every portion of our country, in which this population is to be found.  Public curiosity has been on the stretch to understand the origin and progress of this dreadful conspiracy, and the motives which influences its diabolical actors.  The insurgent slaves had all been destroyed, or apprehended, tried and executed, (with the exception of the leader,) without revealing any thing at all satisfactory, as to the motives which governed them, or the means by which they expected to accomplish their object.  Every thing connected with this sad affair was wrapt in mystery, until Nat Turner, the leader of this ferocious band, whose name has resounded throughout our widely extended empire, was captured.  This “great Bandit” was taken by a single individual, in a cave near the residence of his late owner, on Sunday, the thirtieth of October, without attempting to make the slightest resistance, and on the following day safely lodged in the jail of the County.  His captor was Benjamin Phipps, armed with a shot gun well charged.  Nat’s only weapon was a small light sword which he immediately surrendered, and begged that his life might be spared.  Since his confinement, by permission of the Jailor, I have had ready access to him, and finding that he was willing to make a full and free confession of the origin, progress and consummation of the insurrectory movements of the slaves of which he was the contriver and head; I determined for the gratification of public curiosity to commit his statements to writing, and publish them, with little or no variation, from his own words.  That this is a faithful record of his confessions, the annexed certificate of the County Court of Southampton, will attest.  They certainly bear one stamp of truth and sincerity.  He makes no attempt (as all the other insurgents who were examined did,) to exculpate himself, but frankly acknowledges his full participation in all the guilt of the transaction.  He was not only the contriver of the conspiracy, but gave the first blow towards its execution.

It will thus appear, that whilst every thing upon the surface of society wore a calm and peaceful aspect; whilst not one note of preparation was heard to warn the devoted inhabitants of woe and death, a gloomy fanatic was revolving in the recesses of his own dark, bewildered, and overwrought mind, schemes of indiscriminate massacre to the whites.  Schemes too fearfully executed as far as his fiendish band proceeded in their desolating march.  No cry for mercy penetrated their flinty bosoms.  No acts of remembered kindness made the least impression upon these remorseless murderers.  Men, women and children, from hoary age to helpless infancy were involved in the same cruel fate.  Never did a band of savages do their work of death more unsparingly.  Apprehension for their own personal safety seems to have been the only principle of restraint in the whole course of their bloody proceedings.  And it is not the least remarkable feature in this