University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.
The hatching of a conspiracy.

In the meanwhile the devil was doing his work
among the others, and disaffection grew into wrath
and fury, that were not so perfectly concealed but
that my master, or rather his eldest son, who was
of a more observant disposition, began to suspect
that mischief was brewing; and in a short time it
was reported among us that our master had marked
some of us as being dangerous, and was resolved
to sell us to a Mississippi trader who was then in
the county. This was reported by a spy, a house-servant,
who professed to have overheard the conversation,
and who reported, besides, that our master
and his son were furbishing up their fire-arms,
and laying in terrible supply of balls and powder.

Now whether this account was true or not I
never knew, and I suppose I never shall until I am
in my grave. It was enough, however, to drive us

to a phrensy, those in particular who had been indicated
as the intended victims of the Mississippi trader;
and the more especially, as those men had
wives and children, from whom they were told they
were to be parted. One of these was the blacksmith
of the estate, who, being a resolute and fierce-tempered
fellow, instantly began to convert all the
old horseshoes and iron hoops about his shop into
a kind of blades or spear-heads, which we fastened
upon poles, and hid away in secret places.
There were among us three or four men who had
muskets, with which they used to shoot wild fowl
on the river, there being great abundance at this
season. These weapons were also put into requisition;
besides which we stored away butcher-knives
and bludgeons, old scythe-blades and sickles
beaten straight, until we could boast quite an armory.
And here I may observe, that the faster
these weapons increased upon our hands, the more
deadly became our resolutions, the more fierce and
malignant our desires; until, having at last what
we thought a sufficiency for our purpose, we gave
a loose to our passions, and determined upon a plan
of proceedings that may well be called infernal.

I believe that when we began to collect these
offensive weapons we had but vague ideas of mischief,
thinking rather of defending ourselves from
some meditated outrage on the part of our master,
than of beginning an assault upon him ourselves.
But now, the armory being complete, and several
cunning fellows, who had been spying out among

the surrounding plantations, bringing us word that
the gangs (so they sometimes call the whole number
of hands on a farm) of most of them were ready
to strike with us for freedom; another having
brought us word that a great outbreaking had already
taken place south of James river, which,
however, was not true; a third reminding us that
we were more numerous than our masters; and a
fourth bidding us remember that the negroes had
once, as the little book told us, been the masters of
all the white men in the world, and might be again;
I say, these things being represented to us, as we
were handling our arms and thinking what execution
we could do with them, we shook hands together,
and kissing the little pamphlet (for which
we had conceived a high regard), as we had seen
white men kiss the book in courts of law, we swore
we would exterminate all the white men in Virginia,
beginning with our master and his family.