About midnight on the Sabbath of the 21st of August, 1831, Turner, with his confederates, burst into his master’s house, and murdered every one of the white inmates. They were armed with knives and axes, and, in order to strike terror into the whites, most shockingly mangled the bodies of their victims. Neither helpless infancy nor female loveliness were spared. They then, by threats of death, compelled all the slaves to join them who would not do it voluntarily, and, exciting themselves to fury by ardent spirits, they proceeded to the next plantation. The happy family were reposing in the sound and quiet slumbers which precede the break of day, as the shouts of the raving insurgents fell upon their ears. It was the work of a moment, and they were all weltering in their gore. Not a white individual was spared to carry the tidings. The blow which dashed the infant left its brains upon the hearth. The head of the youthful maiden was in one part of the room and her mangled body was in another. Here again the number of insurgents was increased by those who voluntarily joined them, and by others who did it through compulsion. Stimulating their passions still more by intoxication, and arming themselves with such guns as they could obtain, some on horseback and others on foot, they rushed along to the next plantation. The morning now began to dawn, and the shrieks of those who fell under the sword and the axe of the negro were heard at a distance, and thus the alarm was soon spread from plantation to plantation, carrying inconceivable terror to every heart. The whites supposed it was a plot deeply laid and widely spread, and that the day had come for indiscriminate massacre. One gentleman who heard the appalling tidings hurried to a neighboring plantation, and arrived there just in time to hear the dying shrieks of the family and triumphant shouts of the negroes. He hastened in terror to his own home, but the negroes were there before him, and his wife and daughter had already fallen victims to their fury. Thus the infuriated slaves went on from plantation to plantation, gathering strength at every step, and leaving not a living white behind. They passed the day, until late in the afternoon, in this work of carnage, and numberless were the victims of their rage.
The population in this country is not dense, and, rapidly as the alarm spread, it was impossible for some time to collect a sufficient number to make a defence. Every family was entirely at the mercy of its own slaves. It is impossible to conceive of more distressing circumstances of apprehension. It is said that most of the insurgent slaves belonged to kind and indulgent masters, and consequently no one felt secure.
Late in the afternoon, a small party of whites, well armed, collected at a plantation for defence. The slaves came on in large numbers, and, emboldened by success, they at first drove back the whites. The slaves pressed on, thirsting for blood, and shouting with triumphant fury as the whites slowly retreated, apparently destined to be butchered, with their wives and children. Just at this awful moment a reinforcement of troops arrived, which turned the tide of victory and dispersed the slaves.
Exhausted with the horrible labors of the day, the insurgents retired to the woods and marshes to pass the night.
Early the next morning they commenced their work again. But the first plantation they attacked—that of Dr. Blount—they were driven from by the slaves, who rallied around their master, and fearlessly hazarded their lives in his defence. By this time the whites were collected in sufficient force to bar their further progress. The fugitives were scattered over the country in small parties, but every point was defended, and wherever they appeared they were routed, shot, taken prisoners, and the insurrection quelled. The leader, Nat Turner, for a few weeks succeeded in concealing himself in a cave in Southampton county, near the theatre of his bloody exploits; but was finally taken, and suffered the extreme penalty of the law.
To describe the state of alarm to which this outbreak gave rise is impossible. Whole States were agitated; every plantation was the object of fear and suspicion; free negroes and slaves underwent the most rigid examination; armed bodies of men were held in constant readiness for any emergency which might arise; every slave who had participated in the insurrection was either shot or hung, and for months the entire South remained in a fever of excitement.
All this time the abolition journals of the North were singing their hallelujahs over the event. They circulated through the South then much more freely than at present, and the following extract was read from one of these by a gentleman to his terrified family, in the presence of the gentleman from whom the above particulars were derived:—
“The news from the South is glorious. General Nat is a benefactor of his race. The Southampton massacre is an auspicious era for the African. The blood of the men, women and children shed by the sword and the axe in the hand of the negro is a just return for the drops which have followed the master’s lash.”
Another extract, of similar rhetoric, from the record of that day, is from a speech by the “Reverend” Mr. Bayley, then of Sheffield, Mass.:—
“It is time that the ice was broken—time that the blacks considered they have the same right to regain their liberties, and even the present property of their owners, as the Hebrews had in despoiling the heathen round about them. The blacks should also know that it is their duty to destroy, if no other means offer conveniently, the monstrous incubuses and tyrants, yclept planters; and I, for one, would gladly lend a helping hand to lay them in one common grave! The country would be all the better for ridding the world of such a nest of vampyres.”