by transmission to other slave States. A rumor reached Frankfort, Ky.,
that the slaves already had possession of the coast, both above and below
New Orleans. But the most remarkable circumstance is, that all this seems
to have been a mere revival of an old terror once before excited and
exploded. The following paragraph had appeared in the Jacksonville, Ga.,
_Observer_, during the spring previous:--

"FEARFUL DISCOVERY.--We were favored, by yesterday's mail, with a
letter from New Orleans, of May 1, in which we find that an
important discovery had been made a few days previous in that
city. The following is an extract: 'Four days ago, as some
planters were digging under ground, they found a square room
containing eleven thousand stand of arms and fifteen thousand
cartridges, each of the cartridges containing a bullet.' It is
said the negroes intended to rise as soon as the sickly season
began, and obtain possession of the city by massacring the white
population. The same letter states that the mayor had prohibited
the opening of Sunday schools for the instruction of blacks,
under a penalty of five hundred dollars for the first offence,
and, for the second, death."

Such were the terrors that came back from nine other slave States, as the
echo of the voice of Nat Turner. And when it is also known that the
subject was at once taken up by the legislatures of other States, where
there was no public panic, as in Missouri and Tennessee; and when,
finally, it is added that reports of insurrection had been arriving all
that year from Rio Janeiro, Martinique, St. Jago, Antigua, Caraccas, and
Tortola,--it is easy to see with what prolonged distress the accumulated
terror must have weighed down upon Virginia during the two months that
Nat Turner lay hid.