The Richmond Enquirer (Richmond, Virginia),

November 4, 1831

        GEN. NAT TURNER APPREHENDED: There is no doubt that Nat Turner is caught at last—on the very scene of his atrocities. Rumor says that he displayed no sort of enterprise in the attempt to escape, nor any degree of courage in resisting the person who captured him. Private letters inform that he had been taken and committed to the jail at Southampton. The official account confirms the intelligence. We are indebted to the Governor for a copy of the following letter:

Sussex, 31st October 1831

Sir:

        Perhaps this will reach you before any other intelligence of the capture of Gen. Nat Turner; and as you have had so many accounts of his having been taken, you may be disposed to doubt. Nevertheless he was taken yesterday by Benjamin Phipps, in the County of Southampton in a cave, within a few miles of where the principal part of the depredations were committed, and was this day seen by Mr. Littleton Barker, in confinement, and in the presence, Barker supposed, of nearly one hundred persons, who had collected for the purpose of gratifying their curiosity. I forbear to say more as the whole of the particulars will reach you in a few days.

   I am, Sir, respectfully yours, etc.,

(Signature not given)

[p. 134]

Gen. John Floyd, Governor, Richmond, Va.

        We shall attempt to obtain as accurate account as possible of this murderous Bandit. We shall place it upon record—in order, that if any future historian should hereafter paint him incorrectly, as The Albany Fabulist has the Insurgent Gabriel, the facts may be ready to refute his falsehood.

Henry Irving Tragle, The Southampton Slave Revolt of 1831: A Compilation of Source Material (Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1971), 133-134.