Turner insisted that God had given him a sign to act, that he had shared his plans with only a few trusted followers, and that he knew nothing of any wider conspiracy extending beyond the Southampton County area. Gray interviewed Turner in his jail cell, recorded his “Confessions,” and published them as a pamphlet shortly after Turner was tried, convicted, and executed. On October 30, 1831, Turner surrendered to a local farmer who found him hiding in a cave. State officials took pains to ensure that Turner lived to stand trial by offering a $500 reward for his capture and delivery to jail. An abolitionist writer named Samuel Warner suggested that Turner had hidden himself in the Dismal Swamp with an army of runaways at his disposal. While Turner remained at large, rumors of a wider slave conspiracy flourished. Turner’s ability to elude capture for more than two months only enhanced his mythic stature. Attention focused on Turner it was his “imagined spirit of prophecy” and his extraordinary powers of persuasion, local authorities reported, that had turned obedient slaves into bloodthirsty killers. The confessions of prisoners and the interrogation of eyewitnesses pointed to a small group of ringleaders, one of which was an enslaved preacher by the name of Nat Turner. Reports of as many as 450 participants gave way to revised estimates of perhaps 60 armed men and boys, many of them coerced into joining. Military leaders and others on the scene soon confirmed that the rebels were not runaways but slaves from local plantations. Angry white vigilantes killed dozens of slaves and drove hundreds of free persons of color into exile in the reign of terror that followed.Įarly newspaper reports identified the Southampton insurgents as a leaderless mob of runaway slaves that rose out of the Dismal Swamp to wreak havoc on unsuspecting white families. On August 23, 1831, Governor John Floyd received a note from the Southampton County postmaster stating “that an insurrection of the slaves in that county had taken place, that several families had been massacred and that it would take a considerable military force to put them down.” At least fifty-five white people, many of them women and children, died before a massive force of militiamen and armed volunteers converged on the region and put down the insurrection. Í PROCLAMATION CONCERNING NAT TURNER BY GOVERNOR FLOYD, SEPTEMBER 17, 1831
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