In North Carolina, Raleigh and Fayetteville were put under military defence, and women and children concealed themselves in the swamps for many days.  The rebel organization was supposed to include two thousand.  Forty-six slaves were imprisoned in Union County, twenty-five in Sampson County, and twenty-three at least in Duplin County, some of whom were executed.  The panic also extended into Wayne, New Hanover, and Lenoir Counties.  Four men were shot without trial in Wilmington,—­Nimrod, Abraham, Prince, and “Dan the Drayman,” the latter a man of seventy,—­and their heads placed on poles at the four corners of the town.  Nearly two months afterwards the trials were still continuing; and at a still later day, the Governor in his proclamation recommended the formation of companies of volunteers in every county.

In South Carolina, General Hayne issued a proclamation “to prove the groundlessness of the existing alarms,”—­thus implying that serious alarms existed.  In Macon, Georgia, the whole population were roused from their beds at midnight by a report of a large force of armed negroes five miles off.  In an hour, every woman and child was deposited in the largest building of the town, and a military force hastily collected in front.  The editor of the Macon “Messenger” excused the poor condition of his paper, a few days afterwards, by the absorption of his workmen in patrol duties, and describes “dismay and terror” as the condition of the people, of “all ages and sexes.”  In Jones, Twiggs, and Monroe Counties, the same alarms were reported; and in one place “several slaves were tied to a tree, while a militia captain hacked at them with his sword.”

In Alabama, at Columbus and Fort Mitchell, a rumor was spread of a joint conspiracy of Indians and negroes.  At Claiborne the panic was still greater; the slaves were said to be thoroughly organized through that part of the State, and multitudes were imprisoned; the whole alarm being apparently founded on one stray copy of the “Liberator.”

In Tennessee, the Shelbyville “Freeman” announced that an insurrectionary plot had just been discovered, barely in time for its defeat, through the treachery of a female slave.  In Louisville, Kentucky, a similar organization was discovered or imagined, and arrests were made in consequence.  “The papers, from motives of policy, do not notice the disturbance,” wrote one correspondent to the Portland “Courier.”  “Pity us!” he added.

But the greatest bubble burst in Louisiana.  Captain Alexander, an English tourist, arriving in New Orleans at the beginning of September, found the whole city in tumult.  Handbills had been issued, appealing to the slaves to rise against their masters, saying that all men were born equal, declaring that Hannibal was a black man, and that they also might have great leaders among them.  Twelve hundred stand of weapons were said to have been found in a black man’s house; five hundred citizens were under arms, and four companies of regulars were ordered to the city, whose barracks Alexander himself visited.