Led by Nat Turner, the rebels, made up of enslaved African Americans, killed between 55 and 65 White people, making it the deadliest slave revolt for the latter racial group in U.S. history.

Because Turner was educated and a preacher, Southern state legislatures passed new laws prohibiting the education of enslaved people and free Blacks, restricting rights of assembly and other civil liberties for free Blacks, and requiring White ministers to be present at all worship services.

Turner said, "I communicated the great work laid out to do, to four in whom I had the greatest confidence": fellow slaves Henry, Hark, Nelson, and Sam.

An annular solar eclipse on February 12, 1831, was visible in Virginia and much of the southeastern United States; Turner envisioned this as a Black man's hand reaching over the sun.

[11] On August 13, an atmospheric disturbance made the Virginia sun appear bluish-green, possibly the result of a volcanic plume produced by the eruption of Ferdinandea Island off the coast of Sicily.

[13][14] They were armed with knives, hatchets, and blunt instruments; firearms were too difficult to collect and would have drawn unwanted attention.

According to the Richmond Enquirer, "Turner declared that 'indiscriminate slaughter was not their intention after they attained a foothold, and was resorted to in the first instance to strike terror and alarm.

'"[18] The rebels also avoided the Giles Reese plantation, even though it was en route, likely because Turner wanted to keep his wife and children safe.

In Southampton County, Blacks suspected of participating in the rebellion were beheaded by the militia, and "their severed heads were mounted on poles at crossroads as a grisly form of intimidation".

General Eppes ordered a halt to the killing: He will not specify all the instances that he is bound to believe have occurred but pass in silence what has happened, with the expression of his deepest sorrow, that any necessity should be supposed to have existed, to justify a single act of atrocity.

But he feels himself bound to declare, and hereby announces to the troops and citizens, that no excuse will be allowed for any similar acts of violence, after the promulgation of this order.

"[29] A company of militia from Hertford County, North Carolina, reportedly killed forty Blacks in one day and took $23 and a gold watch from the dead.

[30] Captain Solon Borland, leading a contingent from Murfreesboro, North Carolina, condemned the acts "because it was tantamount to theft from the White owners of the slaves".

According to Terry Bisson, Turner's wife Cherry was "beaten and tortured in an attempt to get her to reveal his plans and whereabouts.

"[7] After a raid on the Reese plantation, the Richmond Constitutional Whig reported on September 26 that "some papers [were] given up by his wife, under the lash.

"[35] On October 30, Benjamin Phipps, a farmer, discovered Turner hiding in Southampton County in a depression in the earth created by a large, fallen tree covered with fence rails.

Some urged gradual emancipation, but the pro-slavery side prevailed after Virginia's leading intellectual, Thomas Roderick Dew, president of the College of William and Mary, published "a pamphlet defending the wisdom and benevolence of slavery, and the folly of its abolition".

The confession of the culprit is given, as it were, from his lips—(and when read to him, he admitted its statements to be correct)—but the language is far superior to what Nat Turner could have employed—Portions of it are even eloquently and classically expressed.—This is calculated to cast some shade of doubt over the authenticity of the narrative, and to give the Bandit a character for intelligence which he does not deserve, and ought not to have received.—In all other respects, the confession appears to be faithful and true.

[4] Antebellum enslavers were shocked by the rebellion and feared further slave violence; to them, Turner became "a symbol of terrorism and violent retribution.

[62] Other Southern writers began to promote a paternalistic ideal of improved Christian treatment of slaves, in part to avoid such rebellions.

"[64] In an 1843 speech at the National Negro Convention, Henry Highland Garnet, a former slave and active abolitionist, described Nat Turner as "patriotic", saying that "future generations will remember him among the noble and brave.

"[65] In 1861, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a White Northern writer, praised Turner in a seminal article published in the Atlantic Monthly.

He described Turner as a man "who knew no book but the Bible, and that by heart who devoted himself soul and body to the cause of his race.