Born in 1800 in Southampton County, Virginia, Nat Turner was one of
millions of enslaved persons of African descent in the United States.
Encouraged to learn to read and write, Turner immersed himself in the
Bible and preached to his fellow slaves and others. Believing he had
received several signs from God about his mission to overthrow the yoke
of slavery, he organized the largest and bloodiest slave revolt in
American history. On the evening of August 21, 1831, Turner and his
closest followers descended on the farms and plantations in Southampton.
Freeing slaves and killing slave-owning men, women, and children,
Turner's force grew to over sixty people. The insurrection, however, was
quickly and brutally put down by local militia, after the deaths of
fifty-seven whites and over one hundred blacks. The court ordered the
execution of fifty-six slaves, acquitted fifteen, and ordered the
transportation of fourteen out of Virginia into slavery elsewhere.
Turner himself was not captured until October 30, tried on November 5,
and hung on November 11, 1831. Nat Turner's Rebellion brought the issue
of slavery to the forefront of American politics, with the Virginia
General Assembly nearly ending the institution during its 1832 session.
New York and Great Britain outlawed slavery in 1834, while the need to
resolve the slavery issue prompted a widespread expansion of
abolitionism, resulting in the end of slavery in the United States in
1865.
In Nat Turner's Rebellion, historian John V. Quarstein weaves Nat
Turner's own confession, court records, newspaper accounts, official
papers, and his decade-long work with the Southampton County Historical
Society into a fresh portrayal of the causes and aftermath of the
uprising. Occurring thirty years before the Civil War, Turner's actions
gave greater focus to the antislavery movement that resulted in a
divided nation, war, and the end to America's "peculiar institution."
