race he was a devoted
student of the Bible to whose interpretation he brought like many other
Bible students, not confined to the Negro race, a good deal of
imagination, and not a little of superstition, which with some natures
is perhaps but another name for the desires of the heart. Thus equipped
it is no wonder that Vesey, as he pored over the Old Testament Scriptures,
found many points of similitude in the history of the Jews and that of
the slaves in the United States. They were both peculiar peoples. They
were both Jehovah's peculiar peoples, one in the past, the other in the
present. And it seemed to him that as Jehovah bent his ear, and bared
his arm once in behalf of the one, so would he do the same for the
other. It was all vividly real to his thought, I believe, for to his
mind thus had said the Lord.

He ransacked the Bible for apposite and terrible texts, whose commands
in the olden times, to the olden people, were no less imperative upon
the new times and the new people. This new people was also commanded to
arise and destroy their enemies and the city in which they dwelt, "both
man and woman, young and old, * * * with the edge of the sword." Believing
superstitiously, as he did, in the stern and Nemesis-like God of the Old
Testament, he looked confidently for a day of vengeance and retribution
for the blacks. He felt, I doubt not, something peculiarly applicable to
his enterprise, and intensely personal to himself in the stern and
exultant prophecy of Zachariah, fierce and sanguinary words which were
constantly in his mouth: "Then shall the Lord go forth, and fight against
those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle." According to
Vesey's lurid exegeisis "those nations" in the text meant, beyond a
peradventure, the cruel masters, and Jehovah was to go forth to fight
against them for the poor slaves, and on which ever side fought that day
the Almighty God, on that side would assuredly rest victory and
deliverance.

It will not be denied that Vesey's plan contemplated the total
annihilation of the white population of Charleston. Nursing for many
dark years the bitter wrongs of himself and race had filled him, without
doubt, with a mad spirit of revenge, and had so given him a decided
predilection for shedding the blood of his oppressors. But if he intended
to kill them to satisfy a desire for vengeance, he intended to do so
also on broader ground. The conspirators, he argued, had no choice in
th