spectators, that these people rebelled simply because they were slaves,
and wished to be free.

No doubt, there were enough special torches with which a man so skilful
as Denmark Vesey could kindle up these dusky powder-magazines; but, after
all, the permanent peril lay in the powder. So long as that existed,
every thing was incendiary. Any torn scrap in the street might contain a
Missouri-Compromise speech, or a report of the last battle in St.
Domingo, or one of those able letters of Boyer's which were winning the
praise of all, or one of John Randolph's stirring speeches in England
against the slave-trade. The very newspapers which reported the happy
extinction of the insurrection by the hanging of the last conspirator,
William Garner, reported also, with enthusiastic indignation, the
massacre of the Greeks at Constantinople and at Scio; and then the
Northern editors, breaking from their usual reticence, pointed out the
inconsistency of Southern journals in printing, side by side,
denunciations of Mohammedan slave-sales, and advertisements of those of
Christians.

Of course the insurrection threw the whole slavery question open to the
public. "We are sorry to see," said the _National Intelligencer_ of Aug.
31, "that a discussion of the hateful Missouri question is likely to be
revived, in consequence of the allusions to its supposed effect in
producing the late servile insurrection in South Carolina." A member of
the Board of Public Works of South Carolina published in the Baltimore
_American Farmer_ an essay urging the encouragement of white laborers,
and hinting at the ultimate abolition of slavery "if it should ever be
thought desirable." More boldly still, a pamphlet appeared in Charleston,
under the signature of "Achates," arguing with remarkable sagacity and
force against the whole system of slave-labor _in towns_; and proposing