The immediate panic created by the Nat Turner insurrection in Virginia and the other states of the South it would be impossible to exaggerate.  When the news of what was happening at Cross Keys spread, two companies, on horse and foot, came from Murfreesboro as quickly as possible.  On the Wednesday after the memorable Sunday night there came from Fortress Monroe three companies and a piece of artillery.  These commands were reenforced from various sources until not less than eight hundred men were in arms.  Many of the Negroes fled to the Dismal Swamp, and the wildest rumors were afloat.  One was that Wilmington had been burned, and in Raleigh and Fayetteville the wildest excitement prevailed.  In the latter place scores of white women and children fled to the swamps, coming out two days afterwards muddy, chilled, and half-starved.  Slaves were imprisoned wholesale.  In Wilmington four men were shot without trial and their heads placed on poles at the four corners of the town.  In Macon, Ga., a report was circulated that an armed band of Negroes was only five miles away, and within an hour the women and children were assembled in the largest building in the town, with a military force in front for protection.

The effects on legislation were immediate.  Throughout the South the slave codes became more harsh; and while it was clear that the uprising had been one of slaves rather than of free Negroes, as usual special disabilities fell upon the free people of color.  Delaware, that only recently had limited the franchise to white men, now forbade the use of firearms by free Negroes and would not suffer any more to come within the state.  Tennessee also forbade such immigration, while Maryland passed a law to the effect that all free Negroes must leave the state and be colonized in Africa—­a monstrous piece of legislation that it was impossible to put into effect and that showed once for all the futility of attempts at forcible emigration as a solution of the problem.  In general, however, the insurrection assisted the colonization scheme and also made more certain the carrying out of the policy of the Jackson administration to remove the Indians of the South to the West.  It also focussed the attention of the nation upon the status of the Negro, crystallized opinion in the North, and thus helped with the formation of anti-slavery organizations.  By it for the time being the Negro lost; in the long run he gained.

3. The “Amistad” and “Creole” Cases

On June 28, 1839, a schooner, the Amistad, sailed from Havana bound for Guanaja in the vicinity of Puerto Principe.  She was under the command of her owner, Don Ramon Ferrer, was laden with merchandise, and had on board fifty-three Negroes, forty-nine of whom supposedly belonged to a Spaniard, Don Jose Ruiz, the other four belonging to Don Pedro Montes.  During the night of June 30 the slaves, under the lead of one of their number named Cinque, rose upon the