The Liberator (Boston, Massachusetts),

September 24, 1831

BLOOD! BLOOD!! BLOOD!!!

Another Insurrection!

        North Carolina is thrown into a high fever! The Avenger is abroad, scattering desolation and death in his path! An insurrection has broken out among the slaves near Wilmington, the town is reported to be burnt, and seventeen families murdered!! At the last accounts, the insurgents were slaying and burning all before them, and women and children were flying in every direction almost distracted. . . .

        We have no room for particulars—not even for comments. So much for oppression! so much for the happiness of the slaves! so much for the security of the South! Where now are our white boasters of liberty? [p. 84] where the Polish shouters? where the admirers of those who die for liberty? Let the blood which is now flowing rest upon the advocates of war—upon the heads of the oppressors and their apologists. Yea, God will require it at their hands. MEN MUST BE FREE!

        “Hath not” a slave “hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions,--hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same summer and winter, as his master is? If you lash him, does he not bleed? If you wrong him, shall he not revenge?”

Eric Foner, editor, Nat Turner (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1971), 83-84.