A brief history of this transaction may prove not uninteresting to the reader, as it was one of the most daring and venal of all the acts of these regulators, and influenced national affairs as has no other local event within the present century. In a remote settlement in the eastern portion of this county, a party of negroes had organized themselves into a military company, which not only conducted night drills and made occasional raids into the surrounding settlements, but threatened that at no distant day they would devastate the neighboring country, and prove the heralds of an insurrection that would give the Southern country into the hands of their race. The whites in the immediate vicinity bore their midnight levies with tolerable resignation, and would, doubtless, have dismissed their taunts as meaningless, if these had not been supported by acts which left no doubt as to the warlike quality of their designs. They had proceeded so far as to procure arms and ammunition, and nominate a day for the threatened outbreak before any interference was attempted, and when this was finally resolved upon, it was effected quietly by arresting some of the more prominent conspirators at their homes. These parties were incarcerated in the county jail at Trenton, and though the feeling of indignation ran high in every portion of the county, it is believed that a resolution to drop the subject here, or submit to such meagre satisfaction as it was in the power of the courts to render in such cases, was general. Such peaceful and eminently wise counsels were not to prevail, however, and on the night succeeding that upon which these prisoners had been committed to the county authorities for safe keeping, a large body of men (estimated at from two to three hundred), disguised as Ku-Klux, rode into the town, and laying siege to the jail, soon effected their object of taking from thence the alleged insurrectionists. In view of the formidable force employed, no resistance was offered, and the prisoners, being tied securely on horses, which had been provided for that purpose, were placed at the head of the column and conducted six miles from Trenton in an easterly direction. Here a parley was called, and some dispute arising as to what disposition should be made of the prisoners, they were commanded to make their escape, and at the same instant fired upon, the volley being repeated twice. Of the company of ten who were commended to this terrible fate, two were killed outright, two were badly wounded, and the remainder (disappointing the wishes of their captors, it is thought), made good their escape. The news of this event spread rapidly, and as it met with almost universal condemnation, a vigorous pursuit was organized, and every effort which a thoroughly aroused and indignant community would be likely to employ, undertaken to discover and arrest the perpetrators. Knowing that disaffection had existed among the raiders, and a large portion, if