these people rebelled simply because they were slaves
and wished to be free.

No doubt, there were enough special torches with which a man so skilful
as Denmark Vesey could kindle up these dusky powder-magazines; but,
after all, the permanent peril lay in the powder. So long as that
existed, everything was incendiary. Any torn scrap in the street might
contain a Missouri-Compromise speech, or a report of the last battle in
St. Domingo, or one of those able letters of Boyer's which were winning
the praise of all, or one of John Randolph's stirring speeches in
England against the slave-trade. The very newspapers which reported
the happy extinction of the insurrection by the hanging of the
last conspirator, William Garner, reported also, with enthusiastic
indignation, the massacre of the Greeks at Constantinople and at Scio;
and then the Northern editors, breaking from their usual reticence,
pointed out the inconsistency of Southern journals in printing, side
by side, denunciations of Mohammedan slave-sales and advertisements of
Christian ones.

Of course, the insurrection threw the whole slavery question open to
the public. "We are sorry to see," said the "National Intelligencer"
of August 31st, "that a discussion of the hateful Missouri question is
likely to be revived, in consequence of the allusions to its supposed
effect in producing the late servile insurrection in South Carolina." A
member of the Board of Public Works of South Carolina published in the
Baltimore "American Farmer" an essay urging the encouragement of white
laborers, and hinting at the ultimate abolition of slavery, "if it
should ever be thought desirable." More boldly still, a pamphlet
appeared in Charleston under the signature of "Achates," arguing with
remarkable sagacity and force against the whole system of slave-labor
_in towns_, and proposing that all slaves in Charleston should be sold
or transferred to the plantations, and their places supplied by white
labor. It is interesting to find many of the facts and arguments of
Helper's "Impending Crisis" anticipated in this courageous tract,
written under the pressure of a crisis which had just been so narrowly
evaded. The author is described in the preface as "a soldier and patriot
of the Revolution, whose name, did we feel ourselves at liberty to use
it, would stamp a peculiar weight and value on his opinions." It was
commonly attributed to General Thomas Pinckney.

Another pamphlet of the per