White newspapers published sensational stories of slave armies marching south toward Wilmington, butchering white families and recruiting and arming local slaves along the way. Terrified whites in one town telegraphed an urgent request for assistance to the governor, warning of a slave “invasion and slaughter.” In fact, not a single white citizen of North Carolina was killed by a slave that summer and autumn. But alarmed whites, primed to believe any tale that described savagery by black men, rounded up and killed scores of slaves throughout eastern North Carolina.
