Daily Picayune, August 19, 1860

“Our accounts from Texas, by every mail, bring additional confirmations of the reported state of public excitement on the subject of the negroes, and new proofs that this excitement has not been without adequate cause. In the midst of so much that was really alarming, and with all the uncertainty as to what might be done already, it was to be expected that a great deal would be imagined, and a great deal of what is true amplified and exaggerated. It was not possible to examine every case, or reported case, according to the rules of a judicial investigation, or to measure words with the exactness of an actual and cool witness. Hence, a great deal more has been reported than what actually transpired, and heat and hurry distorted some of the facts. But there is enough disclosed to give reason for believing that a wide-spread discontent has spread through a large tract in Texas, including a tier of counties, reaching from near the Gulf to the border of the Indian territory on the extreme north. The fires which have destroyed so vast an amount of property are in many cases distinctly traced to the incendiarism of the blacks. The testimony is very clear, too, if not altogether legal, relying, as it does, on the concurrent confessions of blacks, widely separated from each other, and without means for concocting a lie, that there was an understanding among a large number of them, at least, to poison or otherwise kill the whites, and that this insubordinate and malicious temper has been stimulated and fostered by white villains—some of whom have been detected and summarily executed. Much of the apprehension may be unreal and some of the facts imperfectly proved; but there is not ground for resisting the conclusion that the people of those portions of Texas have had real cause for uneasiness and sufficient justification for acts of extraordinary rigor.

These projects, whatever they were, failed, and the vigilance of the people of Texas being fully aroused, their trouble ought to be considered as over, when the offenders are detected and their prompters brought to swift and sure punishment. To be well warned is to be forearmed, and armed with the knowledge of the means by which this population has been reached and corrupted into such insanity of aimless wickedness, it will be the fault of the people of Texas themselves if they do not cut off the avenues by which this poisonous influence has reached the servile population.

The malignant white men, who, in blind subserviency to the teachers of an ‘irrepressible conflict,’ or from the meaner promptings of bad and revengeful temper, tamper with the loyalty of the slave, and stimulating him to be an assassin and incendiary, make him only a dupe and a victim, are entitled to a quick shrift and a short rope, and they who may be disposed to succeed in the work of wickedness should be taught that they will surely find a watchfulness that cannot be evaded, and rigor which will not be appeased. The philanthropy which they have on their tongues teaches the humane guardian of the slave, to protect him, at all hazards, from being seduced into crimes, and left to bear the punishment, which rightfully belongs to the white emissary of evil.”

Daily Picayune, September 8, 1860

“The investigations which have been prosecuted in the disturbed districts of Texas have not developed, with any degree of distinctness, the existence of any other plot for ruin that what a few desperate characters, without connection with or hope of help from any other quarter, might have formed. In some case the negro population have [sic] been demoralized evidently by the insidious promises of white men, and the work of ruin wrought has doubtless been mainly their work. But not half of what has been confessed seems to be borne out by later facts.

The strychnine said to have been discovered in the hands of negroes turns out to be very harmless, having no affinity with the deadly poison which is was supposed to be. The wells thought to have been poisoned, late accounts declare to be untainted with any deleterious substance.

Stript, however, of all exaggerations resulting from the gravity of the danger threatening the inhabitants of Texas, the actual truth is sufficient to justify all the acts of precaution that have been taken. Texas, like all of our frontier States, has been the point where desperate men have congregated, and her whole history is full of violence and outrage inflicted by the foes of society. Aroused by the present danger, the good citizens of our sister State have now taken the most effectual means to bring such offenders to justice, and to break up al combinations for the protection.

The excitement produced will not pass away without producing a most salutary change in the police discipline of the country. Too much freedom has, doubtless, there as elsewhere, been given to servants, and not enough oversight has been had of their habits and morals. Without doubt, this neglect, under the stimulus of the late difficulties, will be amended, and the occurrences which have taken place there should be a warning against similar neglect elsewhere.

On the outbreak of the alarm in Texas, we cautioned our readers against adopting all the reports from that quarter as true, believing that somewhat, at least, of their coloring, was due to excited suspicion, that made the slightest circumstantial evidence as strong as proof from holy writ. The result of the investigations made accord with that caution, while it reveals enough to warn and instruct the entire South.

Daily Picayune September 16, 1860

Account taken from the New York Evening Express for September 11, 1860

“The John Brown Foray in Texas—We have just seen and conversed with an intelligent gentleman from Texas, where the recent cases of arson and attempted poison have so much excited the public mind, and we are sorry to say that the worst rumors we have had of the fiendish Abolitionism are confirmed. . . .

There have been roaming in Texas, in the disguise of peddlers, ministers, preachers . . . &c., a considerable body of men (they who have been arrested say 2,000) sworn to avenge the death of John Brown. They came in the main from Kansas, and were part of gangs there engaged with Brown in his expeditions and forays. As a body regularly organized to create a servile insurrection, they had put on the various disguises that they deemed necessary, and proceeded to act their various parts, the leading one of which has been arson. About all of them, of course, were Northern born men.

Of course, we do not hold the Republican Party directly responsible for such fiends, or for such fiendish acts—but these fiends are the natural, the inevitable product of their party teachings and party lessons. They create fanatics and fanaticism, and these fiends but put into action their “conflicts” with the South, and the animosities and hatreds engendered. The election of Lincoln would let loose thousands of such fiends, who would soon pass beyond the control of the more conservative Republican leaders, as now, before election, they hardly hold them in with cub and snaffle.”

Daily Picayune, September 29, 1860

“Plunder and revenge combined have doubtless been the origin of the Texas conflagrations, and the demoralization of many slaves. An organized band of ruffians, such as once roamed over Western Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Southern Tennessee, evidently have a net-work of secret union spread over the State of Texas. That this brotherhood of ruffians should be Abolitionists is not possible. . . .”

1. Travel to Collin County where more information about the plot is revealed.