Virginia newspapers state that she was tortured under the lash, after her
husband's execution, to make her produce his papers: this is all.

What his private experiences and special privileges or wrongs may have
been, it is therefore now impossible to say. Travis was declared to be
"more humane and fatherly to his slaves than any man in the county;" but
it is astonishing how often this phenomenon occurs in the contemporary
annals of slave insurrections. The chairman of the county court also
stated, in pronouncing sentence, that Nat Turner had spoken of his master
as "only too indulgent;" but this, for some reason, does not appear in
his printed Confession, which only says, "He was a kind master, and
placed the greatest confidence in me." It is very possible that it may
have been so, but the printed accounts of Nat Turner's person look
suspicious: he is described in Gov. Floyd's proclamation as having a scar
on one of his temples, also one on the back of his neck, and a large knot
on one of the bones of his right arm, produced by a blow; and although
these were explained away in Virginia newspapers as having been produced
by fights with his companions, yet such affrays are entirely foreign to
the admitted habits of the man. It must therefore remain an open
question, whether the scars and the knot were produced by black hands or
by white.

Whatever Nat Turner's experiences of slavery might have been, it is
certain that his plans were not suddenly adopted, but that he had brooded
over them for years. To this day there are traditions among the Virginia
slaves of the keen devices of "Prophet Nat." If he was caught with lime
and lampblack in hand, conning over a half-finished county-map on the
barn-door, he was always "planning what to do if he were blind"; or,
"studying how to get to Mr. Francis's house." When he had called a
meeting of slaves, and some poor whites came eavesdropping, the poor