t the least disposition to equivocate, or screen
himself from justice. He denied the charge of being the first in
exciting the insurrection, although he was to have had the chief
command, but that there were four or five persons more materially
concerned in the conspiracy, and said that he could mention several
in Norfolk; but being conscious of meeting with the fate of those
before him, he was determined to make no confession."

"It was stated," says a New York paper, "to be the best planned and
most matured of any before attempted." "Gabriel was condemned," says
another paper, "on the 3d of October, and executed on the 7th,
(having been respited from the 4th,) without making any _useful_
confession. On the 3d of October, ten more negroes were executed, and
on the 7th, fifteen more--viz.: five at the Brook, five at Four Mile
Creek, and four with Gabriel at the Richmond gallows."

These fifteen, as far as we have any account, were the last who were
either executed or tried. The Court, in their eager haste to
apprehend and punish the conspirators, of whom five, six, ten and
fifteen at a time were executed, and that only the day after trial,
of whom not one had committed any overt act, and against whom no
testimony appears to have been furnished by any white witness, found,
after the apprehension of General Gabriel, that they had made some
sad mistakes. This fact, with others, caused such a revulsion of
feeling, and excited so great a sympathy in behalf of the poor
creatures, that they were obliged, by a moral necessity, to pause in
their course.

Under date of Oct. 13th, the _Commercial Advertiser_ thus writes:--

"The trials of the negroes concerned in the late insurrection are
suspended until the opinion of the Legislature can be had on the
subject. _This measure is said to be owing to the immense numbers,
who are implicated in the plot, whose death, should they all be found
guilty and be executed, will nearly produce the annihilation of the
blacks in this part of the country."_

The next day, Oct. 14th, a correspondent from Richmond makes a
similar statement with this addition:--

"A conditional amnesty is perhaps expected. At the next session of
the Legislature of Virginia, they took into consideration the subject
referred to them, _in secret session, with closed doors._ The _whole_
result of their deliberations has never yet been made public, as the
injunction of secrecy has never been removed. To satisfy the