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Nat Turner's Rebellion: About

Nat Turner's Rebellion

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Who was Nat Turner?

Nathanial “Nat” Turner (1800-1831) was an enslaved man who led a rebellion of enslaved people on August 21, 1831. His action set off a massacre of up to 200 Black people and a new wave of oppressive legislation prohibiting the education, movement, and assembly of enslaved people. The rebellion also stiffened pro-slavery, anti-abolitionist convictions that persisted in that region until the American Civil War (1861–65).

Turner was born on the Virginia plantation of Benjamin Turner, who allowed him to be instructed in reading, writing, and religion. Sold three times in his childhood and hired out to John Travis (1820s), he became a fiery preacher and leader of enslaved Africans on Benjamin Turner’s plantation and in his Southampton County neighborhood, claiming that he was chosen by God to lead them from bondage. Believing in signs and hearing divine voices, Turner was convinced by an eclipse of the sun (1831) that the time to rise up had come, and he enlisted the help of four other enslaved men in the area. An insurrection was planned, aborted, and rescheduled for August 21,1831, when he and six others killed the Travis family, managed to secure arms and horses, and enlisted about 75 other enslaved people in a disorganized insurrection that resulted in the murder of an estimated 55 white people. 

Afterwards, Turner hid nearby successfully for six weeks until his discovery, conviction, and hanging at Jerusalem, Virginia, along with 16 of his followers. The incident put fear in the heart of Southerners, ended the organized emancipation movement in that region, resulted in even harsher laws against enslaved people, and deepened the schism between slave-holders and free-soilers (an anti-slavery political party whose slogan was ‘free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men’) that would culminate in the Civil War. Continue reading from History Channel

Turner's Divine Motivation

Turner claimed to have been divinely chosen to lead the rebellion. The divine message to return to his master wasn’t the last that Turner would claim to have received from God. He reportedly confessed to Gray that he received divine visions to avenge slavery and lead his fellow enslaved people from bondage. The most vivid of these visions came on May 12, 1828, when Turner “heard a loud noise in the heavens, and the Spirit instantly appeared to me and said the serpent was loosened, and Christ had laid down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and that I should take it on and fight against the serpent, for the time was fast approaching when the first should be last and the last should be first.” Continue reading from History Channel

From our Collection

Link to Nat Turner's Slave Rebellion by Michael Burgan in Freading
Link to Up From Slavery in Hoopla
Link to Nat Turner by Kyle Baker in Freading
Link to America's Long Struggle Against Slavery by Great Courses in Hoopla
Link to Birth of a Nation by Nate Parker in the Catalog
Link to  Login to Download The Press and Slavery in America, 1791–1859 by Brian Gabrial in Freading
Link to I Was Born a Slave by Yuval Taylor in Freading
Link to Twelve Years a Slave and Other Slave Narratives by Various Authors in Freading
Link to Life Upon These Shores by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in the Catalog

Link to African American History Resource Guide Series Homepage