X, 62, 63, 97, 368.]

[Footnote 69: _Ibid_., X, 433-436; _Louisiana Gazette_ (New Orleans), Apr.
18 and 24 (Reprinting a report from the _Virginia Herald_ of Mch. 9), and
July 12, 1816; MS. Vouchers in the Virginia State Library recording public
payments for convicted slaves.]

In the lower South a plot at Camden, South Carolina, in 1816[70] and
another at Augusta, Georgia,[71] three years afterward had like plans of
setting houses afire at night and then attacking other quarters of the
respective towns when the white men had left their homes defenceless. Both
plots were betrayed, and several participants in each were executed.
These conspiracies were eclipsed in turn by the elaborate Vesey plot at
Charleston in 1822, which, for the variety of the negro types involved, the
methods of persuasion used by the leading spirits and the sobriety of the
whites on the occasion is one of the most notable of such episodes on
record.

[Footnote 70: [Edwin C. Holland], _A Refutation of the Calumnies circulated
against the Southern and Western States, with historical notes of
insurrections_ (Charleston, 1822), pp. 75-77; H.T. Cook, _Life and Legacy
of David R. Williams_, p. 131; H.M. Henry, _Police Control of the Slave in
South Carolina_, pp. 151, 152.]

[Footnote 71: News item from Augusta in the _Louisiana Courier_ (New
Orleans), June 15, 1819.]

Denmark Vesey, brought from Africa in his youth, had bought his freedom
with part of a $1500 prize drawn by him in a lottery, and was in this
period an independent artisan. Harboring a deep resentment against the
whites, however, he began to plan his plot some four years before its
maturity. He familiarized himself with the Bible account of the deliverance
of the children of Israel, and collected pamphlet and newspaper material on
anti-slavery sentiment in England and the North and on occurrences in San
Domingo, with all of which on fit occasions he regaled the blacks with whom
he came into touch. Arguments based on such data brought concurrence of
negroes of the more intelligent sort, prominent among whom were certain
functionaries of the African Church who were already nursing grievances
on the score of the suppression of their ecclesiastical project by the
Charleston authorities.[72] The chief minister of that church, Morris
Brown, however, was carefully left out of the conspiracy. In appealing
to the more ignorant and superstitious element, on the other hand, the
services of Gull