Virginia from within, with six men, and with the determination to spare
no life until his power was established. John Brown intended to pass
rapidly through Virginia, and then retreat to the mountains. Nat Turner
intended to "conquer Southampton County as the white men did in the
Revolution, and then retreat, if necessary, to the Dismal Swamp." Each
plan was deliberately matured; each was in its way practicable; but each
was defeated by a single false step, as will soon appear.

We must pass over the details of horror, as they occurred during the next
twenty-four hours. Swift and stealthy as Indians, the black men passed
from house to house,--not pausing, not hesitating, as their terrible work
went on. In one thing they were humaner than Indians, or than white men
fighting against Indians: there was no gratuitous outrage beyond the
death-blow itself, no insult, no mutilation; but in every house they
entered, that blow fell on man, woman, and child,--nothing that had a
white skin was spared. From every house they took arms and ammunition,
and from a few money. On every plantation they found recruits: those
dusky slaves, so obsequious to their master the day before, so prompt to
sing and dance before his Northern visitors, were all swift to transform
themselves into fiends of retribution now; show them sword or musket, and
they grasped it, though it were an heirloom from Washington himself. The
troop increased from house to house,--first to fifteen, then to forty,
then to sixty. Some were armed with muskets, some with axes, some with
scythes, some came on their masters' horses. As the numbers increased,
they could be divided, and the awful work was carried on more rapidly
still. The plan then was for an advanced guard of horsemen to approach
each house at a gallop, and surround it till the others came up.
Meanwhile, what agonies of terror must have taken place within, shared
alike by innocent and by guilty! what memories of wrongs inflicted on
those dusky creatures, by some,--what innocent participation, by others,