| Nat Turner's Slave Rebellion | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the prelude to the American Civil War and North American slave revolts | |||||||
 1831 woodcut illustrating various stages of the rebellion | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
| Rebel slaves | Local white militias | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Nat Turner  | Unknown, likely many | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| Approximately 96 killed or executed by militia and mobs | 55–65 killed | ||||||
| North American slave revolts |
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 Toussaint Louverture |
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There was widespread fear in the aftermath, and white militias organized in retaliation in opposition to the slaves. The state executed 56 slaves accused of being part of the rebellion, and many non-participant slaves were punished in the frenzy. Approximately 120 slaves and free blacks were murdered by militias and mobs in the area. State legislatures passed new laws prohibiting education of slaves and free black people, restricting rights of assembly and other civil liberties for free black people, and requiring white ministers to be present at all worship services.
Nat Turner's background
Nat Turner was an American slave who had lived his entire life in Southampton County, Virginia, an area with more blacks than whites. After the rebellion, a reward notice described him as:
5 feet 6 or 8 inches [168–173 cm] high, weighs between 150 and 160 pounds [68–73 kg], rather "bright" [light-colored] complexion, but not a mulatto, broad shoulders, larger flat nose, large eyes, broad flat feet, rather knockneed, walks brisk and active, hair on the top of the head very thin, no beard, except on the upper lip and the top of the chin, a scar on one of his temples, also one on the back of his neck, a large knot on one of the bones of his right arm, near the wrist, produced by a blow.
Turner was intelligent and learned how to read and write at a young
age. He grew up deeply religious and was often seen fasting, praying, or
immersed in reading the stories of the Bible.
He frequently had visions which he interpreted as messages from God,
and these visions influenced his life. He ran away at age 21 from his
owner Samuel Turner, but he returned a month later after becoming
delirious from hunger and receiving a vision which told him to "return
to the service of my earthly master".
He had his second vision in 1824 while working in the fields under his
new owner Thomas Moore. In it, "the Saviour was about to lay down the
yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and the great day of judgment was
at hand". Turner often conducted Baptist services and preached the Bible to his fellow slaves, who dubbed him "the Prophet".
By the spring of 1828, Turner was convinced that he "was ordained for some great purpose in the hands of the Almighty".
He "heard a loud noise in the heavens" while working in his owner's
fields on May 12, "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".
In 1830, Joseph Travis purchased Turner, and Turner later
recalled that he was "a kind master" who had "placed the greatest
confidence in" him. Turner eagerly anticipated God's signal to "slay my enemies with their own weapons".
He witnessed a solar eclipse on February 12, 1831 and was convinced
that it was the sign for which he was waiting, so he started
preparations for an uprising against the white slaveholders of
Southampton County by purchasing muskets. He "communicated the great
work laid out to do, to four in whom I had the greatest confidence", his
fellow slaves Henry, Hark, Nelson, and Sam.
Turner's Rebellion
Turner originally planned to begin the rebellion on July 4, 1831, but he had fallen ill.
An atmospheric disturbance on August 13 made the sun appear
bluish-green; he took it as the final signal and began the rebellion a
week later, on August 21. He started with several trusted fellow slaves,
and ultimately gathered more than 70 enslaved and free blacks, some of
whom were on horseback. The rebels traveled from house to house, freeing slaves and killing all the white people whom they encountered.
Muskets and firearms were too difficult to collect and would
gather unwanted attention, so the rebels used knives, hatchets, axes,
and blunt instruments. Historian Stephen B. Oates states that Turner called on his group to "kill all the white people".
A newspaper noted, "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.'"
The group spared a few homes "because Turner believed the poor white
inhabitants 'thought no better of themselves than they did of negroes.'" The rebels killed approximately 60 white people before they were defeated.
Of the total killed, many were women and children. Eventually, the
state militia infantry were able to defeat the insurrection with twice
the manpower of the rebels, reinforced by three companies of artillery.
Retaliation
Belmont, where the rebellion was quashed
Within a day of the suppression of the rebellion, the local militia
and three companies of artillery were joined by detachments of men from
the USS Natchez and USS Warren, which were anchored in Norfolk, and militias from counties in Virginia and North Carolina surrounding Southampton. The state executed 56 black people, and militias killed at least 100 more. An estimated 120 black people were killed, most of whom were not involved with the rebellion.
Rumors quickly spread among whites that the slave revolt was not
limited to Southampton and that it had spread as far south as Alabama.
Fears led to reports in North Carolina that "armies" of slaves were seen
on highways, and that they had burned and massacred the white
inhabitants of Wilmington, North Carolina, and were marching on the state capital. Such fear and alarm led to whites' attacking blacks throughout the South with flimsy cause; the editor of the Richmond Whig described the scene as "the slaughter of many blacks without trial and under circumstances of great barbarity".
The white violence against the black people continued two weeks after
the rebellion had been suppressed. General Eppes ordered troops and
white citizens to stop 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.
Reverend G. W. Powell wrote a letter to the New York Evening Post stating 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 40 blacks in one day and took $23 and a gold watch from the dead. Captain Solon Borland led a contingent from Murfreesboro, North Carolina, and he condemned the acts "because it was tantamount to theft from the white owners of the slaves".
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 section of Virginia State Route 658 remains labeled as "Blackhead Signpost Road" in reference to these events.
Aftermath
Turner
eluded capture for six weeks but remained in Southampton County. On
October 30, a white farmer named Benjamin Phipps discovered him hidden
among the local Nottoway people,
in a depression in the earth, created by a large, fallen tree that was
covered with fence rails. He was tried on November 5, 1831 for
"conspiring to rebel and making insurrection"; he was convicted and
sentenced to death. He was asked if he regretted what he had done, and he responded, "Was Christ not crucified?" He was hanged on November 11 in Jerusalem, Virginia, and his corpse was drawn and quartered.
After Turner's capture, lawyer Thomas Ruffin Gray published The Confessions of Nat Turner: The Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southampton, Virginia.
The book was the result of Gray's research while Turner was in hiding
and his conversations with Turner before the trial, and it is the
primary window into Turner's mind. Gray had a conflict of interest
because he was the defense attorney for other accused participants, so
historians disagree on how to assess it as insight into Turner.
Legal response
In the aftermath of the rebellion, dozens of suspected rebels were
tried in courts called specifically for the purpose of hearing the cases
against the slaves. Most of the trials took place in Southampton, but
some were held in neighboring Sussex County
plus a few in other counties. Most slaves were found guilty and many
were then executed, while others were transported outside the state but
not executed; 15 of the slaves tried in Southampton were acquitted.
Moreover, some slave owners sought compensation from the legislature
for slaves who were killed without trial during the rebellion or its
immediate aftermath; all their petitions were rejected.
The Virginia General Assembly debated the future of slavery the
following spring; some urged gradual emancipation, but the pro-slavery
side prevailed. The General Assembly passed legislation
making it unlawful to teach reading and writing to slaves, free blacks,
or mulattoes, and restricting all blacks from holding religious
meetings without the presence of a licensed white minister. Other slave-holding states in the South enacted similar laws restricting activities of slaves and free blacks.
Some free blacks chose to move their families north to obtain
educations for their children. Some white people, such as teachers Thomas J. Jackson (later to be famous in the American Civil War as Gen. "Stonewall" Jackson) and Mary Smith Peake, and George H. Thomas (a future Union
general and child at the time of his doing this) violated the laws and
taught slaves to read. Overall, the laws enacted in the aftermath of
the Turner Rebellion enforced widespread illiteracy among slaves. As a
result, most newly freed slaves and many free blacks in the South were
illiterate at the end of the American Civil War.
Freedmen and Northerners considered the issue of education and
helping former slaves gain literacy as one of the most critical in the
postwar South. Consequently, many Northern religious organizations,
former Union Army
officers and soldiers, and wealthy philanthropists were inspired to
create and fund schools for the betterment of African Americans in the
South. Although Reconstruction legislatures passed authorization to
establish public education for the first time in the South, a system of
legal racial segregation was later imposed under Jim Crow laws, and black schools were systematically underfunded by Southern states.
