Charlestonians also
organized an association for the prevention of negro disturbances; but by
1825 the public seems to have begun to lose its ardor in the premises.[75]
[Footnote 74: _Memorial of the Citizens of Charleston to the Senate and
House of Representatives of the State of South Carolina_ (Charleston,
1822), reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 103-116.]
[Footnote 75: Address of the association, in the Charleston _City Gazette_,
Aug. 5, 1825.]
The next salient occurrence in the series was the outbreak which brought
fame to Nat Turner and the devoted Virginia county of Southampton. Nat,
a slave who by the custom of the country had acquired the surname of his
first master, was the foreman of a small plantation, a Baptist exhorter
capable of reading the Bible, and a pronounced mystic. For some years, as
he told afterward when in custody, he had heard voices from the heavens
commanding him to carry on the work of Christ to make the last to be first
and the first last; and he took the sun's eclipse in February, 1831, as a
sign that the time was come. He then enlisted a few of his fellows in his
project, but proceeded to spend his leisure for several months in prayer
and brooding instead of in mundane preparation.
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