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"Not far from this time Nat Turner's insurrection [a slave rebellion] broke out; and the news threw our town into great commotion. . . ."It was always the custom to have a muster every year. On that occasion every White man shouldered his musket. The citizens and the so-called country gentlemen wore military uniforms. . . ."I knew the houses were to be searched; and I expected it would be done by country bullies and the poor Whites. . . ."It was a grand opportunity for the low Whites, who had no Negroes of their own to scourge. They exulted in such a chance to exercise a little brief authority, and show their subserviency to the slaveholders; not reflecting that the power which trampled on the colored people also kept themselves in poverty, ignorance, and moral degradation. . . . Colored people and slaves who lived in remote parts of the town suffered in an especial manner. In some cases the searchers scattered [gun]powder and shot among their clothes, and then sent other parties to find them, and bring them forward as proof that they were plotting insurrection."-Harriet Ann Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861, describing events earlier in the nineteenth cen

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