After his arrival in the Southern States, we are again able to glean something of his life and history. While he was yet in the gaol at King’s county, it will be remembered that he said he had been a preacher, and that he should preach again, and would gain proselytes; and now his prediction is brought about, for under a new name, that of Henry Hopkins, he appeared in the character of a preacher in the Southern States! And what wonder? For Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Here, even in this character he was not without success, for he got many to follow and admire him; yet deep as his hypocrisy was, he seemed to be fully sensible of it, although his conscience had become seared, and was proof against any proper sense of wrong. He acknowledged that he had been shocked to see so many follow him to hear him preach, and even to be affected under his preaching.
Our source of information does not furnish us with any of the particulars which marked his conduct while itinerating through the South in his newly assumed character; yet general accounts went on to say that he had, for a length of time, so conducted himself that he gained much popularity in his ministerial calling, and had a considerable number of adherents. However, this may have been the case for a length of time, yet as the assumption of this new character could not be attributable to any supernatural impulse, but was merely another feature of a character already so singularly diversified, intended as a cloak under which he might, with less liability to suspicion, indulge the prevailing and all controlling propensities of his vitiated mind, it was not to be expected, with all the ingenuity he was capable of exercising, that he would long be able to conceal his real character. Accordingly, some misdemeanor, which we have not been able to trace, at length disclosed the hypocrisy of his character, and placed him before his deluded followers in his true light.
It would appear, whatever might have been the nature of his crime, that legal means were adopted for his apprehension, and that in order to expedite his escape from the hands of justice, he had seized upon a certain gentleman’s coach and horses and was travelling in the character of a gentleman in state, when he was overtaken and apprehended in the State of Maryland. Here he was tried and convicted, and sentenced to seven years imprisonment in the state prison in Baltimore, which, from the nature of the climate, was generally believed would terminate his career. The particulars of this adventure I received in the city of New York in 1827, where I took much pains to obtain all possible information concerning his proceedings in the Southern States while passing under the character of a preacher.