ptic fits were real or whether they were in truth feigned,
and therefore the initial _ruse de guerre_ of that bright young
intelligence in its long battle with slavery.

However, I do not mean to consume space with speculations on this head.
Suffice to say that Telemaque's condition was improved by the event. Nor
had Captain Vesey any cause to quarrel with the fate which returned to
him the beautiful Negro youth. For it is recorded that for twenty years
thereafter he proved a faithful servant to the old slave trader, who
retiring in due course of time from his black business, took up his
abode in Charleston, S. C, where Denmark went to live with him. There in
his new home dame fortune again remembered her protege, turning her
formidable wheel a second time in his favor. It was then that Denmark,
grown to manhood, drew the grand prize of freedom. He was about
thirty-four years old when this immense boon came to him.

It is not known for how many eager and anxious months or even years,
Denmark Vesey had patronized East Bay Street Lottery of Charleston prior
to 1800, when he was rewarded with a prize of $1,500. With $600 of this
money he bought himself of Captain Vesey. He was at last his own master,
in possession of a small capital, and of a good trade, carpentry, which
he practiced with great industry. He was successful, massed in time
considerable wealth, became a solid man of the community in spite of his
color, winning the confidence of the whites, and respect from the blacks
amounting almost to reverence. He married--was much married it was said,
which I see no reason to doubt, in view of the polygamous example set
him by many of the respectabilities of the master-race in that
remarkably pious old slave town. A plurality of children rose up, in
consequence, to him from the plurality of his family ties; rose up to
him, but they were not his, for following the condition of the mothers,
they were, under the Slave-Code, the chattels of other men.

This cruel wrong eat deep into Vesey's mind. Of course it was most
outrageous for him, a black man, to concern himself so much about the
human chattels of white men, albeit those human chattels were his own
children. What had he, a social pariah in Christian America, to do with
such high caste things as a heart and natural affections? But somehow he
did have a heart, and it was in the right place, and natural affections
for his own flesh and blood, like men with a white skin.