Terror filled the night, terror filled the State, the most abject terror clutched the bravest hearts.  The panic was pitiable, horrible.  James McDowell, one of the leaders of the Old Dominion, gave voice to the awful memories and sensations of that night, in the great anti-slavery debate, which broke out in the Virginia Legislature, during the winter afterward.  One of the legislators, joined to his idol, and who now, that the peril had passed, laughed at the uprising as a “petty affair.”  McDowell retorted—­“Was that a ‘petty affair,’ which erected a peaceful and confiding portion of the 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.”

Sixty one whites and more than a hundred blacks perished in this catastrophe.  The news produced a profound sensation in the Union.  Garrison himself, as he records, was horror-struck at the tidings.  Eight months before he had in a strain of prophecy penetrated the future and caught a glimpse of just such an appalling tragedy: 

“Wo, if it come with storm, and blood, and fire, When midnight darkness veils the earth and sky!  Wo to the innocent babe—­the guilty sire—­ Mother and daughter—­friends of kindred tie! Stranger and citizen alike shall die! Red-handed slaughter his revenge shall feed, And havoc yell his ominous death-cry, And wild despair in vain for mercy plead—­ While hell itself shall shrink and sicken at the deed!”

After the Southampton insurrection the slavery agitation increased apace, and the Liberator and its editor became instantly objects of dangerous notoriety in it.  The eyes of the country were irresistibly drawn to them.  They were at the bottom of the uprising, they were instigating the slaves to similar outbreaks.  The savage growlings of a storm came thrilling on every breeze from the South, and wrathful mutterings against the agitator and his paper grew thenceforth more distinct and threatening throughout the free States.  October 15, 1831, Garrison records in the Liberator that he “is constantly