Semi-Weekly Mississippian [Jackson, MS], September 21, 1860
A Clergyman of the Methodist persuasion writes the following, among other things, to the Journal of Commerce, from Vicksburg:
Our papers are teeming with accounts of the havoc of another John Brown raid on the border counties of Texas. Abolitionists have been there in the character of Methodist Preachers, Teachers, &c., and instigated a general insurrection among several hundred negroes. They had planned matters for a most bloody and fatal catastrophe. Firearms of all sorts; arsenic, to be put in wells for poisoning the people, and means for setting fire to the whole town at once, were detected, but not until five towns had been burned, and great mischief done. One woman has been hung for distributing arsenic, to be put in cisterns and wells. And one or two preachers have been hung for aiding and inciting to revolt. If things go on at this rate, a man suspected of anti-slavery proclivities will be hung or shot like a dog; a fate they court, it would seem. Dissolution of the Union is inevitable, with abolitionism in the ascendant, at Washington. Here we are trying to lead the negroes to Christ and Heaven, while those incendiaries lead them to the gallows.