wildest rumors were afloat. One was that Wilmington had been burned, and
in Raleigh and Fayetteville the wildest excitement prevailed. In the
latter place scores of white women and children fled to the swamps,
coming out two days afterwards muddy, chilled, and half-starved. Slaves
were imprisoned wholesale. In Wilmington four men were shot without
trial and their heads placed on poles at the four corners of the town.
In Macon, Ga., a report was circulated that an armed band of Negroes was
only five miles away, and within an hour the women and children were
assembled in the largest building in the town, with a military force in
front for protection.

The effects on legislation were immediate. Throughout the South the
slave codes became more harsh; and while it was clear that the uprising
had been one of slaves rather than of free Negroes, as usual special
disabilities fell upon the free people of color. Delaware, that only
recently had limited the franchise to white men, now forbade the use of
firearms by free Negroes and would not suffer any more to come within
the state. Tennessee also forbade such immigration, while Maryland
passed a law to the effect that all free Negroes must leave the state
and be colonized in Africa--a monstrous piece of legislation that it was
impossible to put into effect and that showed once for all the futility
of attempts at forcible emigration as a solution of the problem. In
general, however, the insurrection assisted the colonization scheme and
also made more certain the carrying out of the policy of the Jackson
administration to remove the Indians of the South to the West. It also
focussed the attention of the nation upon the status of the Negro,
crystallized opinion in the North, and thus helped with the formation of
anti-slavery organizations. By it for the time being the Negro lost; in
the long run he gained.