Indeed, a booklet, “The New Reign of Terror,” published early in 1860,—and in all probability compiled by Garrison himself,—is weighty evidence against the truth of this statement. According to _The Liberator_, the booklet gave “multiplied newspaper accounts of lynchings, murders, and mob raids of the Black Power of the Slave States within the past year [1859].” Although this was a time of intense excitement throughout the South,—a time when a more bitter feeling was manifested against abolitionists than in any previous period, a careful examination of the “New Reign of Terror” failed to reveal more than one case in which an abolitionist was put to death by lynching. There is much evidence of a law-abiding spirit in the South (especially in the eastern part) at the beginning of the Anti-Slavery agitation. Indeed, even when lynching was resorted to, it seems to have been done with great reluctance. Another thing that had some effect on lynching was the Southampton Slave Insurrection, which occurred in 1831. About sixty white men, women, and children were murdered in cold blood by Negroes. However, not more than one of the fifty or more Negroes concerned in it was lynched. Instead, they were given a fair trial, and disposed of according to law. The Insurrection may have caused an increase in the lynching of Negroes by the fact that it begat a kind of fear and distrust of the blacks everywhere, caused them to be more carefully looked after, and more severely dealt with when refractory or guilty of crime. This was no more than could be expected. In 1835 there were four great fires in the city of Charleston,—all supposed to have been the work of slaves. Moreover, up to 1860 there were rumors of insurrections, and many minor insurrections did take place. The abolitionists, not without reason, were accused of trying to set the slaves against their masters and of fostering outbreaks of the bondmen. Such things could hardly be considered lightly, for in many places the whites were practically at the mercy of the Negroes. A quotation from Murray,[16:3] an English traveler, may be interesting as it gives an example of the situation in many of the Slave States: “The farms of the two gentlemen whom I visited occupied the whole of the peninsula formed by the James River; they had each two overseers: thus (their families being young) the effective strength of white men on their estates amounted to six: the Negroes were in number about two hundred and fifty: nor was there a village or place within many miles from which help could be summoned.”