'You have said enough, Scipio, to satisfy me that there is a secret league among the blacks, and that you are a leader in it. Now, I tell you, you'll get yourself into a scrape. I've taken a liking to you, Scip, and I should be _very sorry_ to see you run yourself into danger.' 'I tank you, massa, from de bottom ob my soul I tank you,' he said, as the tears moistened his eyes. 'You bery kind, massa; it do me good to talk wid you. But what am my life wuth? What am any _slave's_ life wuth? Ef you war me you'd do like me!' I could not deny it, and made no reply. The writer of this article is aware that he is here making an important statement, and one that may be called in question by those persons who are accustomed to regard the Southern blacks as only reasoning brutes. The great mass of them are but a little above the brutes in their habits and instincts, but a large body are fully on a par, except in mere book-education, with their white masters. The conversation above recorded is, _verbatim et literatim_, TRUE. It took place at the time indicated, and was taken down, as were other conversations recorded in these papers, within twenty-four hours after its occurrence. The name and the locality, only, I have, for very evident reasons, disguised. From this conversation, together with previous ones, held with the same negro, and from after developments made to me at various places, and at different times, extending over a period of six weeks, I became acquainted with the fact--and I _know_ it to be a _fact_--that there exists among the blacks a secret and wide-spread organization of a Masonic character, having its grip, pass-word, and oath. It has various grades of leaders, who are competent and _earnest_ men, and its ultimate object is FREEDOM. It is quite as wide-spread, and much more secret, than the order of the 'Knights of the Golden Circle,' the kindred league among the whites. This latter organization, which was instituted by John C. Calhoun, William L. Porcher, and others, as far back as 1835, has for its sole object the dissolution of the Union, and the establishment of a Southern Empire;--Empire is the word, not Confederacy, or Republic;--and it was solely by means of its secret but powerful machinery that the Southern States were plunged into revolution, in defiance of the will of a majority of their voting population. Nearly every man of influence at the South (and many a pretended Union man at the North) is a member of this organization, and sworn, under the penalty of assassination, to labor, 'in season and out of season, by fair means and by foul, at all times, and on all occasions,' for the accomplishment of its object. The blacks are bound together by a similar oath, and only _bide their time_.