Startled by this terrible intelligence, the military were immediately ordered out and preparations made to suppress the first signs of an outbreak. Finding the city encompassed with patrols and a strict watch kept upon every movement, the negroes feared to carry out their designs, and when the period had passed for the explosion of the plot, the authorities proceeded with vigor to arrest all against whom they possessed information.
The first prisoner tried was Rolla, a commander of one of the contemplated forces. On being asked whether he intended to kill the women and children, he remarked, “When we have done with the men we know what to do with the women.” On this testimony he was found guilty, and sentenced to be executed on the 2d of July.
Another was Denmark Vesey, the father of the plot, and a free black man. It was proved that he had spoken of this conspiracy upwards of four years previously. His house was the rendezvous of the conspirators, where he always presided, encouraging the timid by the hopes of success, removing the scruples of the religious by the grossest perversion of Scripture, and influencing the bold by all the savage fascinations of blood, beauty and booty. It was afterwards proved, though not on his trial, that he had been carrying on a correspondence with certain persons in St. Domingo—the massacre and rebellion in that island having suggested to him the conspiracy in which he embarked at Charleston. His design was to set the mills on fire, and as soon as the bells began to ring the alarm, to kill every man as he came out of his door, and afterwards murder the women and children, “for so God had commanded in the Scriptures.” At the same time, the country negroes were to rise in arms, attack the forts, take the ships, kill every man on board except the captains, rob the banks and stores, and then sail for St. Domingo. English and French assistance was also expected.
Six thousand were ascertained to have been enlisted in the enterprise, their names being enrolled on the books of “The Society,” as the organization was called.
When the first rising failed, the leaders, who still escaped arrest, meditated a second one, but found the blacks cowed by the execution of their associates and by the vigilance of the whites. The leaders waited, they said, “for the head man, who was a white man,” but they would not reveal his name.
The whole number of persons executed was thirty-five; sentenced to transportation, twenty-one; the whole number arrested, one hundred and thirty-one.
Among the conspirators brought to trial and conviction, the cases of Glen, Billy Palmer and Jack Purcell were distinguished for the sanctimonious hypocrisy they blended with their crime. Glen was a preacher, Palmer exceedingly pious, and Purcell no less devout. The latter made the following important confession:—
“If it had not been for the cunning of that old villain Vesey I should not now be in my present situation. He employed every stratagem to induce me to join him. He was in the habit of reading to me all the passages in the newspapers that related to St. Domingo, and apparently every pamphlet he could lay his hands on that had any connection with slavery. He one day brought in a speech which he told me had been delivered in Congress by a Mr. King on the subject of slavery. He told me this Mr. King was the black man’s friend; that he (Mr. King) had declared he would continue to speak, write and publish pamphlets against slavery to the latest day he lived, until the Southern States consented to emancipate their slaves, for that slavery was a great disgrace to the country.”
The Mr. King here spoken of was Rufus King, Senator from New York. This confession shows that the evil which was foretold would arise from the discussion of the Missouri question had been in some degree realized in the course of two or three years.
Religious fanaticism also had its share in the conspiracy at Charleston, as well as politics. The secession of a large body of blacks from the white Methodist church formed a hot-bed, in which the germ of insurrection was nursed into life. A majority of the conspirators belonged to the “African church,” an appellation which the seceders assumed after leaving the white Methodist church, and among those executed were several who had been class-leaders. Thus was religion made a cloak for the most diabolical crimes on record. It is the same at this day. The tirades of the North are calculated to drive the negro population of the South to bloody massacres and insurrections.