examinations were deemed unnecessary, and confessions became flat and
unprofitable; and this strange episode in American history ended.

That there had been cause for alarm, there can be no doubt. That threats
should be uttered by the slaves, is natural; for this would be in keeping
with their whole history in this country. Nor is it at all improbable that
a conspiracy was formed; for this, too, would only be in harmony with the
conduct of slaves from time immemorial. The utter folly and hopelessness
of such a one as the blacks testified to, has been urged against its
existence altogether. If the argument is good for anything, it proves that
the conspiracy thirty years before never existed, and that the Southampton
massacre was a delusion, and John Brown never hatched his utterly insane
conspiracy in Harper's Ferry. There have been a good many servile
insurrections plotted in this country, not one of which was a whit more
sensible or easier of execution than this, which was said to look to the
complete overthrow of the little city. That the fires which first started
the panic were the work of negro incendiaries, there is but little doubt;
but how far they were a part of a wide-laid plan, it is impossible to
determine.

Unquestionably, success at the outset would have made the movement
general, so that nothing but military force could have arrested it.

There is one thing, however, about which there is no doubt--that a panic
seized the people and the courts, and made them as unreliable as in the
days of the Salem witchcraft. But these striking exhibitions of the
weakness of human nature under certain circumstances have been witnessed
since the world was made, and probably will continue to the end of time,
or until the race enters on a new phase of existence. Panics, even among
the most veteran soldiers, sometimes occur, and hence we cannot wonder