This first appearance of him upon the stage of history occurred in the year which ended virtually the war for American Independence, 1781, during the passage between St. Thomas and Cap Francais, of Captain Vesey's slave bark with a cargo of 390 slaves. The lad, Telemaque, was a part of that sad cargo, undistinguished at the outset of the voyage from the rest of the human freight. Of the 389 others, we know absolutely nothing. Not an incident, nor a token, not even a name has floated to us across the intervening years, from all that multitudinous misery, from such an unspeakable tragedy, except that the ship reached its destination, and the slaves were sold. Like boats that pass at sea, that slave vessel loomed for a lurid instant on the horizon, and was gone forever--all but Denmark Vesey. How it happened that he did not vanish with the rest of his ill-fated fellows, will be set down in this paper, which has essayed to describe the slave plot which he planned, with which his name is identified, and by which it ought to be, for all time, hallowed in the memory of every man, woman and child of Negro descent in America. On that voyage Captain Vesey was strongly attracted by the "beauty, intelligence, and alertness" of one of the slaves on board. So were the ship's officers. This particular object of interest, on the part of the slave-traders, was a black boy of fourteen summers. He was quickly made a sort of ship's pet and plaything, receiving new garments from his admirers, and the high sounding name, as I have already mentioned, of Telemaque, which in slave lingo was subsequently metamorphosed into Denmark. The lad found himself in sudden favor, and lifted above his companions in bondage by the brief and idle regard of that ship's company. Brief and idle, indeed, was the interest which he had aroused in the breasts of those men, as the sequel showed. But while it lasted it seemed doubtless very genuine to the boy, as such evidences of human regard must have afforded him, in his forlorn state, the keenest pleasure. Bitter, therefore, must have been his disappointment and grief to find, at the end, that he had, in reality, no hold whatever upon the regard of the slave traders. True he had been separated by captain and officers from the other slaves during the voyage, but this ephemeral distinction was speedily lost upon the arrival of the vessel at Cap Francais, for he was then sold as a part of the human freight. Ah! he had not been to those men so much as even a pet cat or dog, for with a pet cat or dog they would not have so lightly parted, as they had done with him. He had served their purpose, had killed for them the dull days of a dull sail between ports, and he a boy with warm blood in his heart, and hot yearnings for love in his soul.