Thaddeus Hyatt, of New York, too, seems to have known what Brown intended to do, and from whence he derived his inspirations. Also the indiscriminate massacre of non-combatants, white women and children, by the negroes of Hayti seems to have had his approbation. He presented to the Black Republic a portrait[434] of the man, John Brown, who in 1859 sought to incite the negroes of the Southern States to do what the negroes of San Domingo did, when "one August night, in the year 1791 the whole plain of the north was swept with fire and drenched with blood. Five hundred thousand negro slaves in the depths of barbarism revolted, and the horrors of the massacre made Europe and America shudder."[435] August 27, 1859, Gerrit Smith wrote the following letter to the "Jerry Rescue Committee":[436] It is, perhaps, too late to bring slavery to an end by peaceable means,--too late to vote it down. For many years I have feared, and published my fears, that it would go out in blood. These fears have grown into a belief. So debauched are the white people by slavery that there is not virtue enough left in them to put it down.... The feeling among the blacks that they must deliver themselves gains strength with fearful rapidity. No wonder, then, is it that intelligent black men in the States _and in Canada_ should see no hope for their race in the practice and policy of white men.... Whoever he may be that foretells the horrible end of American slavery, is held at the North and the South to be a lying prophet,--another Cassandra. The South would not respect her own Jefferson's prediction of servile insurrection; how then can it be hoped that she will respect another's?... And is it entirely certain that these insurrections will be put down promptly, and before they can have spread far? Will telegraphs and railroads be too swift for the swiftest insurrections? Remember that telegraphs and railroads can be rendered useless in an hour. Remember too that many who would be glad to face the insurgents would be busy in transporting their wives and daughters to places where they would be safe from the worst fate that husbands and fathers can imagine for their wives and daughters. I admit that but for this embarrassment Southern men would laugh at the idea of an insurrection and would quickly dispose of one. But trembling as they would for beloved ones, I know of no part of the world, where, so much as in the South, men would be like, in a formidable insurrection, to lose the most important time, and be distracted and panic stricken.