declaring that he had
communicated his plans to his four confederates within six months;
while, on the other hand, a slave-girl, sixteen or seventeen years old,
belonging to Solomon Parker, notified that she had heard the subject
discussed for eighteen months, and that at a meeting held during the
previous May some eight or ten had joined the plot.

It is astonishing to discover, by laborious comparison of newspaper
files, how vast was the immediate range of these insurrectionary alarms.
Every Southern State seems to have borne its harvest of terror. On the
Eastern shore of Maryland great alarm was at once manifested, especially
in the neighborhood of Easton and Snowhill; and the houses of colored
men were searched for arms even in Baltimore. In Delaware, there were
similar rumors through Sussex and Dover Counties; there were arrests and
executions; and in Somerset County great public meetings were held, to
demand additional safeguards. On election-day, in Seaford, Del., some
young men, going out to hunt rabbits, discharged their guns in sport;
the men being absent, all the women in the vicinity took to flight; the
alarm spread like the "Ipswich Fright"; soon Seaford was thronged with
armed men; and when the boys returned from hunting, they found cannon
drawn out to receive them.

In North Carolina, Raleigh and Fayetteville were put under military
defence, and women and children concealed themselves in the swamps for
many days. The rebel organization was supposed to include two thousand.
Forty-six slaves were imprisoned in Union County, twenty-five in Sampson
County, and twenty-three at least in Duplin County, some of whom were
executed. The panic also extended into Wayne, New Hanover, and Lenoir
Counties. Four men were shot without trial in Wilmington,--Nimrod,
Abraham, Prince, and "Dan the Drayman," the latter a man of
seventy,--and their heads placed on poles at the four corners of the
town. Nearly two months afterwards the trials were still continuing; and
at a still later day, the Governor in his proclamation recommended the
formation of companies of volunteers in every county.

In South Carolina, General Hayne issued a proclamation "to prove the
groundlessness of the existing alarms,"--thus implying that serious
alarms existed. In Macon, Georgia, the whole population were roused from
their beds at midnight by a report of a large force of armed negroes
five miles off. In an hour, every woman and child was deposi