Mr. MacDowell, referring to the insurrection, thus described its terror and its awful lesson: "It drove families from their homes, assembled women and children in crowds in every condition of weakness and infirmity, and every suffering that want and terror could inflict, to escape the terrible dread of domestic assassination. It erected a peaceful and confiding State into a military camp which outlawed from pity the unfortunate beings whose brothers had offended; which barred every door, penetrated every bosom with fear or suspicion, which so banished every sense of security from every man's dwelling; that, let but a hoof or horn break upon the silence of the night, and an aching throb would be driven to the heart. The husband would look to his weapon and the mother would shudder and weep upon her cradle. Was it the fear of Nat Turner and his deluded drunken handful of followers, which produced such effects? Was it this that induced distant counties where the very name of Southampton was strange to arm and equip for a struggle? No sir, it was the suspicion eternally attached to the slave himself, a suspicion that a Nat Turner might be in every family, that the same bloody deed might be acted over at any time and in any place, that the materials for it were spread through the land and were always ready for a like explosion."[41] Although no agreement on the extinction of slavery could be reached, the question of removing the free people of color was decidedly another matter. Many who were unwilling to legislate with reference to slavery did not object to the proposal to remove the free Negroes from the State. Yet there were others who looked upon this as a political by-play. The Southampton Insurrection was not the work of free Negroes but that of slaves. Only two of the many free Negroes in Southampton county took a part in the insurrection and these two had slave wives. The North Carolina plot, moreover, was revealed by a free Negro. Many citizens agreed too with a _Richmond Enquirer_ correspondent of Hanover, who in speaking for the free people of color pointed out the good they had been to the community,[42] and the Governor who in his annual message raised the question as to propriety of removing them, said that the laws of the State had theretofore treated the free people of color with "indulgent kindness" and that "many instances of solicitude for their welfare" had "marked the progress of legislation."[43]