peaceful and confiding portion of the State into a military camp;
which outlawed from pity the unfortunate beings whose brothers
had offended; which barred every door, penetrated every bosom
with fear or suspicion; which so banished every sense of security
from every man's dwelling, that, let but a hoof or horn break
upon the silence of the night, and an aching throb would be
driven to the heart, the husband would look to his weapon, and
the mother would shudder and weep upon her cradle? Was it the
fear of Nat Turner, and his deluded, drunken handful of
followers, which produced such effects? Was it this that induced
distant counties, where the very name of Southampton was strange,
to arm and equip for a struggle? No, sir: it was the suspicion
eternally attached to the slave himself,--the suspicion that a
Nat Turner might be in every family; that the same bloody deed
might be acted over at any time and in any place; that the
materials for it were spread through the land, and were always
ready for a like explosion. Nothing but the force of this
withering apprehension,--nothing but the paralyzing and deadening
weight with which it falls upon and prostrates the heart of every
man who has helpless dependants to protect,--nothing but this
could have thrown a brave people into consternation, or could
have made any portion of this powerful Commonwealth, for a single
instant, to have quailed and trembled."

While these things were going on, the enthusiasm for the Polish
Revolution was rising to its height. The nation was ringing with a peal
of joy, on hearing that at Frankfort the Poles had killed fourteen
thousand Russians. The _Southern Religious Telegraph_ was publishing an
impassioned address to Kosciuszko; standards were being consecrated for
Poland in the larger cities; heroes like Skrzynecki, Czartoryski,