“I sympathize most sincerely,” says the anonymous author of a pamphlet of the period, “with the very respectable and pious clergyman whose heart must still bleed at the recollection that his confidential class-leader, but a week or two before his just conviction, had received the communion of the Lord’s Supper from his hand.  This wretch had been brought up in his pastor’s family, and was treated with the same Christian attention as was shown to their own children.”  “To us who are accustomed to the base and proverbial ingratitude of these people this ill return of kindness and confidence is not surprising; but they who are ignorant of their real character will read and wonder.”

One demonstration of this “Christian attention” had lately been the closing of the African Church,—­of which, as has been stated, most of the leading revolutionists were members,—­on the ground that it tended to spread the dangerous infection of the alphabet.  On January 15th, 1821, the City Marshal, John J. Lafar, had notified “ministers of the gospel and others who keep night- and Sunday-schools for slaves, that the education of such persons is forbidden by law, and that the city government feel imperiously bound to enforce the penalty.”  So that there were some special, as well as general grounds for disaffection among these ungrateful favorites of Fortune, the slaves.  Then there were fancied dangers.  An absurd report had somehow arisen—­since you cannot keep men ignorant without making them unreasonable also—­that on the ensuing Fourth of July the whites were to create a false alarm, and that every black man coming out was to be killed, “in order to thin them”; this being done to prevent their joining an imaginary army supposed to be on its way from Hayti.  Others were led to suppose that Congress had ended the Missouri Compromise discussion by making them all free, and that the law would protect their liberty, if they could only secure it.  Others again were threatened with the vengeance of the conspirators, unless they also joined; on the night of attack, it was said, the initiated would have a countersign, and all who did not know it would share the fate of the whites.  Add to this the reading of Congressional speeches, and of the copious magazine of revolution to be found in the Bible,—­and it was no wonder, if they for the first time were roused, under the energetic leadership of Vesey, to a full consciousness of their own condition.

“Not only were the leaders of good character and very much indulged by their owners, but this was very generally the case with all who were convicted,—­many of them possessing the highest confidence of their owners, and not one of bad character.”  In one case it was proved that Vesey had forbidden his followers to trust a certain man, because he had once been seen intoxicated.  In another case it was shown that a slave named George had made every effort to obtain their confidence, but was constantly excluded