I think they are basing it on rumors and the sensational newspaper reporting of the time, much of it blatantly false. For example, Tyler was reported as burned, and it wasn't.

BELLVILLE [TX] COUNTRYMAN, August 18, 1860, p. 3, c. 1
We hear by Ed Tucker who is just from Houston, that it is reported there that the towns of Tyler and McKinney have been burnt up.

Also based on reported confessions that were coerced, probably by torture. Also by a questionable document captured from one person. It's all covered in detail in Donald E. Reynolds' Texas Terror: The Slave Insurrection Panic of 1860 and the Secession of the Lower South that came out in 2007, and his previous Editors Make War.

On the other hand, what would be considered evidence of a true abolitionist led slave insurrection, considering that communications would have been oral, not written, both due to the danger of capture and the illiteracy of slave leaders?

I've often wondered about how to evaluate situations like that, especially given today's academic emphasis on the "agency" or active resistance of slaves. Just how active were they, and how? Or were they limited to passive resistance? The old "loyal slave" image has pretty much been discounted.

I think that the authors of the Declaration used the panic of the summer, still believed in by some but not all, as just another reason/excuse to secede. If the abolitionists didn't actually do it that summer, then they still COULD do it in the future, so get out now.

Vicki Betts