ted in the
largest building of the town, and a military force hastily collected in
front. The editor of the Macon "Messenger" excused the poor condition of
his paper, a few days afterwards, by the absorption of his workmen in
patrol duties, and describes "dismay and terror" as the condition of the
people, of "all ages and sexes." In Jones, Twiggs, and Monroe Counties,
the same alarms were reported; and in one place "several slaves were
tied to a tree, while a militia captain hacked at them with his sword."

In Alabama, at Columbus and Fort Mitchell, a rumor was spread of a joint
conspiracy of Indians and negroes. At Claiborne the panic was still
greater; the slaves were said to be thoroughly organized through that
part of the State, and multitudes were imprisoned; the whole alarm being
apparently founded on one stray copy of the "Liberator."

In Tennessee, the Shelbyville "Freeman" announced that an
insurrectionary plot had just been discovered, barely in time for
its defeat, through the treachery of a female slave. In Louisville,
Kentucky, a similar organization was discovered or imagined, and arrests
were made in consequence. "The papers, from motives of policy, do
not notice the disturbance," wrote one correspondent to the Portland
"Courier." "Pity us!" he added.

But the greatest bubble burst in Louisiana. Captain Alexander, an
English tourist, arriving in New Orleans at the beginning of September,
found the whole city in tumult. Handbills had been issued, appealing to
the slaves to rise against their masters, saying that all men were born
equal, declaring that Hannibal was a black man, and that they also might
have great leaders among them. Twelve hundred stand of weapons were said
to have been found in a black man's house; five hundred citizens were
under arms, and four companies of regulars were ordered to the city,
whose barracks Alexander himself visited.

If such were the alarm in New Orleans, the story, of course, lost
nothing by transmission to other Slave States. A rumor reached
Frankfort, Kentucky, that the slaves already had possession of the
coast, both above and below New Orleans. But the most remarkable
circumstance is, that all this seems to have been a mere revival of an
old terror, once before excited and exploded. The following paragraph
had appeared in the Jacksonville (Georgia) "Observer," during the spring
previous:--

"FEARFUL DISCOVERY. We were favored, by yesterday's mail, with a letter