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heads spiked to the whipping-post.
When the first news of the outbreak reached the
North,
Mr. Garrison wrote: ‘What we have so long predicted—at the peril of
1 being stigmatized as an alarmist and declaimer—has commenced its fulfilment.’
Was it not his warning, only eight months ago—
‘Wo if it come with storm, and blood, and fire’?
As for those who were joining in the outcry against the revolt:
Ye patriotic hypocrites!
ye panegyrists of Frenchmen, Greeks, and Poles! . . . Cast no reproach upon the conduct of the slaves, but let your lips and cheeks wear the blisters of condemnation!
Ye accuse the pacific friends of emancipation of instigating the slaves to revolt.
Take back the charge as a foul slander.
The slaves need no incentives at our hands.
They will find them in their stripes, . . . in your speeches, your conversations, your celebrations.2 . . .
For ourselves, we are horror-struck at the late tidings.
We have exerted our utmost efforts to avert the calamity.
We have warned our countrymen of the danger of persisting in their unrighteous conduct.
We have preached to the slaves the pacific precepts of Jesus Christ.
We have appealed to Christians, philanthropists and patriots for their assistance to accomplish the great work of national redemption through the agency of moral power—of public opinion—of individual duty.
How have we been received?
We have been threatened, proscribed, vilified and imprisoned—a laughing-stock and a reproach. . . . immediate emancipation! . . .
In December the prison confessions of
Nat Turner were printed in
Baltimore in an edition of fifty thousand copies, whereupon
Mr. Garrison advises ‘the
Grand3 Juries in the several slave States to indict
Mr. Gray [the recipient of the confessions] and the printers of the ’
