Being baffled, Nat Turner with a party of twenty men determined to cross the Nottaway river at the Cypress Bridge and attack Jerusalem where he expected to procure additional arms and ammunition from the rear. After trying in vain to collect a sufficient force to proceed to Jerusalem, the insurgents turned back toward his rendezvous and reached Major Thomas Ridley's, where forty assembled. He placed out sentinels and lay down to sleep, but there was to be no sleep that night. An attack on his forces was at hand, and the embarrassment which ensued left him with one half, but Turner, determined to recruit his forces, was proceeding in his effort to rally new adherents when the firing of a gun by Hark was the signal for a fire in ambush and a retreat followed. After this Turner never saw many of his men any more. They had killed fifty-five whites but the tide had turned. Turner concealed himself in the woods but was not dismayed, for by messenger he directed his forces to rally at the point from which on the previous Sunday they had started out on their bloody work; but the discovery of white men riding around the place as though they were looking for some one in hiding convinced him that he had been betrayed. The leader then gave up hope of an immediate renewal of the attack and on Thursday, after supplying himself with provisions from the old plantation, he scratched a hole under a pile of fence rails in a field and concealed himself for nearly six weeks, never leaving his hiding place except for a few minutes in the quiet of night to obtain water.
A reign of terror followed in Virginia.[5] Labor was paralyzed, plantations abandoned, women and children were driven from home and crowded into nooks and corners. The sufferings of many of these refugees who spent night after night in the woods were intense. Retaliation began. In a little more than one day 120 Negroes were killed. The newspapers of the times contained from day to day indignant protests against the cruelties perpetrated. One individual boasted that he himself had killed between ten and fifteen Negroes. Volunteer whites rode in all directions visiting plantations. Negroes were tortured to death, burned, maimed and subjected to nameless atrocities. Slaves who were distrusted were pointed out and if they endeavored to escape, they were ruthlessly shot down.[6]