five days after this,--two months after the first danger had passed,--a
re-enforcement of United-States troops arrived at Fort Moultrie; and,
during the same month, several different attempts were made by small
parties of armed negroes to capture the mails between Charleston and
Savannah, and a reward of two hundred dollars was offered for their
detection.

The first official report of the trials was prepared by the intendant, by
request of the city council. It passed through four editions in a few
months,--the first and fourth being published in Charleston, and the
second and third in Boston. Being, however, but a brief pamphlet, it did
not satisfy the public curiosity; and in October of the same year (1822),
a larger volume appeared at Charleston, edited by the magistrates who
presided at the trials,--Lionel H. Kennedy and Thomas Parker. It contains
the evidence in full, and a separate narrative of the whole affair, more
candid and lucid than any other which I have found in the newspapers or
pamphlets of the day. It exhibits that rarest of all qualities in a
slave-community, a willingness to look facts in the face. This narrative
has been faithfully followed, with the aid of such cross-lights as could
be secured from many other quarters, in preparing the present history.

The editor of the first official report racked his brains to discover the
special causes of the revolt, and never trusted himself to allude to the
general one. The negroes rebelled because they were deluded by
Congressional eloquence; or because they were excited by a church
squabble; or because they had been spoilt by mistaken indulgences, such
as being allowed to learn to read,--"a misguided benevolence," as he
pronounces it. So the Baptist Convention seems to have thought it was
because they were not Baptists; and an Episcopal pamphleteer, because
they were not Episcopalians. It never seems to occur to any of these