It has since been asserted, though perhaps on questionable authority, that the Secretary of War was informed of the plot, even including some details of the plan and the leader’s name, before it was known in Charleston.  If so, he utterly disregarded it; and, indeed, so well did the negroes play their part, that the whole report was eventually disbelieved, while (as was afterwards proved) they went on to complete their secret organization, and hastened by a fortnight the appointed day of attack.  Unfortunately for their plans, however, another betrayal took place at the very last moment, from a different direction.  A class-leader in a Methodist church had been persuaded or bribed by his master to procure further disclosures.  He at length came and stated, that, about three months before, a man named Rolla, slave of Governor Bennett, had communicated to a friend of his the fact of an intended insurrection, and had said that the time fixed for the outbreak was the following Sunday night, June 16th.  As this conversation took place on Friday, it gave but a very short time for the city authorities to act, especially as they wished neither to endanger the city nor to alarm it.

Yet so cautiously was the game played on both sides, that the whole thing was still kept hushed up from the Charleston public; and some members of the city government did not fully appreciate their danger till they had passed it.  “The whole was concealed,” wrote the Governor afterwards, “until the time came; but secret preparations were made.  Saturday night and Sunday morning passed without demonstrations; doubts were excited, and counter orders issued for diminishing the guard.”  It afterwards proved that these preparations showed to the slaves that their plot was betrayed, and so saved the city without public alarm.  Newspaper correspondence soon was full of the story,—­each informant of course hinting plainly that he had been behind the scenes all along, and had withheld it only to gratify the authorities in their policy of silence.  It was “now no longer a secret,” they wrote,—­adding, that for five or six weeks but little attention had been paid by the community to these rumors, the city council having kept it carefully to themselves, until a number of suspicious slaves had been arrested.  This refers to ten prisoners who were seized on June 18th,—­an arrest which killed the plot, and left only the terrors of what might have been.  The investigation, thus publicly commenced, soon revealed a free colored man named Denmark Vesey as the leader of the enterprise,—­among his chief coadjutors being that innocent Peter and that unsuspecting Mingo who had been examined and discharged nearly three weeks before.

It is matter of demonstration, that, but for the military preparations on the appointed Sunday night, the attempt would have been made.  The ringleaders had actually met for their final arrangements, when, by comparing notes, they found themselves foiled; and within another week they were prisoners on trial.  Nevertheless, the plot which they had laid was the most elaborate insurrectionary project ever formed by American slaves, and came the nearest to a terrible success.  In boldness of conception and thoroughness of organization there has been nothing to compare with it, and it is worth while to dwell somewhat upon its details, first introducing the Dramatis Personae.