Norfolk (Virginia) Herald,

November 14, 1831

reprinted in Richmond Enquirer, November 15, 1831

NAT TURNER:—This wretched culprit expiated his crimes (crimes at the bare mention of which the blood runs cold) on Friday last. He betrayed no emotion, but appeared to be utterly reckless in the awful fate that awaited him and even hurried his executioner in the performance of his duty! Precisely at 12 o’clock he was launched into eternity. There were but a few people to see him hanged—[….appropos the Albany biographer of Negro cut-throats will please to remember that Nat was not torn limbless by horses, but simply “hanged by the neck until he was dead.”—He may say, however, that General Nat sold his body for dissection, and spent the money on ginger cakes.]

A gentleman of Jerusalem has taken down his confession, which he intends to publish with a likeness of the brigand taken by Mr. Crowley, portrait painter of this town, to be lithographed by Endicott and Sweet, of Baltimore.

Henry Irving Tragle, The Southampton Slave Revolt of 1831: A Compilation of Source Material (Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1971), 140.