Other Considerations Might, However, Have Prevented This:

I was a stranger to all around, and knew that I should be either subjected to impertinent interrogations, or become the object of invidious remark - this, in my debilitated state of health, I felt anxious to avoid, as calculated to impede my restoration.

My joining the assembled party might also have involved the chance of surveillance during my stay, which, before my departure for Europe, I intended should be rather protracted. I may have been mistaken in this view, but, from the character I had heard of the place, I felt justified in giving way to the suspicion.

I was beguiled into the erroneous idea that a sense of happiness and security reigned in the assembled multitude, a notion quite fallacious, from attendant circumstances, as I shall directly explain. Troops were stationed at a guard-house in the vicinity, and the sentinels paced in front of the building, as if in preparation for, or in expectation of, a foe, affording a great contrast to the apparent security of the inhabitants assembled in the square. Before reaching Charleston, I had been apprised of the state of jeopardy the citizens were in from the possibility of a recurrence of those scenes of anarchy enacted at the insurrection of the slaves some time before - scenes which had filled every heart with dismay, and spread ruin and desolation on every side. From what I could glean of that fearful drama, the slaves in the surrounding districts, on a concerted signal from their confederates in Charleston, made a descent upon the city, and, rendered furious by long oppression, proceeded to fire it and massacre the inhabitants. No language can convey an accurate idea of the consternation of the white inhabitants, as it was described to me. The tocsin was sounded, the citizens assembled, armed _cap-a-pie_, and after much hard fighting, the rebellion was crushed, and large numbers of the insurgents were slain or arrested. Then came the bloody hand of what was impiously termed retributive justice. A court, or sort of drum-head court-martial, not worthy to be called a trial, condemned numbers of the slaves to death, and they were led out instantly to execution. My informant told me that many a brave, noble-hearted fellow was sacrificed, who, under happier circumstances, though in a cause not half so righteous, would have been extolled as a hero, and bowed down with honours. Many a humble hearth was made desolate, and, in the language quoted by my informant, "as in the days of the curse that descended on the people of the obdurate Pharaoh, every house mourned its dead." Still, there was a strong lurking suspicion that the _emeute_ of the negroes had only been temporarily suppressed, and awful forebodings of fire and of blood spread a gloom on the minds of all. This was the version given to me by a friend, of what he described as the most fearful rising amongst the negroes ever before known in the southern states of America.

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