The friendly bar-keeper aided me the next day in procuring a horse, and I set out for Madison county, again passing; as I left the town, the five murdered gamblers still swinging from the gallows.
Proceeding up the Big Black, I presently found that the spirit of extempore hanging was by no means confined to Vicksburg, but raged as a sort of epidemic in all that part of the state of Mississippi.
The counties of Hinds and Madison were excited to a pitch of terror bordering on madness, by the rumor of a slave insurrection. Some overseers, lurking among the negro cabins, had obtained some hint of a conspiracy; and two white steam doctors from Tennessee, through the instigation of two or three of the regular craft, — who regarded these "steamers," with no little jealousy and indignation, and who insisted that they were nothing but horse thieves in disguise, — had been arrested, along with two or three negroes, as concerned in the plot.
A vigilance committee and volunteer courts had been speedily organized, and the black and white prisoners condemned to death. Brought out to: be hanged, they had been urged to confess, which they had done very extensively, in the hope, probably, of saving their lives; and from their confessions, dressed up by the lively imagination of the court and the bystanders, the plot, whether real or imaginary, had been made to assume a most alarming shape.
According to these confessions, it was not a mere negro or servile plot, but had been got up by a gang of white desperadoes, negro thieves, horse thieves, gamblers, and other ingenious gentlemen who lived by their wits, to whom were ascribed ideas as to the rights of the cunningest and the strongest — precisely those to be expected in a slaveholding community. They were to put themselves at the head of the insurgent negroes, were to rob the banks, and thus, like so many Catilines, to make themselves masters of the country.
Unable to reach my destination the first day, I
