If such were the alarm in New Orleans, the story, of course, lost nothing by transmission to other Slave States.  A rumor reached Frankfort, Kentucky, that the slaves already had possession of the coast, both above and below New Orleans.  But the most remarkable circumstance is, that all this seems to have been a mere revival of an old terror, once before excited and exploded.  The following paragraph had appeared in the Jacksonville (Georgia) “Observer,” during the spring previous:—­

“FEARFUL DISCOVERY.  We were favored, by yesterday’s mail, with a letter from New Orleans, of May 1st, 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 the echo of the voice of Nat Turner; and when it is also known that the subject was at once taken up by the legislatures of other States, where there was no public panic, as in Missouri and Tennessee,—­and when, finally, it is added that reports of insurrection had been arriving all that year from Rio Janeiro, Martinique, St. Jago, Antigua, Caraccas, and Tortola, it is easy to see with what prolonged distress the accumulated terror must have weighed down upon Virginia, during the two months that Nat Turner lay hid.

True, there were a thousand men in arms in Southampton County, to inspire security.  But the blow had been struck by only seven men before; and unless there were an armed guard in every house, who could tell but any house might at any moment be the scene of new horrors?  They might kill or imprison unresisting negroes by day, but could they resist their avengers by night?  “The half cannot be told,” wrote a lady from another part of Virginia, at this time, “of the distresses of the people.  In Southampton County, the scene of the insurrection, the distress beggars description.  A gentleman who 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 not hesitate to believe that many negroes around us would join in a massacre as horrible as that which has taken place, if an opportunity should offer.”