage; and willingly supply
necessary wares in exchange for game, with which the swamp abounds.
Dred, therefore, came in possession of an excellent rifle, and never
wanted for ammunition, which supplied him with an abundance of food.
Besides this, there are here and there elevated spots in the swampy
land, which, by judicious culture, are capable of great productiveness.
And many such spots Dred had brought under cultivation, either with his
own hands, or from those of other fugitives, whom he had received and
protected. From the restlessness of his nature, he had not confined
himself to any particular region, but had traversed the whole swampy
belt of both the Carolinas, as well as that of Southern Virginia;
residing a few months in one place, and a few months in another.
Wherever he stopped, he formed a sort of retreat, where he received and
harbored fugitives. On one occasion, he rescued a trembling and bleeding
mulatto woman from the dogs of the hunters, who had pursued her into the
swamp. This woman he made his wife, and appeared to entertain a very
deep affection for her. He made a retreat for her, with more than common
ingenuity, in the swamp adjoining the Gordon plantation; and, after
that, he was more especially known in that locality. He had fixed his
eye upon Harry, as a person whose ability, address, and strength of
character, might make him at some day a leader in a conspiracy against
the whites. Harry, in common with many of the slaves on the Gordon
plantation, knew perfectly well of the presence of Dred in the
neighborhood, and had often seen and conversed with him. But neither he
nor any of the rest of them ever betrayed before any white person the
slightest knowledge of the fact.
This ability of profound secrecy is one of the invariable attendants of
a life of slavery. Harry was acute enough to know that his position was
by no means so secure that he could afford to dispense with anything
which might prove an assistance in some future emergency. The low white
traders in the neighborhood also knew Dred well; but, as long as they
could drive an advantageous trade with him, he was secure from their
intervention. So secure had he been, that he had been even known to
mingle in the motley throng of a camp-meeting unmolested. Thus much with
regard to one who is to appear often on the stage before our history is
done.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] These extracts are taken from the official report.