t into the plan the Negroes for
seventy or eighty miles around Charleston. The second Monday in July,
1822, or Sunday, July 14, was the time originally set for the attack.
July was chosen because in midsummer many of the white people were
away at different resorts; and Sunday received favorable consideration
because on that day the slaves from the outlying plantations were
frequently permitted to come to the city. Lists of the recruits were
kept. Peter Poyas is said to have gathered as many as six hundred names,
chiefly from that part of Charleston known as South Bay in which he
lived; and it is a mark of his care and discretion that of all of those
afterwards arrested and tried, not one belonged to his company. Monday
Gell, who joined late and was very prudent, had forty-two names. All
such lists, however, were in course of time destroyed. "During the
period that these enlistments were carrying on, Vesey held frequent
meetings of the conspirators at his house; and as arms were necessary to
their success, each night a hat was handed round, and collections made,
for the purpose of purchasing them, and also to defray other necessary
expenses. A Negro who was a blacksmith and had been accustomed to make
edged tools, was employed to make pike-heads and bayonets with sockets,
to be fixed at the ends of long poles and used as pikes. Of these
pike-heads and bayonets, one hundred were said to have been made at an
early day, and by the 16th June as many as two or three hundred, and
between three and four hundred daggers."[1] A bundle containing some of
the poles, neatly trimmed and smoothed off, and nine or ten feet long,
was afterwards found concealed on a farm on Charleston Neck, where
several of the meetings were held, having been carried there to have the
pike-heads and bayonets fixed in place. Governor Bennett stated that the
number of poles thus found was thirteen, but so wary were the Negroes
that he and other prominent men underestimated the means of attack. It
was thought that the Negroes in Charleston might use their masters'
arms, while those from the country were to bring hoes, hatchets, and
axes. For their main supply of arms, however, Vesey and Peter Poyas
depended upon the magazines and storehouses in the city. They planned to
seize the Arsenal in Meeting Street opposite St. Michael's Church; it
was the key to the city, held the arms of the state, and had for some
time been neglected. Poyas at a given signal at midn