From Wikipedia:

Starting with several trusted fellow slaves, Nat Turner ultimately enlisted more than seventy enslaved and free Blacks, some of whom were on horseback.^[36][37] The rebels traveled from house to house, freeing enslaved people and killing many of the White people whom they encountered.^[38]

Muskets and other firearms were too difficult to collect and would gather unwanted attention, so the rebels used knives, hatchets, and blunt instruments.^[38] The rebellion did not discriminate by age or sex and the rebels killed White men, women, and children.^[39][40] Nat Turner confessed to killing only one person, Margaret Whitehead, whom he killed with a blow from a fence post.^[38]

Historian Stephen B. Oates states that Turner called on his group to “kill all the white people”.^[41] A newspaper noted, “Turner declared that ‘indiscriminate slaughter was not their intention after they attained a foothold, and was resorted to in the first instance to strike terror and alarm.'”^[42] The group spared a few homes “because Turner believed the poor White inhabitants ‘thought no better of themselves than they did of negroes.'”^[41] The rebels also avoided the Giles Reese plantation, even though it was in route, likely because Turner wanted to keep his wife and children safe.^[43] The Black rebels killed approximately sixty people before they were defeated by the state militia.^[41] The infantry defeated the insurrection with twice the manpower of the rebels, reinforced by three companies of artillery.^[44]

Turner thought that revolutionary violence would awaken the attitudes of Whites to the reality of the inherent brutality in slave-holding. Turner said he wanted to spread “terror and alarm” among Whites.^[45]