. Nobody but de white folks call me _Scip_. I
can't say no more, massa; I SHUD BREAK DE OATH EF I DID!'

'You have said enough, Scipio, to satisfy me that there is a secret
league among the blacks, and that you are a leader in it. Now, I tell
you, you'll get yourself into a scrape. I've taken a liking to you,
Scip, and I should be _very sorry_ to see you run yourself into danger.'

'I tank you, massa, from de bottom ob my soul I tank you,' he said, as
the tears moistened his eyes. 'You bery kind, massa; it do me good to
talk wid you. But what am my life wuth? What am any _slave's_ life wuth?
Ef you war me you'd do like me!'

I could not deny it, and made no reply.

The writer of this article is aware that he is here making an important
statement, and one that may be called in question by those persons who
are accustomed to regard the Southern blacks as only reasoning brutes.
The great mass of them are but a little above the brutes in their habits
and instincts, but a large body are fully on a par, except in mere
book-education, with their white masters.

The conversation above recorded is, _verbatim et literatim_, TRUE. It
took place at the time indicated, and was taken down, as were other
conversations recorded in these papers, within twenty-four hours after
its occurrence. The name and the locality, only, I have, for very
evident reasons, disguised.

From this conversation, together with previous ones, held with the same
negro, and from after developments made to me at various places, and at
different times, extending over a period of six weeks, I became
acquainted with the fact--and I _know_ it to be a _fact_--that there
exists among the blacks a secret and wide-spread organization of a
Masonic character, having its grip, pass-word, and oath. It has various
grades of leaders, who are competent and _earnest_ men, and its ultimate
object is FREEDOM. It is quite as wide-spread, and much more
secret, than the order of the 'Knights of the Golden Circle,' the
kindred league among the whites.

This latter organization, which was instituted by John C. Calhoun,
William L. Porcher, and others, as far back as 1835, has for its sole
object the dissolution of the Union, and the establishment of a Southern
Empire;--Empire is the word, not Confederacy, or Republic;--and it was
solely by means of its secret but powerful machinery that the Southern
States were plunged into revolution, in defiance of the will of a
majority of