ainly with fowling
pieces with birdshot ammunition, they fled at the first fire, and all but a
score dispersed. The courage of these whites, however, was so outweighed
by their caution that Nat and his fellows were able to continue their
marauding course in a new direction, gradually swelling their numbers to
forty again. That night, however, a false alarm stampeded their bivouac and
again dispersed all the faint-hearted. Nat with his remaining squad then
attacked a homestead just before daybreak on Tuesday, but upon repulse
by the five white men and boys with several slave auxiliaries who were
guarding it they retreated only to meet a militia force which completed
the dispersal. All were promptly killed or taken except Nat who secreted
himself near his late master's home until his capture was accomplished six
weeks afterward. The whites slain by the rebels numbered ten men, fourteen
women and thirty-one children.

The militia in scouring the countryside were prompted by the panic and its
vindictive reaction to shoot down a certain number of innocent blacks along
with the guilty and to make display of some of their severed heads. The
magistrates were less impulsive. They promptly organized a court comprising
all the justices of the peace in the county and assigned attorneys for
the defense of the prisoners while the public prosecutor performed his
appointed task. Forty-seven negroes all told were brought before the court.
As to the five free blacks included in this number the magistrates, who had
only preliminary jurisdiction in their cases, discharged one and remanded
four for trial by a higher court. Of the slaves four, and perhaps a fifth
regarding whom the record is blank, were discharged without trial, and
thirteen more were acquitted. Of those convicted seven were sentenced to
deportation, and seventeen with the ringleader among them, to death by
hanging. In addition there were several slaves convicted of complicity in
neighboring counties.[76]

[Footnote 76: W.S. Drewry, _Slave Insurrections in Virginia, 1830-1865_
(Washington, 1900), recounts this revolt in great detail, and gives a
bibliography. The vouchers in the Virginia archives record only eleven
executions and four deportations of Southampton slaves in this period. It
may be that the rest of those convicted were pardoned.]

This extraordinary event, occurring as it did after a century's lapse since
last an appreciable number of whites on the continent ha