free negroes were hanged in punishment,[91] and the negro Lewis who had betrayed the conspiracy was liberated at state expense and was voted $500 to provide for his security in some distant community.[92] The third was in Lafayette and St. Landry Parishes, betrayed in August, 1840, by a slave woman named Lecide who was freed by her master in reward.  Nine negroes were hanged.  Four white men who were implicated, but who could not be convicted under the laws which debarred slave testimony against whites, were severely flogged under a lynch-law sentence and ordered to leave the state.[93] Rumors of other plots were spread in West Feliciana Parish in the summer of 1841,[94] in several parishes opposite and above Natchez in the fall of 1842,[95] and at Donaldsonville at the beginning of 1843;[96] but each of these in turn was found to be virtually baseless.  Meanwhile at Augusta, Georgia, several negroes were arrested in February, 1841, and at least one of them was sentenced to death.  A petition was circulated for his respite as an inducement for confession; but other citizens, disquieted by the testimony already given, prepared a counter petition asking the governor to let the law take its course.  The plot as described contemplated the seizure of the arsenal and the firing of the city in facilitation of massacre.[97]

[Footnote 90:  Niles’ Register, XLIX, 331.]

[Footnote 91:  Ibid., LIII, 129.]

[Footnote 92:  Louisiana, Acts of 1838, p. 118.]

[Footnote 93:  Niles’ Register, LXIX, 39, 88; E.P.  Puckett, “Free Negroes in Louisiana” (MS.).]

[Footnote 94:  New Orleans Bee, July 23, 29 and 31, 1841.]

[Footnote 95:  Niles’ Register, LXIII, 212.]

[Footnote 96:  Louisiana Courier (New Orleans), Jan. 27 and Feb. 17, 1843.]

[Footnote 97:  Letter of Mrs. S.A.  Lamar, Augusta, Ga., Feb. 25, 1841, to John B. Lamar at Macon.  MS. in the possession of Mrs. A.S.  Erwin, Athens, Ga.]

The rest of the ’forties and the first half of the ’fifties were a period of comparative quiet; but in 1855 there were rumors in Dorchester and Talbot Counties, Maryland,[98] and the autumn of 1856 brought widespread disturbances which the Southern whites did not fail to associate with the rise of the Republican Party.  In the latter part of that year there were rumors afloat from Williamsburg, Virginia, and Montgomery County in the same state, from various quarters of Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas, from New Orleans, and from Atlanta and Cassville, Georgia.[99] A typical episode in the period was described by a schoolmaster from Michigan then sojourning in Mississippi.  One night about Christmas of 1858 when the plantation homestead at which he was staying was filled with house guests, a courier came in the dead of night bringing news that the blacks in the eastern part of the county had risen in a furious band and were laying their murderous course in this direction.  The head of the house after scanning the bulletin, calmly told his family and guests that they might get their guns and prepare for defense, but if they would excuse him he would retire again until the crisis came.  The coolness of the host sent the guests back to bed except for one who stood sentry.  “The negroes never came."[100]