Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 by Various

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During all this time there was a guarded silence in the Charleston
journals, which strongly contrasts with the extreme publicity at
last given to the testimony. Even the "National Intelligencer,"
at Washington, passed lightly over the affair, and deprecated the
publication of particulars. The Northern editors, on the other hand,
eager for items, were constantly complaining of this reserve, and
calling for further intelligence. "The Charleston papers," said the
"Hartford Courant" of July 16th, "have been silent on the subject of the
insurrection, but letters from this city state that it has created much
alarm, and that two brigades of troops were under arms for some time to
suppress any risings that might have taken place." "You will doubtless
hear," wrote a Charleston correspondent of the same paper, just before,
"many reports, and some exaggerated ones." "There was certainly a
disposition to revolt, and some preparations made, principally by the
plantation negroes, to take the city." "We hoped they would progress so
far as to enable us to ascertain and punish the ringleaders." "Assure my
friends that we feel in perfect security, although the number of nightly
guards and other demonstrations may induce a belief among strangers to
the contrary."

The strangers would have been very blind strangers, if they had not
been more influenced by the actions of the Charlestonians than by their
words. The original information was given on May 25th. The time passed,
and the plot failed on June 16th. A plan for its revival on July 2d
proved abortive. Yet a letter from Charleston in the "Hartford Courant"
of August 6th, represented the panic as unabated: "Great preparations
are making, and all the military are put in preparation to guard against
any attempt of the same kind again; but we have no apprehension of its
being repeated." On August 10th, Governor Bennett wrote the letter
already mentioned, which was printed and distributed as a circular, its
object being to deprecate undue alarm. "Every individual in the State is
interested, whether in regard to his own property or the reputation
of the State, in giving no more importance to the transaction than it
justly merits." Yet five days after this,--two months after the first
danger had passed,--a reinforcement of United States troops arrived at
Port Moultrie. And during the same month, several different attempts
were made by small parties of armed negroes to capture the mails between
Charleston and Savannah, and a reward of two hundred dollars was offered
for their detection.

The first official report of the trials was prepared by the Intendant,
by request of the city council. It passed through four editions in a few
months,--the first and fourth being published in Charleston, and the
second and third in Boston. Being, however, but a brief pamphlet, it
did not satisfy the public curiosity, and in October of the same
year, (1822,) a larger volume appeared at Charleston, edited by the
magistrates who presided at the trials, Lionel H. Kennedy and Thomas
Parker. It contains the evidence in full, and a separate narrative of
the whole affair, more candid and lucid than any other which I have
found in the newspapers or pamphlets of the day. It exhibits that rarest
of all qualities in a slave-community, a willingness to look facts in
the face. This narrative has been faithfully followed, with the aid
of such cross-lights as could be secured from many other quarters, in
preparing the present history.

The editor of the first official report racked his brains to discover
the special causes of the revolt, and never trusted himself to allude
to the general one. The negroes rebelled because they were deluded
by Congressional eloquence, or because they were excited by a Church
squabble, or because they had been spoilt by mistaken indulgences, such
as being allowed to learn to read, "a misguided benevolence," as he
pronounces it. So the Baptist Convention seems to have thought it was
because they were not Baptists, and an Episcopal pamphleteer because
they were not Episcopalians. It never seems to occur to any of these
spectators that 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 period, also published in Charleston,
recommended as a practical cure for insurrection the copious
administration of Episcopal Church services, and the prohibition of
negroes from attending Fourth-of-July celebrations. On this last point
it is more consistent than most pro-slavery arguments. "The celebration
of the Fourth of July belongs _exclusively_ to the white population of
the United States. The American Revolution was a _family-quarrel among
equals_. In this the negroes had no concern; their condition remained,
and must remain, unchanged. They have no more to do with the celebration
of that day than with the landing of the Pilgrims on the rock at
Plymouth. It therefore seems to me improper to allow these people to
be present on these occasions. In our speeches and orations, much, and
sometimes more than is politically necessary, is said about personal
liberty, which negro auditors know not how to apply, except by running
the parallel with their own condition. They therefore imbibe false
notions of their own personal rights, and give reality in their minds to
what has no real existence. The peculiar state of our community must
be steadily kept in view. This, I am gratified to learn, will in
some measure be promoted by the institution of the South Carolina
Association."

On the other hand, more stringent laws became obviously necessary to
keep down the advancing intelligence of the Charleston slaves. Dangerous
knowledge must be excluded from without and from within. For the first
end, the South Carolina legislature passed, in December, 1822, the
act for the imprisonment of Northern colored seamen, which has since
produced so much excitement. For the second object, the Grand Jury,
about the same time, presented as a grievance "the number of schools
which are kept within the city by persons of color," and proposed their
prohibition. This was the encouragement given to the intellectual
progress of the slaves; while, as a reward for betraying them, Pensil,
the free colored man who advised with Devany, received a present of one
thousand dollars, and Devany himself had what was rightly judged to
be the higher gift of freedom, and was established in business, with
liberal means, as a drayman. He is still living in Charleston, has
thriven greatly in his vocation, and, according to the newspapers,
enjoys the privilege of being the only man of property in the State whom
a special statute exempts from taxation. It is something of a privilege,
especially with secession impending. But those whom he betrayed to death
have been exempt from taxation longer than be has.

More than a third of a century has passed since the incidents of this
true story closed. It has not vanished from the memories of South
Carolinians, though the printed pages which once told it have been
gradually withdrawn from sight. The intense avidity which at first
grasped at every incident of the great insurrectionary plot was
succeeded by a distaste for the memory of the tale; and the official
reports which told what slaves had once planned and dared have now come
to be among the rarest of American historical documents. In 1841, a
friend of the writer, then visiting South Carolina, heard from her
hostess for the first time the events which are recounted here. On
asking to see the reports of the trials, she was cautiously told that
the only copy in the house, after being carefully kept for years under
lock and key, had been burnt at last, lest it should reach the dangerous
eyes of the slaves. The same thing had happened, it was added, in many
other families. This partially accounts for the great difficulty now to
be found in obtaining a single copy of either publication; and this is
why, to the readers of American history, Denmark Vesey and Peter Poyas
have been heretofore but the shadows of names.

* * * * *

NEW YORK SEVENTH REGIMENT.

OUR MARCH TO WASHINGTON.

THROUGH THE CITY.

At three o'clock in the afternoon of Friday, April 19th, we took our
peacemaker, a neat twelve-pound brass howitzer, down from the Seventh
Regiment Armory, and stationed it in the rear of the building. The twin
peacemaker is somewhere near us, but entirely hidden by this enormous
crowd.

An enormous crowd! of both sexes, of every age and condition. The men
offer all kinds of truculent and patriotic hopes; the women shed tears,
and say, "God bless you, boys!"

This is a part of the town where baddish cigars prevail. But good or
bad, I am ordered to keep all away from the gun. So the throng stands
back, peers curiously over the heads of its junior members, and seems to
be taking the measure of my coffin.

After a patient hour of this, the word is given, we fall in, our two
guns find their places at the right of the line of march, we move on
through the thickening crowd.

At a great house on the left, as we pass the Astor Library, I see a
handkerchief waving for me. Yes! it is she who made the sandwiches in my
knapsack. They were a trifle too thick, as I afterwards discovered,
but otherwise perfection. Be these my thanks and the thanks of hungry
comrades who had bites of them!

At the corner of Great Jones Street we halted for half an hour,--then,
everything ready, we marched down Broadway.

It was worth a life, that march. Only one who passed, as we did, through
that tempest of cheers, two miles long, can know the terrible
enthusiasm of the occasion. I could hardly hear the rattle of our own
gun-carriages, and only once or twice the music of our band came to me
muffled and quelled by the uproar. We knew now, if we had not before
divined it, that our great city was with us as one man, utterly united
in the great cause we were marching to sustain.

This grand fact I learned by two senses. If hundreds of thousands roared
it into my ears, thousands slapped it into my back. My fellow-citizens
smote me on the knapsack, as I went by at the gun-rope, and encouraged
me each in his own dialect. "Bully for you!" alternated with
benedictions, in the proportion of two "bullies" to one blessing.

I was not so fortunate as to receive more substantial tokens of
sympathy. But there were parting gifts showered on the regiment, enough
to establish a variety-shop. Handkerchiefs, of course, came floating
down upon us from the windows, like a snow. Pretty little gloves pelted
us with love-taps. The sterner sex forced upon us pocket-knives new and
jagged, combs, soap, slippers, boxes of matches, cigars by the dozen
and the hundred, pipes to smoke shag and pipes to smoke Latakia, fruit,
eggs, and sandwiches. One fellow got a new purse with ten bright
quarter-eagles.

At the corner of Grand Street, or thereabouts, a "bhoy" in red flannel
shirt and black dress pantaloons, leaning back against the crowd with
Herculean shoulders, called me,--"Saaey, bully! take my dorg! he's one of
the kind that holds till he draps." This gentleman, with his animal, was
instantly shoved back by the police, and the Seventh lost the "dorg."

These were the comic incidents of the march, but underlying all was the
tragic sentiment that we might have tragic work presently to do. The
news of the rascal attack in Baltimore on the Massachusetts Sixth had
just come in. Ours might be the same chance. If there were any of us
not in earnest before, the story of the day would steady us. So we said
goodbye to Broadway, moved down Cortlandt Street under a bower of flags,
and at half-past six shoved off in the ferry-boat.

Everybody has heard how Jersey City turned out and filled up the
Railroad Station, like an opera-house, to give Godspeed to us as a
representative body, a guaranty of the unquestioning loyalty of the
"conservative" class in New York. Everybody has heard how the State of
New Jersey, along the railroad line, stood through the evening and
the night to shout their quota of good wishes. At every station the
Jerseymen were there, uproarious as Jerseymen, to shake our hands and
wish us a happy despatch. I think I did not see a rod of ground without
its man, from dusk till dawn, from the Hudson to the Delaware.

Upon the train we made a jolly night of it. All knew that the more a man
sings, the better he is likely to fight. So we sang more than we slept,
and, in fact, that has been our history ever since.

PHILADELPHIA.

At sunrise we were at the station in Philadelphia, and dismissed for an
hour. Some hundreds of us made up Broad Street for the Lapierre House
to breakfast. When I arrived, I found every place at table filled
and every waiter ten deep with orders. So, being an old campaigner, I
followed up the stream of provender to the fountain-head, the kitchen.
Half a dozen other old campaigners were already there, most hospitably
entertained by the cooks. They served us, hot and hot, with the best of
their best, straight from the gridiron and the pan. I hope, if I live
to breakfast again in the Lapierre House, that I may be allowed to help
myself and choose for myself below-stairs.

When we rendezvoused at the train, we found that the orders were for
every man to provide himself three days' rations in the neighborhood,
and be ready for a start at a moment's notice.

A mountain of bread was already piled up in the station. I stuck my
bayonet through a stout loaf, and, with a dozen comrades armed in the
same way, went foraging about for other _vivers_.

It is a poor part of Philadelphia; but whatever they had in the shops or
the houses seemed to be at our disposition.

I stopped at a corner shop to ask for pork, and was amicably assailed by
an earnest dame,--Irish, I am pleased to say. She thrust her last loaf
upon me, and sighed that it was not baked that morning for my "honor's
service."

A little farther on, two kindly Quaker ladies compelled me to step in.
"What could they do?" they asked eagerly. "They had no meat in the
house; but could we eat eggs? They had in the house a dozen and a half,
new-laid." So the pot to the fire, and the eggs boiled, and bagged by
myself and that tall Saxon, my friend E., of the Sixth Company. While
the eggs simmered, the two ladies thee-ed us prayerfully and tearfully,
hoping that God would save our country from blood, unless blood must be
shed to preserve Law and Liberty.

Nothing definite from Baltimore when we returned to the station. We
stood by, waiting orders. About noon the Eighth Massachusetts Regiment
took the train southward. Our regiment was ready to a man to try its
strength with the Plug Uglies. If there had been any voting on the
subject, the plan to follow the straight road to Washington would have
been accepted by acclamation. But the higher powers deemed that "the
longest way round was the shortest way home," and no doubt their
decision was wise. The event proved it.

At two o'clock came the word to "fall in." We handled our howitzers
again, and marched down Jefferson Avenue to the steamer "Boston" to
embark.

To embark for what port? For Washington, of course, finally; but by what
route? That was to remain in doubt to us privates for a day or two.

The Boston is a steamer of the outside line from Philadelphia to New
York. She just held our legion. We tramped on board, and were allotted
about the craft from the top to the bottom story. We took tents, traps,
and grub on board, and steamed away down the Delaware in the sweet
afternoon of April. If ever the heavens smiled fair weather on any
campaign, they have done so on ours.

THE "BOSTON."

Soldiers on shipboard are proverbially fish out of water. We could not
be called by the good old nickname of "lobsters" by the crew. Our gray
jackets saved the _sobriquet_. But we floundered about the crowded
vessel like boiling victims in a pot. At last we found our places,
and laid ourselves about the decks to tan or bronze or burn scarlet,
according to complexion. There were plenty of cheeks of lobster-hue
before next evening on the Boston.

A thousand young fellows turned loose on shipboard were sure to make
themselves merry. Let the reader imagine that! We were like any other
excursionists, except that the stacks of bright guns were always present
to remind us of our errand, and regular guard-mounting and drill went
on all the time. The young citizens growled or laughed at the minor
hardships of the hasty outfit, and toughened rapidly to business.

Sunday, the 21st, was a long and somewhat anxious day. While we were
bowling along in the sweet sunshine and sweeter moonlight of the halcyon
time, Uncle Sam might be dethroned by somebody in buckram, or Baltimore
burnt by the boys from Lynn and Marblehead, revenging the massacre of
their fellows. Every one begins to comprehend the fiery eagerness of men
who live in historic times. "I wish I had control of chain-lightning for
a few minutes," says O., the droll fellow of our company. "I'd make it
come thick and heavy and knock spots out of Secession."

At early dawn of Monday the 22d, after feeling along slowly all night,
we see the harbor of Annapolis. A frigate with sails unbent lies at
anchor. She flies the stars and stripes. Hurrah!

A large steamboat is aground farther in. As soon as we can see anything,
we catch the glitter of bayonets on board.

By-and-by boats come off, and we get news that the steamer is the
"Maryland," a ferry-boat of the Philadelphia and Baltimore Railroad. The
Massachusetts Eighth Regiment had been just in time to seize her on the
north side of the Chesapeake. They learned that she was to be carried
off by the crew and leave them blockaded. So they shot their Zouaves
ahead as skirmishers. The fine fellows rattled on board, and before
the steamboat had time to take a turn or open a valve, she was held by
Massachusetts in trust for Uncle Sam. Hurrah for the most important
prize thus far in the war! It probably saved the "Constitution," "Old
Ironsides," from capture by the traitors. It probably saved Annapolis,
and kept Maryland open without bloodshed.

As soon as the Massachusetts Regiment had made prize of the ferry-boat,
a call was made for engineers to run her. Some twenty men at once
stepped to the front. We of the New York Seventh afterwards concluded
that whatever was needed in the way of skill or handicraft could be
found among those brother Yankees. They were the men to make armies
of. They could tailor for themselves, shoe themselves, do their own
blacksmithing, gunsmithing, and all other work that calls for sturdy
arms and nimble fingers. In fact, I have such profound confidence in the
universal accomplishment of the Massachusetts Eighth, that I have no
doubt, if the order were, "Poets to the front!" "Painters present arms!"
"Sculptors charge bagonets!" a baker's dozen out of every company would
respond.

Well, to go on with their story,--when they had taken their prize,
they drove her straight down-stream to Annapolis, the nearest point to
Washington. There they found the Naval Academy in danger of attack,
and Old Ironsides--serving as a practice-ship for the future
midshipmen--also exposed. The call was now for seamen to man the old
craft and save her from a worse enemy than her prototype met in the
"Guerriere." Seamen? Of course! They were Marblehead men, Gloucester
men, Beverly men, seamen all, _par excellence_! They clapped on the
frigate to aid the middies, and by-and-by started her out into the
stream. In doing this their own pilot took the chance to run them
purposely on a shoal in the intricate channel. A great error of judgment
on his part! as he perceived, when he found himself in irons and in
confinement. "The days of trifling with traitors are over!" think the
Eighth Regiment of Massachusetts.

But there they were, hard and fast on the shoal, when we came up.
Nothing to nibble on but knobs of anthracite. Nothing to sleep on softer
or cleaner than coal-dust. Nothing to drink but the brackish water under
their keel. "Rather rough!" as they afterward patiently told us.

Meantime the Constitution had got hold of a tug, and was making her way
to an anchorage where her guns commanded everything and everybody. Good
and true men chuckled greatly over this. The stars and stripes also were
still up at the fort at the Naval Academy.

Our dread, that, while we were off at sea, some great and perhaps fatal
harm had been suffered, was greatly lightened by these good omens. If
Annapolis was safe, why not Washington safe also? If treachery had got
head at the capital, would not treachery have reached out its hand
and snatched this doorway? These were our speculations as we began to
discern objects, before we heard news.

But news came presently. Boats pulled off to us. Our officers were put
into communication with the shore. The scanty facts of our position
became known from man to man. We privates have greatly the advantage in
battling with the doubt of such a time. We know that we have nothing to
do with rumors. Orders are what we go by. And orders are Facts.

We lay a long, lingering day, off Annapolis. The air was full of doubt,
and we were eager to be let loose. All this while the Maryland stuck
fast on the bar. We could see them, half a mile off, making every effort
to lighten her. The soldiers tramped forward and aft, danced on her
decks, shot overboard a heavy baggage-truck. We saw them start the truck
for the stern with a cheer. It crashed down. One end stuck in the mud.
The other fell back and rested on the boat. They went at it with axes,
and presently it was clear.

As the tide rose, we gave our grounded friends a lift with a hawser. No
go! The Boston tugged in vain. We got near enough to see the whites of
the Massachusetts eyes, and their unlucky faces and uniforms all grimy
with their lodgings in the coal-dust. They could not have been blacker,
if they had been breathing battle-smoke and dust all day. That
experience was clear gain to them.

By-and-by, greatly to the delight of the impatient Seventh, the Boston
was headed for shore. Never speak ill of the beast you bestraddle!
Therefore _requiescat_ Boston! may her ribs lie light on soft sand when
she goes to pieces! may her engines be cut up into bracelets for the
arms of the patriotic fair! good-bye to her, dear old, close, dirty,
slow coach! She served her country well in a moment of trial. Who
knows but she saved it? It was a race to see who should first get to
Washington,--and we and the Virginia mob, in alliance with the District
mob, were perhaps nip and tuck for the goal.

ANNAPOLIS.

So the Seventh Regiment landed and took Annapolis. We were the first
troops ashore.

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