This talk was sufficient to raise the report of an insurrection
throughout all that part of the State, and a large vigilance committee
was organized to meet once a week and report what they might hear by
listening outside the negro cabins. All slave men or boys who were
overheard to pray for freedom, or to say any thing indicating a desire
to be free, were marked; and in the discussions of this large
committee of a hundred men, every thing that had occurred during a few
years past, in efforts among the slaves to learn to read and write,
was magnified and construed as pointing toward a long and settled
purpose among the slaves to rise in insurrection. A majority of this
committee decided by whipping and other torture to compel confessions
from all these marked slaves, and then to hang them. A number of the
committee resigned because they would not consent to these severe
measures. Many negroes were dragged out of their cabins or yards
without knowing the cause, stripped, tied to the whipping-post or
taken to the calaboose, and given as many lashes as could be endured.
At the close of each whipping the sufferer was called upon to make a
full revelation of every sentence that he or she had heard in favor
of liberty, or of the Yankees, among their people, either in
conversation or prayer, and by whom, with a promise to be released
from further punishment. Never was one released, but on Saturday
generally ten or twelve of these sufferers were thrown into a wagon
and conveyed to the gallows, where they were placed in a row, and all
were hanged at the same instant.

Some hundreds were thus hanged in the edge of the city, and on an
adjoining plantation. I carefully investigated the facts, and gathered
the following statement from both white and colored citizens. I have
good reasons for placing entire confidence in its correctness. A large
number of slaves were hanged, owned by the following persons: