"until the time came; but secret preparations were made. Saturday night
and Sunday morning passed without demonstrations; doubts were excited,
and counter orders issued for diminishing the guard." It afterwards
proved that these preparations showed to the slaves that their plot was
betrayed, and so saved the city without public alarm. Newspaper
correspondence soon was full of the story, each informant of course
hinting plainly that he had been behind the scenes all along, and had
withheld it only to gratify the authorities in their policy of silence.
It was "now no longer a secret," they wrote; adding, that, for five or
six weeks, but little attention had been paid by the community to these
rumors, the city council having kept it carefully to themselves until a
number of suspicious slaves had been arrested. This refers to ten
prisoners who were seized on June 18, an arrest which killed the plot,
and left only the terrors of what might have been. The investigation,
thus publicly commenced, soon revealed a free colored man named Denmark
Vesey as the leader of the enterprise,--among his chief coadjutors being
that innocent Peter and that unsuspecting Mingo who had been examined and
discharged nearly three weeks before.

It is matter of demonstration, that, but for the military preparations on
the appointed Sunday night, the attempt would have been made. The
ringleaders had actually met for their final arrangements, when, by
comparing notes, they found themselves foiled; and within another week
they were prisoners on trial. Nevertheless, the plot which they had laid
was the most elaborate insurrectionary project ever formed by American
slaves, and came the nearest to a terrible success. In boldness of
conception and thoroughness of organization there has been nothing to
compare with it; and it is worth while to dwell somewhat upon its
details, first introducing the _dramatis personae_.