American Beacon (Norfolk, Virginia),

August 30, 1831

 

THE MASSACRE AT SOUTHAMPTON

 

        The whole of the mounted volunteers in the expedition from this town and Portsmouth returned last evening to their homes. Their duties have been no less arduous and fatiguing than efficacious, and reflect the highest credit on their Zealand intrepidity as citizens and soldiers. They concur in stating that the miscreants are prostrate, and that the citizens of Southampton and its vicinity who were lately flying in dismay from their inhuman butcheries are returning in confidence to their dwellings, fully assured that the vengeance of an incensed people will fall with heaviness upon those whom the arms of our soldiers may have spared.

 

        We have been politely furnished with the following extracts of a letter from the late scene of the butchery, written by one of the Richmond Dragoons.

 

                                                                                          Southampton, Saturday August 27th.

 

        “The war is over, and the enemy are captured, I believe, with the exception of the Chief, the notorious Cap. Nat and 2 or 3 others. Our Dragoons will, presume, be discharged today. As our horses are very much jaded we cannot get home under two days, say about [p. 56] Monday evening. The panic in this section of the country has entirely subsided, confidence is re-established, a salutary lesson has been taught, and a dreadful vengeance awaits the guilty.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

        A respectable correspondent of the Herald at Murfreesboro, N.C., states, upon the best information he could obtain, that 31 negroes have been killed, and that the jail at Jerusalem is filled and overflowing with prisoners. He gives the following:

 

List of Persons Considered to Have Been Killed

Joseph Travers, wife and 3 chidlren, 5; Luther Francis, 1; Wm. Reese and mother, 2; Mrs. Eliza Turner and 2 others, 3; Henry Bryant, wife, child and mother in law, 4; Mrs. Whitehead,5 daughters and 1 son, 7; Trajan Doyle, 1; Mrs. John Williams and child, 2; Nat Francis’s two children and 1 overseer, 3; Thos. Barrow (who bravely fought between 20 and 30 negroes until his wife escaped,) 1; Mrs. Waller and 8 children and a young lady, 10; 2 daughters of Francis Felts, 2; Burwell Joyce’s daughter, 1; Mr. and Mrs. Williams and 2 others, 4; Jacob Williams wife, 3 children, and Drewry, 5; Caswell Worrell’s wife and child, 2; Rebecca Vaughan, 2 sons and niece, 4; James Story and wife, 2; Total 59.

 

 

From Henry Irving Tragle, The Southampton Slave Revolt of 1831: A Compilation of Source Material (Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1971), pp. 55-56.