Thomas Ruffin Gray

Thomas Ruffin Gray (1800 – August 23, 1845) was an American attorney, diplomat, and author. He represented several slaves during their trials in the wake of Nat Turner's Rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia in 1831. Gray interviewed Nat Turner and published The Confessions of Nat Turner, the first detailed account of the slave rebellion. Later, Gray was appointed as the U.S. Consul for Tabasco, Mexico and Trinidad de Cuba, Cuba.

Biography Thomas Ruffin Gray was born in 1800 in Southampton County, Virginia. He was the youngest of six children of Anne (née Cocke) Brewer Gray and Thomas Gray, a slaveholder, planter, and horse breeder. Gray inherited his first enslaved person, Hertwell, from his maternal grandfather when he was seven years old. Several years later, Gray had constructed a house on the property, increasing its value to about $500. Gray became a justice of the peace and served as a magistrate in Southampton County in 1828. By mid-September, he had composed a list of forty participants of the rebellion. He also left one-third of his estate to his granddaughter, Ellen Douglas Gray, the only child of Mary and Thomas Ruffin Gray. However, according to Anthony E. Kaye and Gregory P. Downs, Gray never took the post. His work as a consul in Cuba was connected to a scandal, although Gray himself was not faulted. Later, Gray worked as a lawyer in and around Norfolk, Virginia.

Gray died from bilious fever in Portsmouth, Virginia, on August 23, 1845, at the age of 45 years.

The Confessions of Nat Turner

In late October 1831, Gray asked Nat Turner to talk with him about the rebellion; Turner agreed on October 31. Gray compiled the Nat Turner interviews, which were read into evidence in court during the Turner's trial on November 5, 1831.

Five days later, Gray was in Washington, D.C. where he registered his manuscript, receiving a copyright for The Confessions of Nat Turner on November 10, 1831, the day before Turner's execution.

Newspapers in Virginia published excerpts from Gray's pamphlet.

In 1967, William Styron published The Confessions of Nat Turner, a controversial fictionalized account of Nat Turner's Rebellion using the same title as Gray's pamphlet. Styron's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is written from first-person perspective of Turner. Gray's pamphlet, The Confessions of Nat Turner, was the first publication claiming to present Turner's own words regarding the rebellion and his life.