has never experienced such a distressing time as we have had since
Sunday night last..... Every house, room, and corner in this place is
full of women and children, driven from home, who had to take the woods
until they could get to this place." "For many miles around their
track," says another, "the county is deserted by women and children."
Still another writes, "Jerusalem is full of women, most of them from
the other side of the river,--about two hundred at Vix's." Then follow
descriptions of the sufferings of these persons, many of whom had lain
night after night in the woods. But the immediate danger was at an end,
the short-lived insurrection was finished, and now the work of
vengeance was to begin. In the frank phrase of a North Carolina
correspondent,--"The massacre of the whites was over, and the white
people had commenced the destruction of the negroes, which was continued
after our men got there, from time to time, as they could fall in with
them, all day yesterday." A postscript adds, that "passengers by the
Fayetteville stage say, that, by the latest accounts, one hundred and
twenty negroes had been killed,"--this being little more than one day's
work.

These murders were defended as Nat Turner defended his: a fearful blow
must be struck. In shuddering at the horrors of the insurrection, we
have forgotten the far greater horrors of its suppression.

The newspapers of the day contain many indignant protests against the
cruelties which took place. "It is with pain," says a correspondent
of the "National Intelligencer," September 7, 1831, "that we speak of
another feature of the Southampton Rebellion; for we have been most
unwilling to have our sympathies for the sufferers diminished or
affected by their misconduct. We allude to the slaughter of many blacks
without trial and under circumstances of great barbarity..... We met
with an individual of intelligence who told us that he himself had
killed between ten and fifteen..... We [the Richmond troop] witnessed
with surprise the sanguinary temper of the population, who evinced a
strong disposition to inflict immediate death on every prisoner."

There is a remarkable official document from General Eppes, the officer
in command, to be found in the "Richmond Enquirer" for September 6,
1831. It is an indignant denunciation of precisely these outrages; and
though he refuses to give details, he supplies their place by epithets:
"revolting,"--"inhuman and not to be j