s, bond and free alike, toward the
whites. And steadily with that patience which Lowell calls the "passion
of great hearts," he pushed deeper and deeper into the slave lump the
explosive principles of inalienable human rights. He did not flinch from
kindling in the bosoms of the slaves a hostility toward the masters as
burning as that which he felt toward them in his own breast. He had,
indeed, reached such a pitch of race enmity that, as he was often heard
to declare, "he would not like to have a white man in his presence."

And so, devoured by a supreme passion, mastered by a single predominant
idea, Vesey looked for occasions, and when they were wanting he created
them, to preach his new and terrible gospel of liberty and hate. Thus
only could he hope to render their condition intolerable to the slaves,
the production of which was the indispensable first step in the
consummation of his design. Otherwise what possibility of final success
could a contented slave population have offered him? He needed a fulcrum
on which to plant his lever. He had nowhere in such an enterprise to
place it, but in the discontent and hatred of the slaves toward their
masters. Therefore on the fulcrum of race hatred he rested his lever of
freedom for his people.

As the discontented bondsmen heard afresh with Vesey's ears the hateful
clank of their chains, they would, in time, learn to think of Vesey and
to turn, perhaps, to him for leadership and deliverance. Brooding over
their lot as Vesey had revealed it to them, they might move of themselves
to improve or end it altogether, by adopting some such bold plan as
Vesey's. Meantime he would continue to wait and prepare for that moment,
while they would be training in habits of deceit, of deep dissimulation,
that formidable weapon of the weak in conflict with the strong, that
_ars artium_ of slaves in their attempts to break their chains--a habit
of smiling and fawning on unjust and cruel power, while bleeds in secret
their fiery wound, rages and plots there also their passionate hate, and
glows there too their no less passionate hope for freedom.

Everywhere through the dark subterranean world of the slave, in
Charleston and the neighboring country, went with his great passion of
hate and his great purpose of freedom, this untiring breeder of
sedition. And where he moved beneath the thin crust of that upper world
of the master-race, there broke in his wake whirling and shooting
currents of