d lost their lives
in such an outbreak, set nerves on edge throughout the South, and promptly
brought an unusually bountiful crop of local rumors. In North Carolina
early in September it was reported at Raleigh that the blacks of Wilmington
had burnt the town and slaughtered the whites, and that several thousand
of them were marching upon Raleigh itself.[77] This and similarly alarming
rumors from Edenton were followed at once by authentic news telling merely
that conspiracies had been discovered in Duplin and Sampson Counties and
also in the neighborhood of Edenton, with several convictions resulting in
each locality.[78]

[Footnote 77: News item dated Warrenton, N.C., Sept. 15, 1831, in the New
Orleans _Mercantile Advertiser_, Oct. 4, 1831.]

[Footnote 78: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Oct. 6, 1831, citing
the Fayetteville, N.C. _Observer_ of Sept. 14; _Niles' Register_, XLI,
266.]

At Milledgeville, the village capital of Georgia where in the preceding
year the newspapers and the town authorities had been fluttered by the
discovery of incendiary pamphlets in a citizen's possession,[79] a rumor
spread on October 4, 1831, that a large number of slaves had risen a dozen
miles away and were marching upon the town to seize the weapons in the
state arsenal there. Three slaves within the town, and a free mulatto
preacher as well, were seized on suspicion of conspiracy but were promptly
discharged for lack of evidence, and the city council soon had occasion,
because there had been "considerable danger in the late excitement ...
by persons carrying arms that were intoxicated" to order the marshal and
patrols to take weapons away from irresponsible persons and enforce the
ordinance against the firing of guns in the streets.[80] Upon the first
coming of the alarm the governor had appointed Captain J.A. Cuthbert,
editor of the _Federal Union_, to the military command of the town; and
Cuthbert, uniformed and armed to the teeth, dashed about the town all
day on his charger, distributing weapons and stationing guards. Upon the
passing of the baseless panic Seaton Grantland, customarily cool and
sardonic, ridiculed Cuthbert in the _Southern Recorder_ of which he was
editor. Cuthbert retorted in his own columns that Grantland's conduct in
the emergency had proved him a skulking coward.[81] No blood was shed, even
among the editors.

[Footnote 79: _Federal Union_, Aug. 7, 1830; American Historical
Association _Report_ for