This chapter describes the politics of fear that produced the first Seamen Act in South Carolina in 1822. Following the arrests and convictions of dozens of slaves and free blacks in the wake of the Denmark Vesey conspiracy, the state's general assembly enacted several measures to prevent future insurrections. Because Vesey supposedly used itinerant black sailors to tap into an extensive Atlantic network of black revolutionaries, state lawmakers henceforth required all free black maritime workers to be imprisoned upon arriving in the state. This "public health" measure hoped to quarantine the sailors' "moral contagion" and prevent it from infecting local slaves.