Nat Turner (1800–1831), a slave in Virginia, led the most successful slave rebellion in the United States before the Civil War. Although short-lived, the revolt led to dozens of deaths, spread fear widely across the South, and contributed to the growing sectional tensions in antebellum America over the issue of slavery.
In assessing the historical impact of Turner’s uprising, the abolitionist writer William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879) called it “the first step of the earthquake.”
Turner was born and spent his whole life in Southampton County, Virginia, a rural area on the border with North Carolina. While educating slaves was frowned upon in the South, Turner learned how to read, mastered the Bible, and became a Baptist preacher to fellow slaves in the fields.
In the late 1820s, Turner began to experience religious visions and became convinced that he had been picked by God to lead an uprising. Turner interpreted a solar eclipse in February 1831 and atmospheric disturbances later that year as omens and began the revolt on the night of August 21, 1831.
Turner and his followers went on a rampage the next day, stabbing and clubbing to death dozens of whites. The men attempted to seize the town of Jerusalem, Virginia, but were repulsed on the afternoon of August 22, ending the revolt.
As news of the killings spread, many Southern whites responded with panic. Hundreds of innocent blacks were targeted in revenge killings. The Turner uprising also helped polarize the political issue of slavery: In the eyes of many fearful Southerners, abolitionists were no longer seeking merely to end slavery, but also to kill slaveholders. The small abolitionist movement in the South virtually disappeared.
Turner escaped into the forest near Jerusalem, but was captured about two months later. He was hanged on November 11, 1831.
ADDITIONAL FACTS
- Some scholars have argued that Turner’s ability to read enabled him to determine when the next solar eclipse would occur and that he used that information to demonstrate to other slaves that God had ordained the revolt.
- The Confessions of Nat Turner, a historical novel based on the revolt and written by William Styron (1925–2006), won the Pulitzer Prize in 1968.
- A PBS movie, Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property, was broadcast in 2003. The filmmaker, Charles Burnett (1944–), acknowledged the conflicting stories about Turner by casting seven different actors, with each actor playing the version of Turner presented in a different account.
