During the year 1831, up to the twenty-third of August, the Virginia
newspapers were absorbed in the momentous problems which then occupied
the minds of intelligent American citizens:--What General Jackson should
do with the scolds, and what with the disreputables,--Should South
Carolina be allowed to nullify? and would the wives of Cabinet Ministers
call on Mrs. Eaton? It is an unfailing opiate, to turn over the drowsy
files of the "Richmond Enquirer", until the moment when those dry and
dusty pages are suddenly kindled into flame by the torch of Nat Turner.
Then the terror flares on increasing, until the remotest Southern States
are found shuddering at nightly rumors of insurrection,--until far-off
European colonies, Antigua, Martinique, Caraccas, Tortola, recognize by
some secret sympathy the same epidemic alarms,--until the very boldest
words of freedom are reported as uttered in the Virginia House of
Delegates with unclosed doors,--until an obscure young man named
Garrison is indicted at Common Law in North Carolina, and has a price
set upon his head by the Legislature of Georgia. The insurrection
revived in one agonizing reminiscence all the distresses of Gabriel's
Revolt, thirty years before; and its memory endures still fresh, now
that thirty added years have brought the more formidable presence of
General Butler. It is by no means impossible that the very children or
even confederates of Nat Turner may be included at this moment among the
contraband articles of Fort Monroe.
Near the southeastern border of Virginia, in Southampton County, there
is a neighborhood known as "The Cross Keys". It lies fifteen miles from
Jerusalem, the county-town or "court-house", seventy miles from Norfolk,
and about as far from Richmond. It is some ten or fifteen miles from
Murfreesboro in North Carolina, and about twenty-five from the Great
Dismal Swamp. Up to Sunday, the twenty-first of August, 1831, there was
nothing to distinguish it from any other rural, lethargic, slipshod
Virginia neighborhood, with the due allotment of mansion-houses and
log-huts, tobacco-fields and "old-fields", horses, dogs, negroes, "poor
white folks", so called, and other white folks, poor without being
called so. One of these last was Joseph Travis, who had recently married
the widow of one Putnam Moore, and had unfortunately wedded to himself
her negroes also.
In the woods on the plantation of Joseph Travis, upon the Sunday just
named, six slaves met at noon for what is called in the Northern States
a picnic and in the Southern a barbecue. The bill of fare was to be
simple: one brought a pig, and another some brandy, giving to the
meeting an aspect so cheaply convivial that no one would have imagined
it to be the final consummation of a conspiracy which had been for six
months in preparation. In this plot four of the men had been already
initiated,--Henry, Hark or Hercules, Nelson, and Sam. Two others were
novices, Will and Jack by name. The party had remained together from
twelve to three o'clock, when a seventh man joined them,--a short,
stout, powerfully built person, of dark mulatto complexion and
strongly-marked African features, but with a face full of expression and
resolution. This was Nat Turner.
He was at this time nearly thirty-one years old, having been born on
the second of October, 1800. He had belonged originally to Benjamin
Turner,--whence his last name, slaves having usually no patronymic,--had
then been transferred to Putnam Moore, and then to his present owner.
He had, by his own account, felt himself singled out from childhood for
some great work; and he had some peculiar marks on his person, which,
joined to his great mental precocity, were enough to occasion, among his
youthful companions, a superstitious faith in his gifts and destiny.
He had great mechanical ingenuity also, experimentalized very early in
making paper, gunpowder, pottery, and in other arts which in later life
he was found thoroughly to understand. His moral faculties were very
strong, so that white witnesses admitted that he had never been known to
swear an oath, to drink a drop of spirits, or to commit a theft. And in
general, so marked were his early peculiarities, that people said "he
had too much sense to be raised, and if he was, he would never be of
any use as a slave." This impression of personal destiny grew with his
growth;--he fasted, prayed, preached, read the Bible, heard voices when
he walked behind his plough, and communicated his revelations to the
awe-struck slaves. They told him in return, that, "if they had his
sense, they would not serve any master in the world."
The biographies of slaves can hardly be individualized; they belong to
the class. We know bare facts; it is only the general experience of
human beings in like condition which can clothe them with life. The
outlines are certain, the details are inferential. Thus, for instance,
we know that Nat Turner's young wife was a slave; we know that she
belonged to a different master from himself; we know little more than
this, but this is much. For this is equivalent to saying that by day or
by night that husband had no more power to protect her than the man who
lies bound upon a plundered vessel's deck has power to protect his wife
on board the pirate-schooner disappearing in the horizon; she may be
reverenced, she may be outraged; it is in the powerlessness that the
agony lies. There is, indeed, one thing more which we do know of this
young woman: the Virginia newspapers state that she was tortured under
the lash, after her husband's execution, to make her produce his papers:
this is all.
What his private experiences and special privileges or wrongs may have
been, it is therefore now impossible to say. Travis was declared to be
"more humane and fatherly to his slaves than any man in the county"; but
it is astonishing how often this phenomenon occurs in the contemporary
annals of slave insurrections. The chairman of the county court also
stated, in pronouncing sentence, that Nat Turner had spoken of his
master as "only too indulgent"; but this, for some reason, does not
appear in his printed Confession, which only says, "He was a kind
master, and placed the greatest confidence in me." It is very possible
that it may have been so, but the printed accounts of Nat Turner's
person look suspicious: he is described in Governor Floyd's proclamation
as having a scar on one of his temples, also one on the back of his
neck, and a large knot on one of the bones of his right arm, produced by
a blow; and although these were explained away in Virginia newspapers
as being produced by fights with his companions, yet such affrays are
entirely foreign to the admitted habits of the man. It must, therefore,
remain an open question, whether the scars and the knot were produced by
black hands or by white.
Whatever Nat Turner's experiences of slavery might have been, it is
certain that his plans were not suddenly adopted, but that he had
brooded over them for years. To this day there are traditions among the
Virginia slaves of the keen devices of "Prophet Nat". If he was
caught with lime and lamp-black in hand, conning over a half-finished
county-map on the barn-door, he was always "planning what to do, if he
were blind", or "studying how to get to Mr. Francis's house." When he
had called a meeting of slaves, and some poor whites came eavesdropping,
the poor whites at once became the subjects for discussion; he
incidentally mentioned that the masters had been heard threatening to
drive them away; one slave had been ordered to shoot Mr. Jones's pigs,
another to tear down Mr. Johnson's fences. The poor whites, Johnson and
Jones, ran home to see to their homesteads, and were better friends than
ever to Prophet Nat.
He never was a Baptist preacher, though such vocation has often been
attributed to him. The impression arose from his having immersed
himself, during one of his periods of special enthusiasm, together with
a poor white man named Brantley. "About this time", he says in his
Confession, "I told these things to a white man, on whom it had a
wonderful effect, and he ceased from his wickedness, and was attacked
immediately with a cutaneous eruption, and the blood oozed from the
pores of his skin, and after praying and fasting nine days he was
healed. And the Spirit appeared to me again, and said, as the Saviour
had been baptized, so should we be also; and when the white people
would not let us be baptized by the Church, we went down into the water
together, in the sight of many who reviled us, and were baptized by the
Spirit. After this I rejoiced greatly and gave thanks to God."
The religious hallucinations narrated in his Confession seem to have
been as genuine as the average of such things, and are very well
expressed. It reads quite like Jacob Behmen. He saw white spirits and
black spirits contending in the skies, the sun was darkened, the thunder
rolled. "And the Holy Ghost was with me, and said, 'Behold me as I stand
in the heavens!' And I looked and saw the forms of men in different
attitudes. And there were lights in the sky, to which the children of
darkness gave other names than what they really were; for they were the
lights of the Saviour's hands, stretched forth from east to west, even
as they were extended on the cross on Calvary, for the redemption of
sinners." He saw drops of blood on the corn: this was Christ's blood,
shed for man. He saw on the leaves in the woods letters and numbers and
figures of men,--the same symbols which he had seen in the skies. On May
12, 1828, the Holy Spirit appeared to him and proclaimed that the yoke
of Jesus must fall on him, and he must fight against the Serpent when
the sign appeared. Then came an eclipse of the sun in February, 1831:
this was the sign; then he must arise and prepare himself, and slay his
enemies with their own weapons; then also the seal was removed from his
lips, and then he confided his plans to four associates.
When he came, therefore, to the barbecue on the appointed Sunday, and
found, not these four only, but two others, his first question to the
intruders was, How they came thither. To this Will answered manfully,
that his life was worth no more than the others, and "his liberty was as
dear to him." This admitted him to confidence, and as Jack was known to
be entirely under Hark's influence, the strangers were no bar to their
discussion. Eleven hours they remained there, in anxious consultation:
one can imagine those terrible dusky faces, beneath the funereal woods,
and amid the flickering of pine-knot torches, preparing that stern
revenge whose shuddering echoes should ring through the land so long.
Two things were at last decided: to begin their work that night, and to
begin it with a massacre so swift and irresistible as to create in a
few days more terror than many battles, and so spare the need of future
bloodshed. "It was agreed that we should commence at home on that night,
and, until we had armed and equipped ourselves and gained sufficient
force, neither age nor sex was to be spared: which was invariably
adhered to."
John Brown invaded Virginia with nineteen men, and with the avowed
resolution to take no life but in self-defence. Nat Turner attacked
Virginia from within, with six men, and with the determination to spare
no life until his power was established. John Brown intended to pass
rapidly through Virginia, and then retreat to the mountains. Nat Turner
intended to "conquer Southampton County as the white men did in the
Revolution, and then retreat, if necessary, to the Dismal Swamp." Each
plan was deliberately matured; each was in its way practicable; but each
was defeated by a single false step, as will soon appear.
We must pass over the details of horror, as they occurred during the
next twenty-four hours. Swift and stealthy as Indians, the black men
passed from house to house,--not pausing, not hesitating, as their
terrible work went on. In one thing they were humaner than Indians
or than white men fighting against Indians,--there was no gratuitous
outrage beyond the death-blow itself, no insult, no mutilation; but
in every house they entered, that blow fell on man, woman, and
child,--nothing that had a white skin was spared. From every house they
took arms and ammunition, and from a few, money; on every plantation
they found recruits: those dusky slaves, so obsequious to their master
the day before, so prompt to sing and dance before his Northern
visitors, were all swift to transform themselves into fiends of
retribution now; show them sword or musket and they grasped it, though
it were an heirloom from Washington himself. The troop increased from
house to house,--first to fifteen, then to forty, then to sixty. Some
were armed with muskets, some with axes, some with scythes; some came on
their masters' horses. As the numbers increased, they could be divided,
and the awful work was carried on more rapidly still. The plan then was
for an advanced guard of horsemen to approach each house at a gallop,
and surround it till the others came up. Meanwhile what agonies of
terror must have taken place within, shared alike by innocent and by
guilty! what memories of wrongs inflicted on those dusky creatures, by
some,--what innocent participation, by others, in the penance! The
outbreak lasted for but forty-eight hours; but during that period
fifty-five whites were slain, without the loss of a single slave.
One fear was needless, which to many a husband and father must have
intensified the last struggle. These negroes had been systematically
brutalized from childhood; they had been allowed no legalized
or permanent marriage; they had beheld around them an habitual
licentiousness, such as can scarcely exist except in a Slave State; some
of them had seen their wives and sisters habitually polluted by the
husbands and the brothers of these fair white women who were now
absolutely in their power. Yet I have looked through the Virginia
newspapers of that time in vain for one charge of an indecent outrage
on a woman against these triumphant and terrible slaves. Wherever they
went, there went death, and that was all. Compare this with ordinary
wars; compare it with the annals of the French Revolution. No one,
perhaps, has yet painted the wrongs of the French populace so terribly
as Dickens in his "Tale of Two Cities"; yet what man, conversant with
slave-biographies, can read that narrative without feeling it weak
beside the provocations to which fugitive slaves testify? It is
something for human nature that these desperate insurgents revenged such
wrongs by death alone. Even that fearful penalty was to be inflicted
only till the object was won. It was admitted in the "Richmond Enquirer"
of the time, that "indiscriminate massacre was not their intention,
after they obtained foothold, and was resorted to in the first instance
to strike terror and alarm. Women and children would afterwards have
been spared, and men also who ceased to resist."
It is reported by some of the contemporary newspapers, that a portion
of this abstinence was the result of deliberate consultation among the
insurrectionists; that some of them were resolved on taking the white
women for wives, but were overruled by Nat Turner. If so, he is the only
American slave-leader of whom we know certainly that he rose above the
ordinary level of slave vengeance, and Mrs. Stowe's picture of Dred's
purposes is then precisely typical of his. "Whom the Lord saith unto us,
'Smite,' them will we smite. We will not torment them with the scourge
and fire, nor defile their women as they have done with ours. But we
will slay them utterly, and consume them from off the face of the
earth."
When the number of adherents had increased to fifty or sixty, Nat Turner
judged it time to strike at the county-seat, Jerusalem. Thither a
few white fugitives had already fled, and couriers might thence
be despatched for aid to Richmond and Petersburg, unless promptly
intercepted. Besides, he could there find arms, ammunition, and money;
though they had already obtained, it is dubiously reported, from eight
hundred to one thousand dollars. On the way it was necessary to pass the
plantation of Mr. Parker, three miles from Jerusalem. Some of the
men wished to stop here and enlist some of their friends. Nat Turner
objected, as the delay might prove dangerous; he yielded at last, and it
proved fatal.
He remained at the gate with six or eight men; thirty or forty went to
the house, half a mile distant. They remained too long, and he went
alone to hasten them. During his absence a party of eighteen white men
came up suddenly, dispersing the small guard left at the gate; and when
the main body of slaves emerged from the house, they encountered, for
the first time, their armed masters. The blacks halted, the whites
advanced cautiously within a hundred yards and fired a volley; on its
being returned, they broke into disorder, and hurriedly retreated,
leaving some wounded on the ground. The retreating whites were pursued,
and were saved only by falling in with another band of fresh men from
Jerusalem, with whose aid they turned upon the slaves, who in their turn
fell into confusion. Turner, Hark, and about twenty men on horseback
retreated in some order; the rest were scattered. The leader still
planned to reach Jerusalem by a private way, thus evading pursuit;
but at last decided to stop for the night, in the hope of enlisting
additional recruits.
During the night the number increased again to forty, and they
encamped on Major Ridley's plantation. An alarm took place during the
darkness,--whether real or imaginary does not appear,--and the men
became scattered again. Proceeding to make fresh enlistments with the
daylight, they were resisted at Dr. Blunt's house, where his slaves,
under his orders, fired upon them, and this, with a later attack from a
party of white men near Captain Harris's, so broke up the whole force
that they never reunited. The few who remained together agreed to
separate for a few hours to see if anything could be done to revive the
insurrection, and meet again that evening at their original rendezvous.
But they never reached it.
Sadly came Nat Turner at nightfall into those gloomy woods where
forty-eight hours before he had revealed the details of his terrible
plot to his companions. At the outset all his plans had succeeded;
everything was as he predicted: the slaves had come readily at his call,
the masters had proved perfectly defenceless. Had he not been persuaded
to pause at Parker's plantation, he would have been master before now
of the arms and ammunition at Jerusalem; and with these to aid, and the
Dismal Swamp for a refuge, he might have sustained himself indefinitely
against his pursuers.
Now the blood was shed, the risk was incurred, his friends were killed
or captured, and all for what? Lasting memories of terror, to be sure,
for his oppressors; but on the other hand, hopeless failure for the
insurrection, and certain death for him. What a watch he must have kept
that night! To that excited imagination, which had always seen spirits
in the sky and blood-drops on the corn and hieroglyphic marks on the dry
leaves, how full the lonely forest must have been of signs and solemn
warnings! Alone with the fox's bark, the rabbit's rustle, and the
screech-owl's scream, the self-appointed prophet brooded over his
despair. Once creeping to the edge of the wood, he saw men stealthily
approach on horseback. He fancied them some of his companions; but
before he dared to whisper their ominous names, "Hark" or "Dred,"--for
the latter was the name, since famous, of one of his more recent
recruits,--he saw them to be white men, and shrank back stealthily
beneath his covert.
There he waited two weary days and two melancholy nights,--long
enough to satisfy himself that no one would rejoin him, and that the
insurrection had hopelessly failed. The determined, desperate spirits
who had shared his plans were scattered forever, and longer delay would
be destruction for him also. He found a spot which he judged safe, dug
a hole under a pile of fence-rails in a field, and lay there for six
weeks, only leaving it for a few moments at midnight to obtain water
from a neighboring spring. Food he had previously provided, without
discovery, from a house near by.
Meanwhile an unbounded variety of rumors went flying through the State.
The express which first reached the Governor announced that the militia
were retreating before the slaves. An express to Petersburg further
fixed the number of militia at three hundred, and of blacks at eight
hundred, and invented a convenient shower of rain to explain the
dampened ardor of the whites. Later reports described the slaves as
making three desperate attempts to cross the bridge over the Nottoway
between Cross Keys and Jerusalem, and stated that the leader had been
shot in the attempt. Other accounts put the number of negroes at three
hundred, all well mounted and armed, with two or three white men as
leaders. Their intention was supposed to be to reach the Dismal Swamp,
and they must be hemmed in from that side.
Indeed, the most formidable weapon in the hands of slave-insurgents is
always this blind panic they create, and the wild exaggerations which
follow. The worst being possible, every one takes the worst for granted.
Undoubtedly a dozen armed men could have stifled this insurrection, even
after it had commenced operations; but it is the fatal weakness of a
slaveholding community, that it can never furnish men promptly for such
a purpose, "My first intention was," says one of the most intelligent
newspaper narrators of the affair, "to have attacked them with thirty or
forty men; but those who had families here were strongly opposed to it."
As usual, each man was pinioned to his own hearth-stone. As usual, aid
had to be summoned from a distance, and, as usual, the United States
troops were the chief reliance. Colonel House, commanding at
Fort Monroe, sent at once three companies of artillery under
Lieutenant-Colonel Worth, and embarked them on board the steamer Hampton
for Suffolk. These were joined by detachments from the United States
ships Warren and Natchez, the whole amounting to nearly eight hundred
men. Two volunteer companies went from Richmond, four from Petersburg,
one from Norfolk, one from Portsmouth, and several from North Carolina.
The militia of Norfolk, Nansemond, and Princess Anne Counties, and the
United States troops at Old Point Comfort, were ordered to scour the
Dismal Swamp, where it was believed that two or three thousand fugitives
were preparing to join the insurgents. It was even proposed to send two
companies from New York and one from New London to the same point.
When these various forces reached Southampton County, they found
all labor paralyzed and whole plantations abandoned. A letter from
Jerusalem, dated August 24th, says, "The oldest inhabitant of our county
has never experienced such a distressing time as we have had since
Sunday night last..... Every house, room, and corner in this place is
full of women and children, driven from home, who had to take the woods
until they could get to this place." "For many miles around their
track," says another, "the county is deserted by women and children."
Still another writes, "Jerusalem is full of women, most of them from
the other side of the river,--about two hundred at Vix's." Then follow
descriptions of the sufferings of these persons, many of whom had lain
night after night in the woods. But the immediate danger was at an end,
the short-lived insurrection was finished, and now the work of
vengeance was to begin. In the frank phrase of a North Carolina
correspondent,--"The massacre of the whites was over, and the white
people had commenced the destruction of the negroes, which was continued
after our men got there, from time to time, as they could fall in with
them, all day yesterday." A postscript adds, that "passengers by the
Fayetteville stage say, that, by the latest accounts, one hundred and
twenty negroes had been killed,"--this being little more than one day's
work.
These murders were defended as Nat Turner defended his: a fearful blow
must be struck. In shuddering at the horrors of the insurrection, we
have forgotten the far greater horrors of its suppression.
The newspapers of the day contain many indignant protests against the
cruelties which took place. "It is with pain," says a correspondent
of the "National Intelligencer," September 7, 1831, "that we speak of
another feature of the Southampton Rebellion; for we have been most
unwilling to have our sympathies for the sufferers diminished or
affected by their misconduct. We allude to the slaughter of many blacks
without trial and under circumstances of great barbarity..... We met
with an individual of intelligence who told us that he himself had
killed between ten and fifteen..... We [the Richmond troop] witnessed
with surprise the sanguinary temper of the population, who evinced a
strong disposition to inflict immediate death on every prisoner."
There is a remarkable official document from General Eppes, the officer
in command, to be found in the "Richmond Enquirer" for September 6,
1831. It is an indignant denunciation of precisely these outrages; and
though he refuses to give details, he supplies their place by epithets:
"revolting,"--"inhuman and not to be justified,"--"acts of barbarity and
cruelty,"--"acts of atrocity,"--"this course of proceeding dignifies the
rebel and the assassin with the sanctity of martyrdom." And he ends by
threatening martial law upon all future transgressors. Such general
orders are not issued except in rather extreme cases. And in the
parallel columns of the newspaper the innocent editor prints equally
indignant descriptions of Russian atrocities in Lithuania, where the
Poles were engaged in active insurrection, amid profuse sympathy from
Virginia.
The truth is, it was a Reign of Terror. Volunteer patrols rode in all
directions, visiting plantations. "It was with the greatest difficulty,"
said General Brodnax before the House of Delegates, "and at the hazard
of personal popularity and esteem, that the coolest and most
judicious among us could exert an influence sufficient to restrain an
indiscriminate slaughter of the blacks who were suspected." A letter
from the Rev. G.W. Powell declares, "There are thousands of troops
searching in every direction, and many negroes are killed every day: the
exact number will never be ascertained." Petition after petition was
subsequently presented to the legislature, asking compensation for
slaves thus assassinated without trial.
Men were tortured to death, burned, maimed, and subjected to nameless
atrocities. The overseers were called on to point out any slaves whom
they distrusted, and if any tried to escape, they were shot down. Nay,
worse than this. "A party of horsemen started from Richmond with the
intention of killing every colored person they saw in Southampton
County. They stopped opposite the cabin of a free colored man, who
was hoeing in his little field. They called out, 'Is this Southampton
County?' He replied, 'Yes, Sir, you have just crossed the line, by
yonder tree.' They shot him dead and rode on." This is from the
narrative of the editor of the "Richmond Whig," who was then on duty in
the militia, and protested manfully against these outrages. "Some
of these scenes," he adds, "are hardly inferior in barbarity to the
atrocities of the insurgents."
These were the masters' stones. If even these conceded so much, it would
be interesting to hear what the slaves had to report. I am indebted to
my honored friend, Lydia Maria Child, for some vivid recollections of
this terrible period, as noted down from the lips of an old colored
woman, once well known in New York, Charity Bower. "At the time of the
old Prophet Nat," she said, "the colored folks was afraid to pray loud;
for the whites threatened to punish 'em dreadfully, if the least noise
was heard. The patrols was low drunken whites, and in Nat's time, if
they heard any of the colored folks praying or singing a hymn, they
would fall upon 'em and abuse 'em, and sometimes kill 'em, afore master
or missis could get to 'em. The brightest and best was killed in Nat's
time. The whites always suspect such ones. They killed a great many at
a place called Duplon. They killed Antonio, a slave of Mr. J. Stanley,
whom they shot; then they pointed their guns at him, and told him to
confess about the insurrection. He told 'em he didn't know anything
about any insurrection. They shot several balls through him, quartered
him, and put his head on a pole at the fork of the road leading to the
court." (This is no exaggeration, if the Virginia newspapers may be
taken as evidence.) "It was there but a short time. He had no trial.
They never do. In Nat's time, the patrols would tie up the free colored
people, flog 'em, and try to make 'em lie against one another, and
often killed them before anybody could interfere. Mr. James Cole, High
Sheriff, said, if any of the patrols came on his plantation, he would
lose his life in defence of his people. One day he heard a patroller
boasting how many niggers he had killed. Mr. Cole said, 'If you don't
pack up, as quick as God Almighty will let you, and get out of this
town, and never be seen in it again, I'll put you where dogs won't bark
at you.' He went off, and wasn't seen in them parts again."
These outrages were not limited to the colored population; but other
instances occurred which strikingly remind one of more recent times. An
Englishman, named Robinson, was engaged in selling books at Petersburg.
An alarm being given, one night, that five hundred blacks were marching
towards the town, he stood guard, with others, on the bridge. After the
panic had a little subsided, he happened to remark, that "the blacks, as
men, were entitled to their freedom, and ought to be emancipated."
This led to great excitement, and he was warned to leave town. He took
passage in the stage, but the stage was intercepted. He then fled to a
friend's house; the house was broken open, and he was dragged forth.
The civil authorities, being applied to, refused to interfere. The mob
stripped him, gave him a great number of lashes, and sent him on foot,
naked, under a hot sun, to Richmond, whence he with difficulty found a
passage to New York.
Of the capture or escape of most of that small band who met with Nat
Turner in the woods upon the Travis plantation little can now be known.
All appear among the list of convicted, except Henry and Will. General
Moore, who occasionally figures as second in command, in the newspaper
narratives of that day, was probably the Hark or Hercules before
mentioned; as no other of the confederates had belonged to Mrs. Travis,
or would have been likely to bear her previous name of Moore. As usual,
the newspapers state that most, if not all the slaves, were "the
property of kind and indulgent masters." Whether in any case they were
also the sons of those masters is a point ignored; but from the fact
that three out of the seven were at first reported as being white men by
several different witnesses,--the whole number being correctly given,
and the statement therefore probably authentic,--one must suppose that
there was an admixture of patrician blood in some of these conspirators.
The subordinate insurgents sought safety as they could. A free colored
man, named Will Artist, shot himself in the woods, where his hat was
found on a stake and his pistol lying by him; another was found drowned;
others were traced to the Dismal Swamp; others returned to their homes,
and tried to conceal their share in the insurrection, assuring their
masters that they had been forced, against their will, to join,--the
usual defence in such cases. The number shot down at random must, by
all accounts, have amounted to many hundreds, but it is past all human
registration now. The number who had a formal trial, such as it was, is
officially stated at fifty-five; of these, seventeen were convicted and
hanged, twelve convicted and transported, twenty acquitted, and four
free colored men sent on for further trial and finally acquitted. "Not
one of those known to be concerned escaped." Of those executed, one only
was a woman: "Lucy, slave of John T. Barrow": that is all her epitaph,
shorter even than that of Wordsworth's more famous Lucy;--but whether
this one was old or young, pure or wicked, lovely or repulsive, octroon
or negro, a Cassy, an Emily, or a Topsy, no information appears; she was
a woman, she was a slave, and she died.
There is one touching story, in connection with these terrible
retaliations, which rests on good authority, that of the Rev. M.B. Cox,
a Liberian missionary, then in Virginia. In the hunt which followed the
massacre, a slaveholder went into the woods, accompanied by a
faithful slave, who had been the means of saving his life during the
insurrection. When they had reached a retired place in the forest, the
man handed his gun to his master, informing him that he could not live a
slave any longer, and requesting him either to free him or shoot him on
the spot. The master took the gun, in some trepidation, levelled it at
the faithful negro, and shot him through the heart. It is probable that
this slaveholder was a Dr. Blunt,--his being the only plantation where
the slaves were reported as thus defending their masters. "If this
be true," said the "Richmond Enquirer," when it first narrated this
instance of loyalty, "great will be the desert of these noble minded
Africans." This "noble-minded African," at least, estimated his own
desert at a high standard: he demanded freedom,--and obtained it.
Meanwhile the panic of the whites continued; for, though all others
might be disposed of, Nat Turner was still at large. We have positive
evidence of the extent of the alarm, although great efforts were
afterwards made to represent it as a trifling affair. A distinguished
citizen of Virginia wrote three months later to the Hon. W.B. Seabrook
of South Carolina,--"From all that has come to my knowledge during and
since that affair, I am convinced most fully that every black preacher
in the country east of the Blue Ridge was in the secret." "There is much
reason to believe," says the Governor's message on December 6th, "that
the spirit of insurrection was not confined to Southampton. Many
convictions have taken place elsewhere, and some few in distant
counties." The withdrawal of the United States troops, after some ten
days' service, was a signal for fresh excitement, and an address,
numerously signed, was presented to the United States Government,
imploring their continued stay. More than three weeks after the first
alarm, the Governor sent a supply of arms into Prince William, Fauquier,
and Orange Counties. "From examinations which have taken place in other
counties," says one of the best newspaper historians of the affair,
(in the "Richmond Enquirer" of September 6th,) "I fear that the scheme
embraced a wider sphere than I at first supposed." Nat Turner himself,
intentionally or otherwise, increased the confusion by denying all
knowledge of the North Carolina outbreak, and declaring that he had
communicated his plans to his four confederates within six months;
while, on the other hand, a slave-girl, sixteen or seventeen years old,
belonging to Solomon Parker, notified that she had heard the subject
discussed for eighteen months, and that at a meeting held during the
previous May some eight or ten had joined the plot.
It is astonishing to discover, by laborious comparison of newspaper
files, how vast was the immediate range of these insurrectionary alarms.
Every Southern State seems to have borne its harvest of terror. On the
Eastern shore of Maryland great alarm was at once manifested, especially
in the neighborhood of Easton and Snowhill; and the houses of colored
men were searched for arms even in Baltimore. In Delaware, there were
similar rumors through Sussex and Dover Counties; there were arrests and
executions; and in Somerset County great public meetings were held, to
demand additional safeguards. On election-day, in Seaford, Del., some
young men, going out to hunt rabbits, discharged their guns in sport;
the men being absent, all the women in the vicinity took to flight; the
alarm spread like the "Ipswich Fright"; soon Seaford was thronged with
armed men; and when the boys returned from hunting, they found cannon
drawn out to receive them.
In North Carolina, Raleigh and Fayetteville were put under military
defence, and women and children concealed themselves in the swamps for
many days. The rebel organization was supposed to include two thousand.
Forty-six slaves were imprisoned in Union County, twenty-five in Sampson
County, and twenty-three at least in Duplin County, some of whom were
executed. The panic also extended into Wayne, New Hanover, and Lenoir
Counties. Four men were shot without trial in Wilmington,--Nimrod,
Abraham, Prince, and "Dan the Drayman," the latter a man of
seventy,--and their heads placed on poles at the four corners of the
town. Nearly two months afterwards the trials were still continuing; and
at a still later day, the Governor in his proclamation recommended the
formation of companies of volunteers in every county.
In South Carolina, General Hayne issued a proclamation "to prove the
groundlessness of the existing alarms,"--thus implying that serious
alarms existed. In Macon, Georgia, the whole population were roused from
their beds at midnight by a report of a large force of armed negroes
five miles off. In an hour, every woman and child was deposited in the
largest building of the town, and a military force hastily collected in
front. The editor of the Macon "Messenger" excused the poor condition of
his paper, a few days afterwards, by the absorption of his workmen in
patrol duties, and describes "dismay and terror" as the condition of the
people, of "all ages and sexes." In Jones, Twiggs, and Monroe Counties,
the same alarms were reported; and in one place "several slaves were
tied to a tree, while a militia captain hacked at them with his sword."
In Alabama, at Columbus and Fort Mitchell, a rumor was spread of a joint
conspiracy of Indians and negroes. At Claiborne the panic was still
greater; the slaves were said to be thoroughly organized through that
part of the State, and multitudes were imprisoned; the whole alarm being
apparently founded on one stray copy of the "Liberator."
In Tennessee, the Shelbyville "Freeman" announced that an
insurrectionary plot had just been discovered, barely in time for
its defeat, through the treachery of a female slave. In Louisville,
Kentucky, a similar organization was discovered or imagined, and arrests
were made in consequence. "The papers, from motives of policy, do
not notice the disturbance," wrote one correspondent to the Portland
"Courier." "Pity us!" he added.
But the greatest bubble burst in Louisiana. Captain Alexander, an
English tourist, arriving in New Orleans at the beginning of September,
found the whole city in tumult. Handbills had been issued, appealing to
the slaves to rise against their masters, saying that all men were born
equal, declaring that Hannibal was a black man, and that they also might
have great leaders among them. Twelve hundred stand of weapons were said
to have been found in a black man's house; five hundred citizens were
under arms, and four companies of regulars were ordered to the city,
whose barracks Alexander himself visited.
If such were the alarm in New Orleans, the story, of course, lost
nothing by transmission to other Slave States. A rumor reached
Frankfort, Kentucky, that the slaves already had possession of the
coast, both above and below New Orleans. But the most remarkable
circumstance is, that all this seems to have been a mere revival of an
old terror, once before excited and exploded. The following paragraph
had appeared in the Jacksonville (Georgia) "Observer," during the spring
previous:--
"FEARFUL DISCOVERY. We were favored, by yesterday's mail, with a letter
from New Orleans, of May 1st, in which we find that an important
discovery had been made a few days previous in that city. The following
is an extract:--'Four days ago, as some planters were digging under
ground, they found a square room containing eleven thousand stand of
arms and fifteen thousand cartridges, each of the cartridges containing
a bullet.' It is said the negroes intended to rise as soon as the sickly
season began, and obtain possession of the city by massacring the white
population. The same letter states that the mayor had prohibited the
opening of Sunday-schools for the instruction of blacks, under a penalty
of five hundred dollars for the first offence, and for the second,
death."
Such were the terrors that came back from nine other Slave States, as
the echo of the voice of Nat Turner; and when it is also known that the
subject was at once taken up by the legislatures of other States, where
there was no public panic, as in Missouri and Tennessee,--and when,
finally, it is added that reports of insurrection had been arriving all
that year from Rio Janeiro, Martinique, St. Jago, Antigua, Caraccas, and
Tortola, it is easy to see with what prolonged distress the accumulated
terror must have weighed down upon Virginia, during the two months that
Nat Turner lay hid.
True, there were a thousand men in arms in Southampton County, to
inspire security. But the blow had been struck by only seven men before;
and unless there were an armed guard in every house, who could tell but
any house might at any moment be the scene of new horrors? They might
kill or imprison unresisting negroes by day, but could they resist their
avengers by night? "The half cannot be told," wrote a lady from another
part of Virginia, at this time, "of the distresses of the people. In
Southampton County, the scene of the insurrection, the distress beggars
description. A gentleman who has been there says that even here, where
there has been great alarm, we have no idea of the situation of those in
that county.... I do not hesitate to believe that many negroes around us
would join in a massacre as horrible as that which has taken place, if
an opportunity should offer."
Meanwhile the cause of all this terror was made the object of desperate
search. On September 17th the Governor offered a reward of five hundred
dollars for his capture, and there were other rewards swelling the
amount to eleven hundred dollars,--but in vain. No one could track or
trap him. On September 30th a minute account of his capture appeared
in the newspapers, but it was wholly false. On October 7th there was
another, and on October 18th another; yet all without foundation. Worn
out by confinement in his little cave, Nat Turner grew more adventurous,
and began to move about stealthily by night, afraid to speak to any
human being, but hoping to obtain some information that might aid his
escape. Returning regularly to his retreat before daybreak, he might
possibly have continued this mode of life until pursuit had ceased, had
not a dog succeeded where men had failed. The creature accidentally
smelt out the provisions hid in the cave, and finally led thither his
masters, two negroes, one of whom was named Nelson. On discovering the
terrible fugitive, they fled precipitately, when he hastened to retreat
in an opposite direction. This was on October 15th, and from this moment
the neighborhood was all alive with excitement, and five or six hundred
men undertook the pursuit.
It shows a more than Indian adroitness in Nat Turner to have escaped
capture any longer. The cave, the arms, the provisions were found; and
lying among them the notched stick of this miserable Robinson Crusoe,
marked with five weary weeks and six days. But the man was gone. For ten
days more he concealed himself among the wheat-stacks on Mr. Francis's
plantation, and during this time was reduced almost to despair. Once he
decided to surrender himself, and walked by night within two miles of
Jerusalem before his purpose failed him. Three times he tried to get out
of that neighborhood, but in vain: travelling by day was, of course,
out of the question, and by night he found it impossible to elude the
patrol. Again and again, therefore, he returned to his hiding-place,
and during his whole two months' liberty never went five miles from the
Cross Keys. On the 25th of October, he was at last discovered by Mr.
Francis, as he was emerging from a stack. A load of buckshot was
instantly discharged at him, twelve of which passed through his hat
as he fell to the ground. He escaped even then, but his pursuers were
rapidly concentrating upon him, and it is perfectly astonishing that he
could have eluded them for five days more.
On Sunday, October 30th, a man named Benjamin Phipps, going out for the
first time on patrol duty, was passing at noon a clearing in the woods
where a number of pine-trees had long since been felled. There was a
motion among their boughs; he stopped to watch it; and through a gap in
the branches he saw, emerging from a hole in the earth beneath, the
face of Nat Turner. Aiming his gun instantly, Phipps called on him
to surrender. The fugitive, exhausted with watching and privation,
entangled in the branches, armed only with a sword, had nothing to do
but to yield; sagaciously reflecting, also, as he afterwards explained,
that the woods were full of armed men, and that he had better trust
fortune for some later chance of escape, instead of desperately
attempting it then. He was correct in the first impression, since there
were fifty armed scouts within a circuit of two miles. His insurrection
ended where it began; for this spot was only a mile and a half from the
house of Joseph Travis.
Torn, emaciated, ragged, "a mere scarecrow," still wearing the hat
perforated with buckshot, with his arms bound to his sides, he was
driven before the levelled gun to the nearest house, that of a Mr.
Edwards. He was confined there that night; but the news had spread so
rapidly that within an hour after his arrival a hundred persons had
collected, and the excitement became so intense "that it was with
difficulty he could be conveyed alive to Jerusalem." The enthusiasm
spread instantly through Virginia; Mr. Trezvant, the Jerusalem
postmaster, sent notices of it far and near; and Governor Floyd himself
wrote a letter to the "Richmond Enquirer" to give official announcement
of the momentous capture.
When Nat Turner was asked by Mr. T.R. Gray, the counsel assigned him,
whether, although defeated, he still believed in his own Providential
mission, he answered, as simply as one who came thirty years after him,
"Was not Christ crucified?" In the same spirit, when arraigned before
the court, "he answered, 'Not guilty,' saying to his counsel that he did
not feel so." But apparently no argument was made in his favor by his
counsel, nor were any witnesses called,--he being convicted on the
testimony of Levi Waller, and upon his own confession, which was put in
by Mr. Gray, and acknowledged by the prisoner before the six justices
composing the court, as being "full, free, and voluntary." He was
therefore placed in the paradoxical position of conviction by his own
confession, under a plea of "Not guilty." The arrest took place on the
thirtieth of October, 1831, the confession on the first of November, the
trial and conviction on the fifth, and the execution on the following
Friday, the eleventh of November, precisely at noon. He met his death
with perfect composure, declined addressing the multitude assembled, and
told the sheriff in a firm voice that he was ready. Another account says
that he "betrayed no emotion, and even hurried the executioner in the
performance of his duty." "Not a limb nor a muscle was observed to
move. His body, after his death, was given over to the surgeons for
dissection."
This last statement merits remark. There would he no evidence that this
formidable man was not favored during his imprisonment with that full
measure of luxury which slave-jails afford to slaves, but for a rumor
which arose after the execution, that he was compelled to sell his body
in advance, for purposes of dissection, in exchange for food. But it
does not appear probable, from the known habits of Southern anatomists,
that any such bargain could have been needed. For in the circular of the
South Carolina Medical School for that very year I find this remarkable
suggestion:--"Some advantages of a peculiar character are connected
with this institution. No place in the United States affords so great
opportunities for the acquisition of medical knowledge, subjects being
obtained among the colored population in sufficient number for every
purpose, and proper dissections carried on without offending any
individual." What a convenience, to possess for scientific purposes a
class of population sufficiently human to be dissected, but not human
enough to be supposed to take offence at it! And as the same arrangement
may be supposed to have existed in Virginia, Nat Turner would hardly
have gone through the formality of selling his body for food to those
who claimed its control at any rate.
The Confession of the captive was published under authority of Mr. Gray,
in a pamphlet, at Baltimore. Fifty thousand copies of it are said to
have been printed, and it was "embellished with an accurate likeness
of the brigand, taken by Mr. John Crawley. portrait-painter, and
lithographed by Endicott & Swett, at Baltimore." The newly published
"Liberator" said of it, at the time, that it would "only serve to rouse
up other leaders, and hasten other insurrections," and advised grand
juries to indict Mr. Gray. I have never seen a copy of the original
pamphlet, it is not to be found in any of our public libraries, and I
have heard of but one as still existing, although the Confession itself
has been repeatedly reprinted. Another small pamphlet, containing the
main features of the outbreak, was published at New York during the same
year, and this is in my possession. But the greater part of the facts
which I have given were gleaned from the contemporary newspapers.
Who now shall go back thirty years and read the heart of this
extraordinary man, who, by the admission of his captors, "never was
known to swear an oath or drink a drop of spirits,"--who, on the same
authority, "for natural intelligence and quickness of apprehension was
surpassed by few men," "with a mind capable of attaining anything,"--who
knew no book but his Bible, and that by heart,--who devoted himself
soul and body to the cause of his race, without a trace of personal hope
or fear,--who laid his plans so shrewdly that they came at last with
less warning than any earthquake on the doomed community around,--and
who, when that time arrived, took the life of man, woman, and child,
without a throb of compunction, a word of exultation, or an act of
superfluous outrage? Mrs. Stowe's "Dred" seems dim and melodramatic
beside the actual Nat Turner. De Quincey's "Avenger" is his only
parallel in imaginative literature: similar wrongs, similar retribution.
Mr. Gray, his self-appointed confessor, rises into a sort of bewildered
enthusiasm, with the prisoner before him. "I shall not attempt to
describe the effect of his narrative, as told and commented on by
himself, in the condemned-hole of the prison. The calm, deliberate
composure with which he spoke of his late deeds and intentions, the
expression of his fiend-like face when excited by enthusiasm, still
bearing the stains of the blood of helpless innocence about him, clothed
with rags and covered with chains, yet daring to raise his manacled
hands to heaven, with a spirit soaring above the attributes of man,--I
looked on him, and the blood curdled in my veins."
But the more remarkable the personal character of Nat Turner, the
greater the amazement felt that he should not have appreciated the
extreme felicity of his position as a slave. In all insurrections, the
standing wonder seems to be that the slaves most trusted and best used
should be most deeply involved. So in this case, as usual, they resorted
to the most astonishing theories of the origin of the affair. One
attributed it to Free-Masonry, and another to free whiskey,--liberty
appearing dangerous, even in these forms. The poor whites charged it
upon the free colored people, and urged their expulsion, forgetting that
in North Carolina the plot was betrayed by one of this class, and that
in Virginia there were but two engaged, both of whom had slave-wives.
The slaveholding clergymen traced it to want of knowledge of the Bible,
forgetting that Nat Turner knew scarcely anything else. On the other
hand, "a distinguished citizen of Virginia" combined in one sweeping
denunciation "Northern incendiaries, tracts, Sunday-schools, religion,
reading, and writing."
But whether the theories of its origin were wise or foolish,
the insurrection made its mark, and the famous band of Virginia
emancipationists who all that winter made the House of Delegates ring
with unavailing eloquence--till the rise of slave-exportation to
new cotton regions stopped their voices--were but the unconscious
mouth-pieces of Nat Turner. In January, 1832, in reply to a member who
had called the outbreak a "petty affair," the eloquent James McDowell
thus described the impression it left behind:--
"Now, Sir, I ask you, I ask gentlemen, in conscience to say, was that
a 'petty affair' which startled the feelings of your whole
population,--which threw a portion of it into alarm, a portion of it
into panic,--which wrung out from an affrighted people the thrilling
cry, day after day, conveyed to your executive, '_We are in peril of our
lives; send us an army for defence_'? Was that a 'petty affair' which
drove families from their homes,--which assembled women and children in
crowds, without shelter, at places of common refuge, in every condition
of weakness and infirmity, under every suffering which want and terror
could inflict, yet willing to endure all, willing to meet death from
famine, death from climate, death from hardships, preferring anything
rather than the horrors of meeting it from a domestic assassin? Was that
a 'petty affair' which erected a peaceful and confiding portion of the
State into a military camp,--which outlawed from pity the unfortunate
beings whose brothers had offended,--which barred every door, penetrated
every bosom with fear or suspicion,--which so banished every sense of
security from every man's dwelling, that, let but a hoof or horn break
upon the silence of the night, and an aching throb would be driven to
the heart, the husband would look to his weapon, and the mother would
shudder and weep upon her cradle? Was it the fear of Nat Turner, and his
deluded, drunken handful of followers, which produced such effects?
Was it this that induced distant counties, where the very name of
Southampton was strange, to arm and equip for a struggle? No, Sir,
it was the suspicion eternally attached to the slave himself,--the
suspicion that a Nat Turner might be in every family,--that the same
bloody deed might be acted over at any time and in any place,--that the
materials for it were spread through the land, and were always ready for
a like explosion. Nothing but the force of this withering apprehension,
--nothing but the paralyzing and deadening weight with which it falls
upon and prostrates the heart of every man who has helpless dependents
to protect,--nothing but this could have thrown a brave people
into consternation, or could have made any portion of this powerful
Commonwealth, for a single instant, to have quailed and trembled."
While these things were going on, the enthusiasm for the Polish
Revolution was rising to its height. The nation was ringing with a peal
of joy, on hearing that at Frankfort the Poles had killed fourteen
thousand Russians. "The Southern Religious Telegraph" was publishing an
impassioned address to Kosciusko; standards were being consecrated for
Poland in the larger cities; heroes, like Skrzynecki, Czartoryski,
Rozyski, Kaminski, were choking the trump of Fame with their complicated
patronymics. These are all forgotten now; and this poor negro, who did
not even possess a name, beyond one abrupt monosyllable,--for even the
name of Turner was the master's property,--still lives a memory of
terror and a symbol of retribution triumphant.