[Footnote 22:  Columbian Museum and Savannah Advertiser (Savannah, Ga.), Feb. 24, 1797.]

[Footnote 23:  Paducah Kentuckian, quoted in the New Orleans Bee, Apr. 3, 1844.]

[Footnote 24:  New Orleans Bee, Aug. 1, 1845, citing the Arkansas Southern Shield.]

[Footnote 25:  New Orleans Daily Tropic, Feb. 16, 1846.]

If all such rumors as this, many of which had equally slight basis, were assembled, the catalogue would reach formidable dimensions.  A large number doubtless escaped record, for the newspapers esteemed them “a delicate subject to touch";[26] and many of those which were recorded, we may be sure, have not come to the investigator’s notice.  A survey of the revolts and conspiracies and the rumors of such must nevertheless be attempted; for their influence upon public thought and policy, at least from time to time, was powerful.

[Footnote 26:  Federal Union (Milledgeville, Ga.), Dec. 23, 1856, editorial.]

Early revolts were of course mainly in the West Indies, for these were long the chief plantation colonies.  No more than twenty years after the first blacks were brought to Hispaniola a score of Joloff negroes on the plantation of Diego Columbus rose in 1622 and were joined by a like number from other estates, to carry death and desolation in their path until they were all cut down or captured.[27] In the English islands precedents of conspiracy were set before the blacks became appreciably numerous.  A plot among the white indentured servants in Barbados in 1634 was betrayed and the ringleader executed;[28] and another on a larger scale in 1649 had a similar end.[29] Incoming negroes appear not to have taken a similar course until 1675 when a plot among them was betrayed by one of their number.  The governor promptly appointed captains to raise companies, as a contemporary wrote,[30] “for repressing the rebels, which accordingly was done, and abundance taken and apprehended and since put to death, and the rest kept in a more stricter manner.”  This quietude continued only until 1692 when three negroes were seized on charge of conspiracy.  One of these, on promise of pardon, admitted the existence of the plot and his own participation therein.  The two others were condemned “to be hung in chains on a gibbet till they were starved to death, and their bodies to be burned.”  These endured the torture “for four days without making any confession, but then gave in and promised to confess on promise of life.  One was accordingly taken down on the day following.  The other did not survive.”  The tale as then gathered told that the slaves already pledged were enough to form six regiments, and that arrangements were on foot for the seizure of the forts and arsenal through bribery among their custodians.  The governor when reporting these disclosures expressed the hope that the severe punishment of the leaders, together with a new act offering freedom as reward to future informers, would make the colony secure.[31] There seems to have been no actual revolt of serious dimensions in Barbados except in 1816 when the blacks rose in great mass and burned more than sixty plantations, as well as killing all the whites they could catch, before troops arrived from neighboring islands and suppressed them.[32]