on and support.
They were Hark Travis, Henry Porter, Samuel Francis, Nelson Williams,
Will Francis and Jack Reese, with Nat Turner making the seventh. They
worked out their plans while they ate in the lonely woods of
Southampton their feast of consecration, remaining at the feast until
long after midnight. The massacre was begun at the house of Joseph
Travis, the man to whom Nat Turner then belonged. Armed with a hatchet
Turner entered his master's chamber, the door having been broken open
with the axe, and aimed the first blow of death. The hatchet glanced
harmless from the head of the would-be victim and the first fatal blow
was given by Will Francis, the one of the party who had got into the
plot without Nat Turner's suggestion. All of his master's household,
five in number, soon perished.[4]

The insurgents procured here four guns, several old muskets with a few
rounds of ammunition. At the barn, under the command of Nat Turner the
party was drilled and maneuvered. Nat Turner himself assumed the title
of General Cargill with a stipend of ten dollars a day. Henry Porter,
the paymaster, was to receive five dollars a day, and each private one
dollar. Thence they marched from plantation to plantation until by
Monday morning the party numbered fifteen with nine mounted. Before
nine o'clock the force had increased to forty and the insurgents had
covered an extent of territory two or three miles distant from the
first point of attack, sweeping everything before them. Nat Turner
generally took his station in the rear, with fifteen or twenty of the
best armed and reliable men at the front, who generally approached the
houses as fast as their horses could run for the double purpose of
preventing escapes and striking terror. His force continued to
increase until they numbered sixty, all armed with guns, axes, swords,
and clubs, and mounted. This line of attack was kept up until late
Monday afternoon, when they reached a point, about three miles distant
from Jerusalem, the county seat, where Nat Turner reluctantly yielded
to a halt while some of his forces went in search of reenforcements.
He was eager to push on to the county seat as speedily as possible and
capture it. This delay proved the turning point in the enterprise.

Impatient at the delay of his men who had turned aside, Turner started
to the mansion house whither they had gone and on their return to the
wood found a party of white men who had pursued the bloody path