There was great excitement during the last presidential campaign. The slave passed through terrible experiences during 1860-61. It seemed to be accepted as a settled fact, that if Lincoln was elected it would result in war; and in many places regular drills were instituted. In Natchez the half-grown slave boys got together on Sunday afternoons, and drilled with sticks for guns. At first it attracted no particular attention, and the boys became as expert in handling their stick guns as were their masters. Two slave men were overheard repeating what their master said, that if Lincoln was elected he would free all the slaves, for he was a Black Republican; and they declared that if this was true they would go to the Yankees and help to free their nation. This talk was sufficient to raise the report of an insurrection throughout all that part of the State, and a large vigilance committee was organized to meet once a week and report what they might hear by listening outside the negro cabins. All slave men or boys who were overheard to pray for freedom, or to say any thing indicating a desire to be free, were marked; and in the discussions of this large committee of a hundred men, every thing that had occurred during a few years past, in efforts among the slaves to learn to read and write, was magnified and construed as pointing toward a long and settled purpose among the slaves to rise in insurrection. A majority of this committee decided by whipping and other torture to compel confessions from all these marked slaves, and then to hang them. A number of the committee resigned because they would not consent to these severe measures. Many negroes were dragged out of their cabins or yards without knowing the cause, stripped, tied to the whipping-post or taken to the calaboose, and given as many lashes as could be endured. At the close of each whipping the sufferer was called upon to make a full revelation of every sentence that he or she had heard in favor of liberty, or of the Yankees, among their people, either in conversation or prayer, and by whom, with a promise to be released from further punishment. Never was one released, but on Saturday generally ten or twelve of these sufferers were thrown into a wagon and conveyed to the gallows, where they were placed in a row, and all were hanged at the same instant. Some hundreds were thus hanged in the edge of the city, and on an adjoining plantation. I carefully investigated the facts, and gathered the following statement from both white and colored citizens. I have good reasons for placing entire confidence in its correctness. A large number of slaves were hanged, owned by the following persons: