[Footnote 3: Educated Negroes then constituted an alarming element in Massachusetts, Virginia, and South Carolina. See _The New York Daily Advertiser_, Sept. 22, 1800.] [Footnote 4: See _The New York Daily Advertiser_, Sept. 22, 1800.] [Footnote 5: _Ibid._, Oct. 7, 1800.] [Footnote 6: Letter of St. George Tucker in Joshua Coffin's _Slave Insurrections._] Camden was disturbed by an insurrection in 1816 and Charleston in 1822 by a formidable plot which the officials believed was due to the "sinister" influences of enlightened Negroes.[1] The moving spirit of this organization was Denmark Vesey. He had learned to read and write, had accumulated an estate worth $8000, and had purchased his freedom in 1800[2] Jack Purcell, an accomplice of Vesey, weakened in the crisis and confessed. He said that Vesey was in the habit of reading to him all the passages in the newspapers, that related to Santo Domingo and apparently every accessible pamphlet that had any connection with slavery.[3] One day he read to Purcell the speeches of Mr. King on the subject of slavery and told Purcell how this friend of the Negro race declared he would continue to speak, write, and publish pamphlets against slavery "the longest day he lived," until the Southern States consented to emancipate their slaves.[4] [Footnote 1: _The City Gazette and Commercial Daily Advertiser_ (Charleston, South Carolina), August 21, 1822.] [Footnote 2: _Ibid._, August 21, 1822.] [Footnote 3: _The City Gazette and Commercial Daily Advertiser_, August 21, 1822.] [Footnote 4: _Ibid_., August 21, 1822.] The statement of the Governor of South Carolina also shows the influence of the educated Negro. This official felt that Monday, the slave of Mr. Gill, was the most daring conspirator. Being able to read and write he "attained an extraordinary and dangerous influence over his fellows." "Permitted by his owner to occupy a house in the central part of this city, he was afforded hourly opportunities for the exercise of his skill on those who were attracted to his shop by business or favor." "Materials were abundantly furnished in the seditious pamphlets brought into the State by equally culpable incendiaries, while the speeches of the oppositionists in Congress to the admission of Missouri gave a serious and imposing effect to his machinations."[1] It was thus brought home to the South that the enlightened Negro was having his heart fired with the spirit of liberty by his perusal of the accounts of servile insurrections and the congressional debate on slavery. [Footnote 1: _The Norfolk and Portsmouth Herald_, Aug. 30, 1822.]