ober, 1800. He had belonged originally to Benjamin
Turner,--whence his last name, slaves having usually no patronymic,--had
then been transferred to Putnam Moore, and then to his present owner.
He had, by his own account, felt himself singled out from childhood for
some great work; and he had some peculiar marks on his person, which,
joined to his great mental precocity, were enough to occasion, among his
youthful companions, a superstitious faith in his gifts and destiny.
He had great mechanical ingenuity also, experimentalized very early in
making paper, gunpowder, pottery, and in other arts which in later life
he was found thoroughly to understand. His moral faculties were very
strong, so that white witnesses admitted that he had never been known to
swear an oath, to drink a drop of spirits, or to commit a theft. And in
general, so marked were his early peculiarities, that people said "he
had too much sense to be raised, and if he was, he would never be of
any use as a slave." This impression of personal destiny grew with his
growth;--he fasted, prayed, preached, read the Bible, heard voices when
he walked behind his plough, and communicated his revelations to the
awe-struck slaves. They told him in return, that, "if they had his
sense, they would not serve any master in the world."

The biographies of slaves can hardly be individualized; they belong to
the class. We know bare facts; it is only the general experience of
human beings in like condition which can clothe them with life. The
outlines are certain, the details are inferential. Thus, for instance,
we know that Nat Turner's young wife was a slave; we know that she
belonged to a different master from himself; we know little more than
this, but this is much. For this is equivalent to saying that by day or
by night that husband had no more power to protect her than the man who
lies bound upon a plundered vessel's deck has power to protect his wife
on board the pirate-schooner disappearing in the horizon; she may be
reverenced, she may be outraged; it is in the powerlessness that the
agony lies. There is, indeed, one thing more which we do know of this
young woman: the Virginia newspapers state that she was tortured under
the lash, after her husband's execution, to make her produce his papers:
this is all.

What his private experiences and special privileges or wrongs may have
been, it is therefore now impossible to say. Travis was declared to be
"more humane an