lmost said that he was
a man without a name. He is certainly a man without ancestral name. For
the name to which he answered up to the age of fourteen, has been lost
forever. After that time he has been known as Denmark Vesey. Denmark is
a corruption of Telemaque, the praenomen bestowed upon him at that age
by a new master, and Vesey was the cognomen of that master who was
captain of an American vessel, engaged in the African slave trade
between the islands of St. Thomas and Sto. Domingo. It is on board of
Captain Vesey's slave vessel that we catch the earliest glimpse of our
hero. Deeply interesting moment is that, which revealed thus to us the
Negro lad, deeply interesting and tragical for one and the same cause.

This first appearance of him upon the stage of history occurred in the
year which ended virtually the war for American Independence, 1781,
during the passage between St. Thomas and Cap Francais, of Captain
Vesey's slave bark with a cargo of 390 slaves. The lad, Telemaque, was
a part of that sad cargo, undistinguished at the outset of the voyage
from the rest of the human freight. Of the 389 others, we know absolutely
nothing. Not an incident, nor a token, not even a name has floated to us
across the intervening years, from all that multitudinous misery, from
such an unspeakable tragedy, except that the ship reached its destination,
and the slaves were sold. Like boats that pass at sea, that slave vessel
loomed for a lurid instant on the horizon, and was gone forever--all but
Denmark Vesey. How it happened that he did not vanish with the rest of
his ill-fated fellows, will be set down in this paper, which has essayed
to describe the slave plot which he planned, with which his name is
identified, and by which it ought to be, for all time, hallowed in the
memory of every man, woman and child of Negro descent in America.

On that voyage Captain Vesey was strongly attracted by the "beauty,
intelligence, and alertness" of one of the slaves on board. So were the
ship's officers. This particular object of interest, on the part of the
slave-traders, was a black boy of fourteen summers. He was quickly made
a sort of ship's pet and plaything, receiving new garments from his
admirers, and the high sounding name, as I have already mentioned, of
Telemaque, which in slave lingo was subsequently metamorphosed into
Denmark. The lad found himself in sudden favor, and lifted above his
companions in bondage by the brief and idl