seem to have been absorbed in the momentous problems which then occupied
the minds of intelligent American citizens: What Gen. 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 flared on increasing, until the remotest Southern States were
found shuddering at nightly rumors of insurrection; until far-off
European colonies--Antigua, Martinique, Caraccas, Tortola--recognized by
some secret sympathy the same epidemic alarms; until the very boldest
words of freedom were reported as uttered in the Virginia House of
Delegates with unclosed doors; until an obscure young man named Garrison
was indicted at common law in North Carolina, and had a price set upon
his head by the Legislature of Georgia.
Near the south-eastern 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
Murfreesborough in North Carolina, and about twenty-five from the Great
Dismal Swamp. Up to Sunday, the 21st 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
2d of October, 1800. He had belonged originally to Benjamin Turner,--from
whom he took 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 mental precocity, were enough to occasion, among his youthful
companions, a superstitious faith in his gifts and destiny. He had some
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 appeared 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, her
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 well treated, 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 Gov. 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 having been 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 lampblack 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.
The account 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 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 under slavery; 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. 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 Capt. Harris's, so broke up the whole force that
they never re-united. The few who remained together agreed to separate
for a few hours to see if any thing could be done to revive the
insurrection, and meet again that evening at their original rendezvous.
But they never reached it.
Gloomily 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; every thing
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 days and two 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
rural 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. Col. House, commanding at Fort Monroe,
sent at once three companies of artillery under Lieut.-Col. 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 Aug. 24, 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_, Sept. 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 Gen. Eppes, the officer in
command, to be found in the Richmond _Enquirer_ for Sept. 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.