These fifteen, as far as we have any account, were the last who were either executed or tried. The Court, in their eager haste to apprehend and punish the conspirators, of whom five, six, ten and fifteen at a time were executed, and that only the day after trial, of whom not one had committed any overt act, and against whom no testimony appears to have been furnished by any white witness, found, after the apprehension of General Gabriel, that they had made some sad mistakes. This fact, with others, caused such a revulsion of feeling, and excited so great a sympathy in behalf of the poor creatures, that they were obliged, by a moral necessity, to pause in their course. Under date of Oct. 13th, the _Commercial Advertiser_ thus writes:-- "The trials of the negroes concerned in the late insurrection are suspended until the opinion of the Legislature can be had on the subject. _This measure is said to be owing to the immense numbers, who are implicated in the plot, whose death, should they all be found guilty and be executed, will nearly produce the annihilation of the blacks in this part of the country."_ The next day, Oct. 14th, a correspondent from Richmond makes a similar statement with this addition:-- "A conditional amnesty is perhaps expected. At the next session of the Legislature of Virginia, they took into consideration the subject referred to them, _in secret session, with closed doors._ The _whole_ result of their deliberations has never yet been made public, as the injunction of secrecy has never been removed. To satisfy the Court, the public, and themselves, they had a task so difficult to perform, that it is not surprising that their deliberations were in secret." From 1800 till 1816, nothing was divulged. In the spring of 1816, the Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer, in a speech delivered by him in 1833, says, "The intelligence broke in upon me, like a ray of light through the profoundest gloom, and by a mere accident, which occurred in the spring of 1816, that, upon two several occasions, the General Assembly of Virginia had invited the United States to obtain a territory beyond their limits, whereon to colonize _certain portions_ of our colored population. For the evidence of these facts, _then new to me,_ I was referred to the Clerk of the Senate; and in the _private records_ I found them verified." On the 21st of December, 1800, the Virginia House of Delegates passed, in _secret session,_ the following resolution:-- "Resolved, That the Governor [Monroe] be requested to correspond with the President of the United States, on the subject of purchasing land without the limits of this State, _whither persons obnoxious to the laws, or dangerous to the peace of society, may be removed."_