1. Virginia.

2. The whites’ main residence on the plantation.

3. Companionway (nautical); a stairway leading from one deck to another.

4. Shakespeare, Richard III, 3.7.24–26.

5. The wood or metal lever used with the machine (capstan) that hauls in heavy ropes.

6. In 1822 the free black Denmark Vesey (c. 1767–1822) allegedly planned a massive slave rebellion in Charleston, South Carolina, which was discovered by white authorities; Vesey and his accomplices were subsequently put on trial and executed. On 22 August 1831, the slave preacher Nat Turner (1800–1831) led a bloody slave rebellion in Southampton Country, Virginia. Vesey and Turner were regularly invoked as revolutionary heroes by black abolitionists.