AP Success - AP US History: Nat Turner’s Confession

On the evening of 1st November, I visited NAT in prison... "You have asked me to give a history of the motives which induced me to undertake the late insurrection... I was thirty-one years of age the 2d of October last, and born the property of Benj. Turner, of this county... a circumstance occurred which made an indelible impression on my mind, and laid the ground work of that enthusiasm, which has terminated so fatally to many, both white and black... Being at play with other children, when three or four years old, I was telling them something, which my mother overhearing, said it had happened before I was I born... I surely would be a prophet, as the Lord had shewn me things that had happened before my birth…
It was then observed that I must spill the first blood... The murder of this family, five in number, was the work of a moment... we got here, four guns that would shoot, and several old muskets, with a pound or two of powder... I formed them in a line as soldiers, and after carrying them through all the manoeuvres I was master of, marched them off to Mr. Salathul Francis', about six hundred yards distant…"