]
This extraordinary event, occurring as it did after a century's lapse since
last an appreciable number of whites on the continent had lost their lives
in such an outbreak, set nerves on edge throughout the South, and promptly
brought an unusually bountiful crop of local rumors. In North Carolina
early in September it was reported at Raleigh that the blacks of Wilmington
had burnt the town and slaughtered the whites, and that several thousand
of them were marching upon Raleigh itself.[77] This and similarly alarming
rumors from Edenton were followed at once by authentic news telling merely
that conspiracies had been discovered in Duplin and Sampson Counties and
also in the neighborhood of Edenton, with several convictions resulting in
each locality.[78]
[Footnote 77: News item dated Warrenton, N.C., Sept. 15, 1831, in the New
Orleans _Mercantile Advertiser_, Oct. 4, 1831.]
[Footnote 78: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Oct. 6, 1831, citing
the Fayetteville, N.C. _Observer_ of Sept. 14; _Niles' Register_, XLI,
266.]
At Milledgeville, the village capital of Georgia where in the preceding
year the newspapers and the town authorities had been fluttered by the
discovery of incendiary pamphlets in a citizen's possession,[79] a rumor
spread on October 4, 1831, that a large number of slaves had risen a dozen
miles away and were marching upon the town to seize the weapons in the
state arsenal there.
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