During the year 1831, up to the twenty-third of August, the Virginia newspapers were absorbed in the momentous problems which then occupied the minds of intelligent American citizens:—­What General Jackson should do with the scolds, and what with the disreputables,—­Should South Carolina be allowed to nullify? and would the wives of Cabinet Ministers call on Mrs. Eaton?  It is an unfailing opiate, to turn over the drowsy files of the “Richmond Enquirer”, until the moment when those dry and dusty pages are suddenly kindled into flame by the torch of Nat Turner.  Then the terror flares on increasing, until the remotest Southern States are found shuddering at nightly rumors of insurrection,—­until far-off European colonies, Antigua, Martinique, Caraccas, Tortola, recognize by some secret sympathy the same epidemic alarms,—­until the very boldest words of freedom are reported as uttered in the Virginia House of Delegates with unclosed doors,—­until an obscure young man named Garrison is indicted at Common Law in North Carolina, and has a price set upon his head by the Legislature of Georgia.  The insurrection revived in one agonizing reminiscence all the distresses of Gabriel’s Revolt, thirty years before; and its memory endures still fresh, now that thirty added years have brought the more formidable presence of General Butler.  It is by no means impossible that the very children or even confederates of Nat Turner may be included at this moment among the contraband articles of Fort Monroe.

Near the southeastern border of Virginia, in Southampton County, there is a neighborhood known as “The Cross Keys”.  It lies fifteen miles from Jerusalem, the county-town or “court-house”, seventy miles from Norfolk, and about as far from Richmond.  It is some ten or fifteen miles from Murfreesboro in North Carolina, and about twenty-five from the Great Dismal Swamp.  Up to Sunday, the twenty-first of August, 1831, there was nothing to distinguish it from any other rural, lethargic, slipshod Virginia neighborhood, with the due allotment of mansion-houses and log-huts, tobacco-fields and “old-fields”, horses, dogs, negroes, “poor white folks”, so called, and other white folks, poor without being called so.  One of these last was Joseph Travis, who had recently married the widow of one Putnam Moore, and had unfortunately wedded to himself her negroes also.

In the woods on the plantation of Joseph Travis, upon the Sunday just named, six slaves met at noon for what is called in the Northern States a picnic and in the Southern a barbecue.  The bill of fare was to be simple:  one brought a pig, and another some brandy, giving to the meeting an aspect so cheaply convivial that no one would have imagined it to be the final consummation of a conspiracy which had been for six months in preparation.  In this plot four of the men had been already initiated,—­Henry, Hark or Hercules, Nelson, and Sam.  Two others were novices, Will and Jack by name.  The party had remained together from twelve to three o’clock, when a seventh man joined them,—­a short, stout, powerfully built person, of dark mulatto complexion and strongly-marked African features, but with a face full of expression and resolution.  This was Nat Turner.