Nat Turner's Rebellion

Led by Nat Turner, the rebels killed between 55 and 65 White people, making it the deadliest slave revolt for white people in U.S. history. The rebellion was effectively suppressed within a few days, at Belmont Plantation on the morning of August 23, but Turner survived in hiding for more than 30 days afterward.

Nat Turner's Rebellion

Part of the origins of the American Civil War and North American slave revolts
19th Century woodcut depiction of the Southampton Insurrection.
Location of the rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia
Date	August 21–23, 1831 (1831-08-21 – 1831-08-23)
Duration	3 days
Location	Southampton County, Virginia, United States
Coordinates	36°46′12″N 77°09′40″W / 36.770°N 77.161°W / 36.770; -77.161
Also known as	Nat Turner's Rebellion Southampton Insurrection Nat Turner's Insurrection Nat Turner's Revolt
Type	Slave rebellion
Organized by	Nat Turner
Outcome	Rebellion suppressed Participants tried and executed or sold
Casualties
56 to 65 White men, women, and children
36 to 120 Black rebels and non-rebels

There was widespread fear amongst the White population in the aftermath of the rebellion. Militia and mobs killed as many as 120 enslaved people and free African Americans in retaliation. After trials, the Commonwealth of Virginia executed 56 enslaved people accused of participating in the rebellion, including Turner himself; many Blacks who had not participated were also persecuted in the frenzy. Because Turner was educated and was a preacher, Southern state legislatures subsequently passed new laws prohibiting the education of enslaved people and free Blacks, restricting rights of assembly and other civil liberties for free Blacks, and requiring White ministers to be present at all worship services.

Lonnie Bunch, director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, said, "The Nat Turner rebellion is probably the most significant uprising in American history."

Turner began communicating his plans to a small circle of trusted fellow slaves. "All his initial recruits were other slaves from his neighborhood". These scattered men had to find ways to communicate their intentions without revealing the plot. Songs may have tipped the neighborhood members to movements: "It is believed that one of the ways Turner summoned fellow conspirators to the woods was through the use of particular songs." According to author Terry Bisson, Turner entrusted his wife with "his most secret plans and papers". In a report by James Trezvant immediately following the uprising, Cherry was mentioned as having said that Nat was "digesting" a plan for the revolt "for years".

Turner eagerly anticipated God's signal to "slay my enemies with their own weapons". He began preparations for an uprising against the slaveholders in Southampton County. Turner said, "I communicated the great work laid out to do, to four in whom I had the greatest confidence," fellow slaves Henry, Hark, Nelson, and Sam.

Beginning in February 1831, Turner interpreted atmospheric conditions as signs to prepare for the revolt. An annular solar eclipse on February 12, 1831 was visible in Virginia and much of the southeastern United States; Turner envisioned this as a Black man's hand reaching over the sun. Illness prevented Turner from starting the rebellion as planned on Independence Day, July 4, 1831. The conspirators used the delay to extend planning. On August 13, an atmospheric disturbance made the Virginia sun appear bluish-green, possibly the result of a volcanic plume produced by the eruption of Ferdinandea Island off the coast of Sicily. Turner took this, like the earlier eclipse, as a divine signal, and started the rebellion a week later on August 21.

The rebellion expanded from several trusted slaves to over seventy enslaved and free Blacks, some of whom were on horseback. They were armed with knives, hatchets, and blunt instruments; firearms were too difficult to collect and would have drawn unwanted attention

The rebels killed White people without discriminating for age or sex. Turner's slaveowner and his family were the first to be killed. The rebels then traveled from house to house, freeing slaves and killing Whites. Historian Stephen B. Oates states that Turner called on his group to "kill all the white people". According to a newspaper: "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.'" A few homes were spared "because Turner believed the poor White inhabitants 'thought no better of themselves than they did of negroes.'" The rebels also avoided the Giles Reese plantation, even though it was en route, likely because Turner wanted to keep his wife and children safe. Nat Turner confessed to killing only one person, Margaret Whitehead, whom he killed with a blow from a fence post. The last to be attacked was the Rebecca Vaughan House. The rebels killed approximately sixty people before being defeated by the state militia; the militia had twice the manpower and three companies of artillery.

Turner thought that revolutionary violence would force Whites to acknowledge the brutality of slavery. Turner said he wanted to spread "terror and alarm" among Whites.

 

Within a day of suppressing the rebellion, the local militia was joined by detachments from the USS Natchez and USS Warren in Norfolk and militias from neighboring counties in Virginia and North Carolina. Brigadier General William Henry Brodnax commanded the Virginia militia.

In Southampton County, Blacks suspected of participating in the rebellion were beheaded by the militia, and "their severed heads were mounted on poles at crossroads as a grisly form of intimidation". A local road (now Virginia State Route 658) was called "Blackhead Signpost Road" after it became the site of one such display.

Rumors quickly spread that the slave revolt had spread as far south as Alabama. Fears led to reports in North Carolina of slave "armies" on highways, burning and massacring the White inhabitants of Wilmington, North Carolina, and marching on the state capital. The fear and alarm resulted in White violence against Blacks on flimsy pretenses. The editor of the Richmond Whig described the scene as "the slaughter of many blacks without trial and under circumstances of great barbarity". The violence continued for two weeks after the rebellion. General Eppes ordered a halt to the killing:

He will not specify all the instances that he is bound to believe have occurred but pass in silence what has happened, with the expression of his deepest sorrow, that any necessity should be supposed to have existed, to justify a single act of atrocity. But he feels himself bound to declare, and hereby announces to the troops and citizens, that no excuse will be allowed for any similar acts of violence, after the promulgation of this order.

In a letter to the New York Evening Post, Reverend G. W. Powell wrote that "many negroes are killed every day. The exact number will never be known." A company of militia from Hertford County, North Carolina, reportedly killed forty Blacks in one day and took $23 and a gold watch from the dead. Captain Solon Borland, leading a contingent from Murfreesboro, North Carolina, condemned the acts "because it was tantamount to theft from the White owners of the slaves".

Modern historians concur that the militias and mobs killed as many as 120 Blacks, most of whom were not involved with the rebellion.

Turner eluded capture for six weeks but remained in Southampton County. According to author Terry Bisson, Turner's wife Cherry was "beaten and tortured in an attempt to get her to reveal his plans and whereabouts." Following a raid on the Reese plantation, the Richmond Constitutional Whig reported on September 26, 1831 that "some papers [were] given up by his wife, under the lash." According to The Authentic and Impartial Narrative, also published in 1831, journal entries belonging to Turner were "in her possession after Nat's escape."

On October 30, 1831, a farmer named Benjamin Phipps discovered Turner hiding in Southampton County in a depression in the earth, created by a large, fallen tree covered with fence rails. Around 1 p.m. on October 31, Turner arrived at the prison in Jerusalem. While awaiting trial, Turner confessed knowledge of the rebellion to attorney and slavery apologist Thomas R. Gray.

Dozens of suspected rebels were tried by courts specially convened for the rebellion. Turner was tried on November 5, 1831, for "conspiring to rebel and making insurrection", and was convicted and sentenced to death. His attorney was James Strange French. James Trezvant served on the jury. Turner was hanged on November 11, 1831, in the county seat of Jerusalem, Virginia (now Courtland). According to some sources, he was beheaded to deter further rebellion. The body was dissected and flayed, and the skin used to make souvenir purses.^: 218 In October 1897, Virginia newspapers reported that the skeleton was being used as a medical specimen by Dr. H. U. Stephenson of Toana, Virginia.

Most of Turner's alleged conspirators were tried in Southampton County, with some trials occurring in neighboring Sussex County or other nearby counties. French represented many of the defendants, along with William Henry Brodnax and Meriwether Brodnax. 30 slaves were convicted, of which 18 were hanged and 12 were sold out of state; 15 were acquitted. Four of the five free Blacks tried were acquitted; the fifth was hanged.

During the rebellion, the Virginia General Assembly (VGA) targeted free Blacks with an African relocation bill, and a police bill denying them trials by jury and criminal punishment by slavery and relocation.

The VGA received petitions from at least seven slave-owners asking to be compensated for slaves lost without trial because of the insurrection; they were all rejected.

The VGA debated the future of slavery the following spring. Some urged gradual emancipation, but the pro-slavery side prevailed after Virginia's leading intellectual, Thomas Roderick Dew, president of the College of William and Mary, published "a pamphlet defending the wisdom and benevolence of slavery, and the folly of its abolition". Laws were passed in all slave states except Maryland, Kentucky, and Tennessee criminalizing teaching Blacks read and write, and restricting Blacks from holding religious meetings without a licensed White minister.

Other Southern slave-holding states also enacted legal restrictions on Black activities. Possession of abolitionist publications was criminalized in Virginia and other Southern states.

On September 3, 1831, William Lloyd Garrison published an article called "The Insurrection" in the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator. On September 10, 1831, The Liberator published excerpts from a letter to the editor saying that many people in the South believed the newspaper had a link to the revolt and that if Garrison were to go to the South, he "would not be permitted to live long... he would be taken away, and no one is the wiser for it... if Mr. Garrison were to go to the South, he would be dispatched immediately... [an] opinion expressed by persons at the South, repeatedly."

In November 1831, Thomas R. Gray published The Confessions of Nat Turner, based on research while Turner was in hiding and from conversations with Turner before the trial. The pamphlet sold 40,000 to 50,000 copies, making it a noted source about the rebellion at the time. However, a November 25, 1831, review of the publication by The Richmond Enquirer says:

The pamphlet has one defect – we mean its style. The confession of the culprit is given, as it were, from his lips – (and when read to him, he admitted its statements to be correct) – but the language is far superior to what Nat Turner could have employed – Portions of it are even eloquently and classically expressed. – This is calculated to cast some shade of doubt over the authenticity of the narrative, and to give the Bandit a character for intelligence which he does not deserve, and ought not to have received. – In all other respects, the confession appears to be faithful and true.

Gray's work is the primary historical document regarding Nat Turner but some modern historians, specifically David F. Allmendinger Jr., have also questioned the validity of his portrayal of Turner.

In the aftermath of the revolt, Whites did not try to interpret Turner's motives and ideas. Antebellum slave-owners were shocked by the rebellion and feared further slave violence; to them, Turner became "a symbol of terrorism and violent retribution." Northern and Southern states shared many of the same fears; a proposal to create a college for African Americans in New Haven, Connecticut was overwhelmingly rejected in the New Haven Excitement.

The fear caused by Turner's rebellion and the concerns raised in the emancipation debates that followed resulted in politicians and writers defining "slavery as a positive good"; Thomas Dew was among those writers. Other Southern writers began to promote a paternalistic ideal of improved Christian treatment of slaves, in part to avoid such rebellions. Dew and others believed that they were civilizing Blacks (who were then still mostly American-born) through slavery. The writings were collected in The pro-slavery argument, as maintained by the most distinguished writers of the southern states (1853).

African Americans have generally regarded Turner as a resistance hero for avenging the suffering of Africans and African Americans. James H. Harris, who has written extensively about the history of the Black church, says that the revolt "marked the turning point in the black struggle for liberation." According to Harris, Turner believed that "only a cataclysmic act could convince the architects of a violent social order that violence begets violence."

In an 1843 speech at the National Negro Convention, Henry Highland Garnet, a former slave and active abolitionist, described Nat Turner as "patriotic", saying that "future generations will remember him among the noble and brave." In 1861, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a white Northern writer, praised Turner in a seminal article published in the Atlantic Monthly. He described Turner as a man "who knew no book but the Bible, and that by heart who devoted himself soul and body to the cause of his race."

In 1988, Turner was included in the Black Americans of Achievement biography series for children, with the book Nat Turner: Slave Revolt Leader by Terry Bisson. The book's introduction was written by Coretta Scott King.

The sword believed to have been used by Turner in the rebellion is displayed at the Southampton County Courthouse. In 1991, the Virginia Department of Historic Resources dedicated the "Nat Turner Insurrection" historic marker on Virginia Route 30, near Courtland, Virginia. In December 2021, the Virginia Department of Cultural Resources dedicated the "Blackhead Signpost Road" historic marker. Nat Turner's Rebellion is celebrated as part of Black August.

Film

• The Birth of a Nation, the 2016 film starring, produced, and directed by Nate Parker, co-written with Jean McGianni Celestin, is about Turner's 1831 rebellion.

Literature

• The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967), a novel by William Styron, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1968. It prompted much controversy, with some criticizing a white author writing about such an important black figure and calling him racist for portraying Turner as lusting for a white woman.
• In response to Styron's novel, ten African-American writers published a collection of essays, William Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond (1968).

Music

• The 1960s funk-soul band Nat Turner Rebellion was named after the slave revolt.
• Chance The Rapper's song "How Great" refers to Turner's rebellion, along with the 1805 slave revolt at Chatham Manor, in the line, "Hosanna Santa invoked and woke up enslaved people from Southampton to Chatham Manor."
• In the early 1990s, hip hop artist Tupac Shakur spoke in interviews about Nat Turner and his admiration for his spirit against oppression. Shakur also honored Turner with a cross tattoo on his back "EXODUS 1831", referring to the year Turner led the rebellion.

• African-American history
• Back-to-Africa movement
• Denmark Vesey
• History of slavery in the United States
• John Brown (abolitionist)
• List of incidents of civil unrest in the United States
• Slave rebellion and resistance in the United States
• Slavery in the United States
• 1831 in the United States