Confessions: Of Text and Paratext

This chapter analyzes the pamphlet, The Confessions of Nat Turner (1831), written by a white attorney named Thomas Ruffin Gray. The pamphlet “immediately became the standard account” of the event that became known as the Turner Rebellion. The event has spawned many commentaries, both historical and literary. Without exception all grant considerable prominence to Gray's pamphlet. But like all documents generated in the course of master-class investigations of slave revolts, alleged or actual, The Confessions raises obvious evidentiary quandaries: credibility, reliability, authenticity. The chapter considers precisely what kind of historical source this document entails, how it should be interrogated, and what it can tell us. In doing so, this chapter investigates the pamphlet's paratextual aspects.