Virginia there were but two engaged, both of whom had slave wives. The
slaveholding clergymen traced it to want of knowledge of the Bible,
forgetting that Nat Turner knew scarcely any thing else. On the other
hand, "a distinguished citizen of Virginia" combined in one sweeping
denunciation "Northern incendiaries, tracts, Sunday schools, religion,
reading, and writing."

But whether the theories of its origin were wise or foolish, the
insurrection made its mark; and the famous band of Virginia
emancipationists, who all that winter made the House of Delegates ring
with unavailing eloquence,--till the rise of slave-exportation to new
cotton regions stopped their voices,--were but the unconscious
mouthpieces of Nat Turner. In January, 1832, in reply to a member who had
called the outbreak a "petty affair," the eloquent James McDowell thus
described the impression it left behind:--

"Now, sir, I ask you, I ask gentlemen in conscience to say, was
that a 'petty affair' which startled the feelings of your whole
population; which threw a portion of it into alarm, a portion of
it into panic; which wrung out from an affrighted people the
thrilling cry, day after day, conveyed to your executive, '_We
are in peril of our lives; send us an army for defence_'? Was
that a 'petty affair' which drove families from their
homes,--which assembled women and children in crowds, without
shelter, at places of common refuge, in every condition of
weakness and infirmity, under every suffering which want and
terror could inflict, yet willing to endure all, willing to meet
death from famine, death from climate, death from hardships,
preferring any thing rather than the horrors of meeting it from a
domestic assassin? Was that a 'petty affair' which erected a