nd San Domingo is a tale for future
history."[39] Mr. Faulkner addressed the House in favor of the gradual
extinction of slavery, concluding with these words: "Tax our lands,
vilify our country, carry the sword of extermination through our
defenceless villages but spare us the curse of slavery, that bitterest
drop from the chalice of the destroying angel."[40]

Mr. MacDowell, referring to the insurrection, thus described its
terror and its awful lesson: "It drove families from their homes,
assembled women and children in crowds in every condition of weakness
and infirmity, and every suffering that want and terror could inflict,
to escape the terrible dread of domestic assassination. It erected a
peaceful and confiding 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 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, a suspicion that a 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."[41]

Although no agreement on the extinction of slavery could be reached,
the question of removing the free people of color was decidedly
another matter. Many who were unwilling to legislate with reference to
slavery did not object to the proposal to remove the free Negroes from
the State. Yet there were others who looked upon this as a political
by-play. The Southampton Insurrection was not the work of free Negroes
but that of slaves. Only two of the many free Negroes in Southampton
county took a part in the insurrection and these two had slave wives.
The North Carolina plot, moreover, was revealed by a free Negro. Many
citizens agreed too with a _Richmond Enquirer_ correspondent of
Hanover, who in speaking for the free people of color point