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 cha