By noon there were some
sixty in the straggling ranks, but when shortly afterward they met a squad
of eighteen rallying whites, armed like themselves mainly with fowling
pieces with birdshot ammunition, they fled at the first fire, and all but a
score dispersed. The courage of these whites, however, was so outweighed
by their caution that Nat and his fellows were able to continue their
marauding course in a new direction, gradually swelling their numbers to
forty again. That night, however, a false alarm stampeded their bivouac and
again dispersed all the faint-hearted. Nat with his remaining squad then
attacked a homestead just before daybreak on Tuesday, but upon repulse
by the five white men and boys with several slave auxiliaries who were
guarding it they retreated only to meet a militia force which completed
the dispersal. All were promptly killed or taken except Nat who secreted
himself near his late master's home until his capture was accomplished six
weeks afterward. The whites slain by the rebels numbered ten men, fourteen
women and thirty-one children.
The militia in scouring the countryside were prompted by the panic and its
vindictive reaction to shoot down a certain number of innocent blacks along
with the guilty and to make display of some of their severed heads.
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