"Nat Turner Certainly Taken!" from the Richmond Enquirer

Reprinted from the Norfolk Herald, this article gives the details of Nat Turner’s capture and offers the author’s views on Turner’s character. Turner’s “wildest superstition and fanaticism” and “miserable ignorance” led him to believe that he could “[conquer] the county of Southampton! As the white people did in the revolution.” Through deception, Turner “seduced” his fellow slaves into joining him. According to the article, he did not actually believe himself to be a religious leader but pretended to be a prophet in order to gain “complete control of his followers.” The writer dismisses Turner’s comparison of his “pretended prophecies with passages in the Holy Scriptures” as “profan[e]” and “proof of his insanity.” 

“Nat Turner Certainly Taken!” Richmond Enquirer. From the collection of the American Antiquarian Society.