and blackened posts stood month after month, hideous monuments of what man
may become when judgment and reason are surrendered to fear and passion.
The spectacle was made still more revolting by the gallows standing near
the stake, on which many were hung in chains, and their bodies left to
swing, blacken, and rot in the summer air, a ghastly, horrible sight.

Where this madness, that had swept away court, bar, and people together,
would have ended, it is impossible to say, had not a new terror seized the
inhabitants. Mary Burton, on whose accusation the first victims had been
arrested and executed, finding herself a heroine, sought new fields in
which to win notoriety. She ceased to implicate the blacks, and turned her
attention to the whites, and twenty-four were arrested and thrown into
prison. Elated with her success, she began to ascend in the social scale,
and criminated some persons of the highest social standing in the city,
whose characters were above suspicion. This was turning the tables on them
in a manner the upper class did not expect, and they began to reflect what
the end might be. The testimony that was sufficient to condemn the slaves
was equally conclusive against them. The stake and the gallows which the
court had erected for the black man, it could not pull down because a
white gentleman stood under their shadow.

Robespierre and his friends cut off the upper-crust of society without
hesitation or remorse; but unfortunately the crust next below this became
in turn the upper-crust, which also had to be removed, until at last they
themselves were reached, when they paused. They had advanced up to their
necks in the bloody tide of revolution, and finding that to proceed
farther would take them overhead, they attempted to wade back to shore. So
here, so long as the accusations were confined to the lowest class, it was
all well enough, but when _they_ were being reached, it was high time
to stop. The proceedings were summarily brought to a close, further