One demonstration of this "Christian attention" had lately been the closing of the African Church,--of which, as has been stated, most of the leading revolutionists were members,--on the ground that it tended to spread the dangerous infection of the alphabet. On January 15th, 1821, the City Marshal, John J. Lafar, had notified "ministers of the gospel and others who keep night- and Sunday-schools for slaves, that the education of such persons is forbidden by law, and that the city government feel imperiously bound to enforce the penalty." So that there were some special, as well as general grounds for disaffection among these ungrateful favorites of Fortune, the slaves. Then there were fancied dangers. An absurd report had somehow arisen--since you cannot keep men ignorant without making them unreasonable also--that on the ensuing Fourth of July the whites were to create a false alarm, and that every black man coming out was to be killed, "in order to thin them"; this being done to prevent their joining an imaginary army supposed to be on its way from Hayti. Others were led to suppose that Congress had ended the Missouri Compromise discussion by making them all free, and that the law would protect their liberty, if they could only secure it. Others again were threatened with the vengeance of the conspirators, unless they also joined; on the night of attack, it was said, the initiated would have a countersign, and all who did not know it would share the fate of the whites. Add to this the reading of Congressional speeches, and of the copious magazine of revolution to be found in the Bible,--and it was no wonder, if they for the first time were roused, under the energetic leadership of Vesey, to a full consciousness of their own condition.