They were at the bottom of the uprising, they were instigating the slaves to similar outbreaks.

The savage growlings of a storm came thrilling on every breeze from the South, and wrathful mutterings against the agitator and his paper grew thenceforth more distinct and threatening throughout the free States.

October 15, 1831, Garrison records in the _Liberator_ that he "is constantly receiving from the slave States letters filled with the most diabolical threats and indecent language." In the same month Georgetown, S.C., in a panic made it unlawful for a free colored person to take the _Liberator_ from the post-office.

In the same month the Charleston _Mercury_ announced that "gentlemen of the first respectability" at Columbia had offered a reward of fifteen hundred dollars for the arrest and conviction of any white person circulating the _Liberator_, Walker's pamphlet, "or any other publication of seditious tendency." In Georgia the same symptoms of fright were exhibited.

In the same month the grand jury at Raleigh, N.C., indicted William Lloyd Garrison and Isaac Knapp for circulating the _Liberator_ in that county.