This last statement merits remark.  There would he no evidence that this formidable man was not favored during his imprisonment with that full measure of luxury which slave-jails afford to slaves, but for a rumor which arose after the execution, that he was compelled to sell his body in advance, for purposes of dissection, in exchange for food.  But it does not appear probable, from the known habits of Southern anatomists, that any such bargain could have been needed.  For in the circular of the South Carolina Medical School for that very year I find this remarkable suggestion:—­“Some advantages of a peculiar character are connected with this institution.  No place in the United States affords so great opportunities for the acquisition of medical knowledge, subjects being obtained among the colored population in sufficient number for every purpose, and proper dissections carried on without offending any individual.”  What a convenience, to possess for scientific purposes a class of population sufficiently human to be dissected, but not human enough to be supposed to take offence at it!  And as the same arrangement may be supposed to have existed in Virginia, Nat Turner would hardly have gone through the formality of selling his body for food to those who claimed its control at any rate.

The Confession of the captive was published under authority of Mr. Gray, in a pamphlet, at Baltimore.  Fifty thousand copies of it are said to have been printed, and it was “embellished with an accurate likeness of the brigand, taken by Mr. John Crawley. portrait-painter, and lithographed by Endicott & Swett, at Baltimore.”  The newly published “Liberator” said of it, at the time, that it would “only serve to rouse up other leaders, and hasten other insurrections,” and advised grand juries to indict Mr. Gray.  I have never seen a copy of the original pamphlet, it is not to be found in any of our public libraries, and I have heard of but one as still existing, although the Confession itself has been repeatedly reprinted.  Another small pamphlet, containing the main features of the outbreak, was published at New York during the same year, and this is in my possession.  But the greater part of the facts which I have given were gleaned from the contemporary newspapers.

Who now shall go back thirty years and read the heart of this extraordinary man, who, by the admission of his captors, “never was known to swear an oath or drink a drop of spirits,”—­who, on the same authority, “for natural intelligence and quickness of apprehension was surpassed by few men,” “with a mind capable of attaining anything,”—­who knew no book but his Bible, and that by heart,—­who devoted himself soul and body to the cause of his race, without a trace of personal hope or fear,—­who laid his plans so shrewdly that they came at last with less warning than any earthquake on the doomed community around,—­and who, when that time arrived, took the life of man, woman, and child, without a