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October, 1861.   DOUGLASS' MONTHLY.   539

at him, twelve of which passed through his hat as he fell to the ground.  He escaped even then, but his pursuers were rapidly concentrating upon him, and it is perfectly astonishing that he could have eluded them for five days more. 

On Sunday, Oct. 30th, a man named Benj. Phipps, going out for the first time on patrol duty, was passing at noon a clearing in the woods where a number of pine-trees had long since been felled.  There was a motion among their boughs; he stopped to watch it; and through a gap in the branches he saw, emerging from a hole in the earth beneath, the face of Nat Turner.  Aiming his gun instantly, Phipps called on him to surrender.  The fugitive, exhausted with watching and privation, entangled in the branches, armed only with a sword, had nothing to do but to yield 'sagaciously reflecting, also, as he afterwards explained, that the woods were full of armed men, and that he had better trust fortune for some latter chance of escape, instead of desperately attempting it then. He was correct in the first impression, since there were fifty armed scouts within a circuit of two miles. – His insurrection ended where it began; for this spot was only a mile and a half from the house of Joseph Travis.

Torn, emaciated, ragged, 'a mere scarecrow,' still wearing the hat perforated with buckshot, with his arms bound to his sides, he was driven before the levelled gun to the nearest house, that of a Mr. Edwards.  He was confined there that night; but the news had spread so rapidly that within an hour after his arrival a hundred persons has collected, and the excitement became so intense 'that it was with difficulty he could be conveyed alive to Jerusalem.' The enthusiasm spread instantly through Virginia; Mr. Trezvant, the Jerusalem postmaster, sent notices of it far and near; and Governor Floyd himself wrote a letter to the Richmond Enquirer to give official announcement of the momentous capture.

When Nat Turner was asked by Mr. T. R. Gray, the counsel assigned to him, whether, although defeated, he still believed in his own Providential mission, he answered, as simply as one who came thirty years after him, 'Was not Christ crucified?' In the same spirit, when arraigned before the court, 'he answered, "Not guilty," saying to his counsel, that he did not feel so.'  But apparently no argument was made in his favor by his counsel, nor were any witnesses called–he being convicted on the testimony of Levi Waller, and upon his own confession, which was put in by Mr. Gray, and acknowledged by the prisoner before the six justices composing the court as being 'full, free and voluntary.'  He was therefore placed in the paradoxical position of conviction by his own confession, under a pleas of 'Not guilty.'  The arrest took place on the 30th of October, 1831, the confession on the 1st of November, the trial and conviction on the 5th, and the execution on the following Friday, the 11th of November, precisely at noon.  He met his death with perfect composure, declined addressing the multitude assembled, and told the sheriff in a firm voice that he was ready.  Another account says that he 'betrayed no emotion, and even hurried the executioner in the performance of his duty.'  'Not a limb nor a muscle was observed to move. His body, after his death, was given over to the surgeons for dissection.

This last statement merits remark.  There would be no evidence that this formidable man was not favored during his imprisonment with the full measure of luxury which slavejails afford to slaves, but for a rumor which arose after the execution, that he was compelled to sell his body in advance, for purposes of dissection in exchange for food.– But it does not appear probably, from the known habits of Southern anatomists, that any such bargain could have been needed.– For in the circular of the South Carolina Medical School for that very year, I find this remarkable suggestion:–'Some advantages of a peculiar character are connected with this institution.  No place in the United States affords so great opportunities for the acquisition of medical knowledge, subjects being obtained among the colored population in sufficient number for every purpose, and proper dissections carried on without offending any individual.'  What a convenience, to possess for scientific purposes a class of population sufficiently human to be dissected, but not human enough to be supposed to take offence at it!  And as the same arrangement may be supposed to have existed in Virginia, Nat Turner would hardly have gone through the formality of selling ghis body for food to those who claimed its control at any rate.

The Confession of the captive was published under authority of Mr. Gray, in a pamphlet, at Baltimore.  Fifty thousand copies of it are said to have been printed, and it was 'embellished with an accurate likeness of the brigand, taken by Mr. John Crawley, portrait painter, and lithographed by Edicott & Swett, at Baltimore.'  The newly published Liberator said of it, at the time, that it would 'only serve to rouse up other leaders, and hasten other insurrections,' and advised grand juries to indict Mr. Gray.  I have never seen a copy of the original pamphlet ; it is not to be found in any of our public libraries, and I have heard of but one as still existing, although the Confession itself 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 sear 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 describer this 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 the 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 charged it upon the free colored people, and urged their expulsion, forgetting that in North Carolina the plot was betrayed by one of this class, and the in Virginia there were but two engaged, both of whom had slave wives.  The slaveholding clergyman traced it to want of knowledge of the Bible, forgetting that Nat Turner knew scarcely anything else. On the other hand, 'a distinguished citizen of Virginia' combined in one sweeping denunciation 'Northern incendiaries, tracts, Sunday-schools, religion, reading, and writing.'

But whether the theories of its origin were wise or foolish, the insurrection made its mark, and the famous bad of Virginia emancipationists who had all that winter made the House of Delegates ring with unavailing eloquence–till the rise of slave-exportation to new cotton regions stopped their voices–were but the unconscious mouth-pieces of Nat. Turner.

In January, 1832, in reply to a member who had called the outbreak a 'petty affair', the eloquent James McDowell thus described the impression it left behind"—'Now, Sir, I ask you, I ask gentlemen, in conscience to say, was that a "petty affair" which startled the feelings of your whole population—which threw a portion of it into alarm, a portion of it into panic—which wrung out from an affrighted people the thrilling cry, day after day, conveyed to your Executive, 'We are in peril of our lives; send us an army for defence?"  Was that a "petty affair" which drove families from their homes—which assembled women and children in crowds, without shelter, at places of common refuge, in every condition of weakness and infirmity, under every suffering which want and terror could inflict, yet willing to endure all, willing to meet death from famine, death from climate, death from hardships, preferring anything rather than the horrors of meeting it from a domestic assassin?  Was that a "petty affair" which erected a peaceful and confiding portion of the State into a military camp—which outlawed from pity the unfortunate beings whose brothers had offended—which barred every door, penetrated every bosom with fear or suspicion—which so banished every sense of security from every man's dwelling, that, let but a hoof or horn break upon the silence of the night, and an aching throb would I be driven to the heart, the husband would look to his weapon, and the mother would shudder and weep upon her cradle?  Was it the fear of Nat Turner, and his deluded, drunken handful of followers, which produced such effects?  Was it this that induced distant counties, where the very name of Southampton was strange, to arm and equip for a struggle?  No, Sir, it was the suspicion eternally attached to the slave himself—the suspicion that Nat Turner might be in every family—that the same bloody deed might be acted over at any time and in any place—that the materials for it were spread through the land, and were always ready for a like explosion.  Nothing but the force of this withering apprehension—nothing but the paralyzing and deadening weight with which it falls upon and prostrates the heart of every man who has helpless dependents to protect—nothing but this could have thrown a brave people into consternation, or could have made any portion of this powerful Commonwealth, for a single instant, to have quailed and trembled.'

While these things were going on, the enthusiasm for the Polish Revolution was rising to its height.  The nation was ringing with a peal of joy, on hearing that at Frankfort the Poles had killed fourteen thousand Russians.  The  Southern Religious Telegraph  was publishing an impassioned address to Kosciusko; standards were being consecrated for Polan din the larger cities; heroes, lie Skrzynecki, Czartoryski, Rozyski, Kaminski, were choking the trump of Fame with their complicated patryonymics.  These are all forgotten now; and this poor negro, who did not even possess a name, beyond one abrupt monosyllable--for even the name of Turner was the master's property—still lives a memory of terror and a symbol of retribution triumphant.

—Major-Genreal Fremont, immediately after the surrender of Lexington to the rebels, took the field in person, and he will probably be heard from soon. 

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