of the extent of the alarm, although great efforts were afterwards made
to represent it as a trifling affair. A distinguished citizen of Virginia
wrote, three months later, to the Hon. W. B. Seabrook of South Carolina,
"From all that has come to my knowledge during and since that affair, I
am convinced most fully that every black preacher in the country east of
the Blue Ridge was in the secret." "There is much reason to believe,"
says the Governor's Message on Dec. 6, "that the spirit of insurrection
was not confined to Southampton. Many convictions have taken place
elsewhere, and some few in distant counties." The withdrawal of the
United States troops, after some ten days' service, was a signal for
fresh excitement; and an address, numerously signed, was presented to the
United States Government, imploring their continued stay. More than three
weeks after the first alarm, the governor sent a supply of arms into
Prince William, Fauquier, and Orange Counties. "From examinations which
have taken place in other counties," says one of the best newspaper
historians of the affair (in the Richmond _Enquirer_ of Sept. 6), "I fear
that the scheme embraced a wider sphere than I at first supposed." Nat
Turner himself, intentionally or otherwise, increased the confusion by
denying all knowledge of the North Carolina outbreak, and declaring that
he had communicated his plans to his four confederates within six months;
while, on the other hand, a slave-girl, sixteen or seventeen years old,
belonging to Solomon Parker, testified that she had heard the subject
discussed for eighteen months, and that at a meeting held during the
previous May some eight or ten had joined the plot.

It is astonishing to discover, by laborious comparison of newspaper
files, how vast was the immediate range of these insurrectionary alarms.
Every Southern State seems to have borne its harvest of terror. On the
eastern shore of Maryland, great alarm was at once manifested, especially
in the neighborhood of Easton and Snowhill; and the houses of colored men