[Footnote 4:  See The New York Daily Advertiser, Sept. 22, 1800.]

[Footnote 5:  Ibid., Oct. 7, 1800.]

[Footnote 6:  Letter of St. George Tucker in Joshua Coffin’s Slave Insurrections.]

Camden was disturbed by an insurrection in 1816 and Charleston in 1822 by a formidable plot which the officials believed was due to the “sinister” influences of enlightened Negroes.[1] The moving spirit of this organization was Denmark Vesey.  He had learned to read and write, had accumulated an estate worth $8000, and had purchased his freedom in 1800[2] Jack Purcell, an accomplice of Vesey, weakened in the crisis and confessed.  He said that Vesey was in the habit of reading to him all the passages in the newspapers, that related to Santo Domingo and apparently every accessible pamphlet that had any connection with slavery.[3] One day he read to Purcell the speeches of Mr. King on the subject of slavery and told Purcell how this friend of the Negro race 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.[4]

[Footnote 1:  The City Gazette and Commercial Daily Advertiser (Charleston, South Carolina), August 21, 1822.]

[Footnote 2:  Ibid., August 21, 1822.]

[Footnote 3:  The City Gazette and Commercial Daily Advertiser, August 21, 1822.]

[Footnote 4:  Ibid., August 21, 1822.]

The statement of the Governor of South Carolina also shows the influence of the educated Negro.  This official felt that Monday, the slave of Mr. Gill, was the most daring conspirator.  Being able to read and write he “attained an extraordinary and dangerous influence over his fellows.”  “Permitted by his owner to occupy a house in the central part of this city, he was afforded hourly opportunities for the exercise of his skill on those who were attracted to his shop by business or favor.”  “Materials were abundantly furnished in the seditious pamphlets brought into the State by equally culpable incendiaries, while the speeches of the oppositionists in Congress to the admission of Missouri gave a serious and imposing effect to his machinations."[1] It was thus brought home to the South that the enlightened Negro was having his heart fired with the spirit of liberty by his perusal of the accounts of servile insurrections and the congressional debate on slavery.

[Footnote 1:  The Norfolk and Portsmouth Herald, Aug. 30, 1822.]

Southerners of all types thereafter attacked the policy of educating Negroes.[1] Men who had expressed themselves neither one way nor the other changed their attitude when it became evident that abolition literature in the hands of slaves would not only make them dissatisfied, but cause them to take drastic measures to secure liberty.  Those who had emphasized the education of the Negroes to increase their economic efficiency were largely converted.  The clergy who had insisted that the bondmen were entitled to, at least, sufficient training to enable them to understand the principles of the Christian religion, were thereafter willing to forego the benefits of their salvation rather than see them destroy the institution of slavery.