church had been persuaded or bribed by his
master to procure further disclosures. He at length came and stated,
that, about three months before, a man named Rolla, slave of Governor
Bennett, had communicated to a friend of his the fact of an intended
insurrection, and had said that the time fixed for the outbreak was the
following Sunday night, June 16th. As this conversation took place on
Friday, it gave but a very short time for the city authorities to act,
especially as they wished neither to endanger the city nor to alarm it.

Yet so cautiously was the game played on both sides, that the whole
thing was still kept hushed up from the Charleston public; and some
members of the city government did not fully appreciate their danger
till they had passed it. "The whole was concealed," wrote the Governor
afterwards, "until the time came; but secret preparations were made.
Saturday night and Sunday morning passed without demonstrations; doubts
were excited, and counter orders issued for diminishing the guard." It
afterwards proved that these preparations showed to the slaves that
their plot was betrayed, and so saved the city without public alarm.
Newspaper correspondence soon was full of the story,--each informant of
course hinting plainly that he had been behind the scenes all along,
and had withheld it only to gratify the authorities in their policy of
silence. It was "now no longer a secret," they wrote,--adding, that for
five or six weeks but little attention had been paid by the community to
these rumors, the city council having kept it carefully to themselves,
until a number of suspicious slaves had been arrested. This refers to
ten prisoners who were seized on June 18th,--an arrest which killed
the plot, and left only the terrors of what might have been. The
investigation, thus publicly commenced, soon revealed a free colored man
named Denmark Vesey as the leader of the enterprise,--among his chief
coadjutors being that innocent Peter and that unsuspecting Mingo who had
been examined and discharged nearly three weeks before.

It is matter of demonstration, that, but for the military preparations
on the appointed Sunday night, the attempt would have been made. The
ringleaders had actually met for their final arrangements, when, by
comparing notes, they found themselves foiled; and within another week
they were prisoners on trial. Nevertheless, the plot which they had laid
was the most elaborate insurrectionary projec