On the other hand, more stringent laws became obviously necessary to keep
down the advancing intelligence of the Charleston slaves. Dangerous
knowledge must be excluded from without and from within. For the first
purpose the South Carolina Legislature passed, in December, 1822, the Act
for the imprisonment of Northern colored seamen, which afterwards
produced so much excitement. For the second object, the Grand Jury, about
the same time, presented as a grievance "the number of schools which are
kept within the city by persons of color," and proposed their
prohibition. This was the encouragement given to the intellectual
progress of the slaves; while, as a reward for betraying them, Pensil,
the free colored man who advised with Devany, received a present of one
thousand dollars; and Devany himself had what was rightly judged to be
the higher gift of freedom, and was established in business, with liberal
means, as a drayman. He lived long in Charleston, thriving greatly in his
vocation, and, according to the newspapers, enjoyed the privilege of
being the only man of property in the State whom a special statute
exempted from taxation.

More than half a century has passed since the incidents of this true
story closed. It has not vanished from the memories of South Carolinians,
though the printed pages which once told it have gradually disappeared
from sight. The intense avidity which at first grasped at every incident
of the great insurrectionary plot was succeeded by a prolonged distaste
for the memory of the tale; and the official reports which told what
slaves had once planned and dared have now come to be among the rarest of
American historical documents. In 1841, a friend of the writer, then
visiting South Carolina, heard from her hostess, for the first time, the
events which are recounted here. On asking to see the reports of the
trials, she was cautiously told that the only copy in the house, after
being carefully kept for years under lock and key, had been burnt at