In late 1831 Thomas Ruffin Gray published The Confessions of Nat Turner, the Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southampton, Va. Gray was the courtappointed attorney who represented Nat Turner, the leader of a bloody slave revolt in the summer of that year, in his subsequent legal defense. The pamphlet was based on Gray’s own investigations after the revolt and on the interview he conducted with Turner after his arrest in October 1831, and most of the pamphlet purportedly consists of Turner’s own words.