branches, armed only with a sword, had nothing to do but to
yield,--sagaciously reflecting, also, as he afterwards explained, that
the woods were full of armed men, and that he had better trust fortune
for some later chance of escape, instead of desperately attempting it
then. He was correct in the first impression, since there were fifty
armed scouts within a circuit of two miles. His insurrection ended where
it began; for this spot was only a mile and a half from the house of
Joseph Travis.

Tom, emaciated, ragged, "a mere scarecrow," still wearing the hat
perforated with buckshot, with his arms bound to his sides, he was driven
before the levelled gun to the nearest house, that of a Mr. Edwards. He
was confined there that night; but the news had spread so rapidly that
within an hour after his arrival a hundred persons had collected, and the
excitement became so intense "that it was with difficulty he could be
conveyed alive to Jerusalem." The enthusiasm spread instantly through
Virginia; M. Trezvant, the Jerusalem postmaster, sent notices of it far
and near; and Gov. Floyd himself wrote a letter to the Richmond
_Enquirer_ to give official announcement of the momentous capture.

When Nat Turner was asked by Mr. T. R. Gray, the counsel assigned him,
whether, although defeated, he still believed in his own Providential
mission, he answered, as simply as one who came thirty years after him,
"Was not Christ crucified?" In the same spirit, when arraigned before the
court, "he answered, 'Not guilty,' saying to his counsel that he did not
feel so." But apparently no argument was made in his favor by his
counsel, nor were any witnesses called,--he being convicted on the
testimony of Levi Waller, and upon his own confession, which was put in
by Mr. Gray, and acknowledged by the prisoner before the six justices
composing the court, as being "full, free, and voluntary." He was