Niles’ Register (Baltimore, Maryland),

October 29, 1831

BRIEF NOTICES

        Incendiary Publications—The “Vigilance Association of Columbia,” (South Carolina), composed ot gentlemen of the first respectability, have offered a reward of fifteen hundred dollars for the apprehension and prosecution to conviction, of any white person who may be detected in distributing or circulating within that state the newspaper called, “The Liberator,” printed in Boston, or the pamphlet called “Walker’s Pamphlet” or any other publications of a seditious tendency.

        (Is not, by far, too much importance attached to these publications? It can be accounted for only in the fearful and ardent feeling of the people in the south, because of their condition—and indeed from certain movements among the slaves in various states, there is much reason to apprehend no inconsiderable degree of concerted action, though extremely indigested and inefficient, except for very limited operations, though causing a general alarm, no one knowing where a blow might fall.)

Henry Irving Tragle, The Southampton Slave Revolt of 1831: A Compilation of Source Material (Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1971), 131.