Poison determined to be harmless preparation

“Mr. John D. Evans, who has made a tour through the counties of Upshur, Rusk, and Cherokee, informs us . . . that what was supposed to be poison in the hands of the negroes in Cherokee county, when subjected to chemical analysis turned out to be a harmless preparation. And yet the negroes stated that it was poison, and that they had been instructed to place it in the wells and in the food of their masters. Very little reliance can be placed in testimony obtained by coercion or intimidation. . . .¹

Report of R. F. Tannehill, secretary of the Athens Vigilance Committee

Tannehill reported that the committee determined that their investigations into allegations of a widespread abolitionist-slave conspiracy plot did not exist. Tannehill argued that the slaves in the area were at least as scared by the rumors of Abolitionists as were the whites.

Committee members took two vials from slaves that supposedly contained poison actually held whiskey and snake root, in one case, and paregoric in the other.

“The Vigilance Committee of Athens dissolved itself just as soon as they could and the excitement so far as the fear of [slaves] is concerned has all died away.”²

Report from LaGrange

Newspaper reports from LaGrange claimed that the “abolitionists” were nothing more than phantoms conjured up in men’s imaginations. “That most of the accounts we have received from the Northern part of the State are falsehoods and sensation tales, is too evident to every well informed man to need contradiction.”³