8/4/2023 0 Comments Nat tuner revoltGray conducted and recorded long interviews with him that eventually informed the many distorted “historical” accounts of Nat Turner’s legacy. Turner escaped and eluded the white captors for six weeks before eventually being caught.īefore his brutal execution, Nat Turner was beaten and tortured while Thomas R. By that time, fifty to sixty whites had been killed. Eventually, the white local militia organized and suppressed the revolt by killing and capturing the slave rebels. On August 22, 1831, starting with the Turner enslavers, Turner and his organization of slaves went from plantation to plantation killing white enslavers while freeing Blacks as they moved. From this position, Turner was able to connect and mass organize the slaves on the Turner plantation. “Discovery of Nat Turner.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections.Īs a result of his religious convictions and visions (which he described as divine messages from God), Turner became the plantation preacher. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library. ![]() Like in the case of Denmark Vesey, whites in Virginia identified a correlation between literacy and Black free citizenry, so after Nat Turner’s mass organized insurrection, many laws were passed in Virginia that “legally mandated illiteracy” for Blacks. Whites also speculated that Turner read other works by African American figures such as, David Walker’s The Appeal that inspired his rebellion. Turner learned how to read and write at a young age and spent much of his time studying the Bible. Nat Turner was described as intelligent and cunning with quick apprehension skills. Nat Turner was born into slavery to the Turner family, Benjamin Turner and eventually Samuel Turner, in Southhampton County, Virginia, on October 2, 1800. Nat Turner’s legacy and history has been fragmented through unreliable sources and an undeniably white supremacist history, but in the eyes of Henry Highland Garnet and many of the Buffalo National Colored Convention delegates, Nat Turner’s legacy was burned into the mind and imagination as a hero, prophet, and legendary trickster. “Nat Turner & his confederates in conference.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library. 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.The Miriam and Ira D. 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.Īfterwards, Turner hid nearby successfully for six weeks until his discovery, conviction, and hanging at Jerusalem, Virginia, along with 16 of his followers. 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. 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. Turner was born on the Virginia plantation of Benjamin Turner, who allowed him to be instructed in reading, writing, and religion. The rebellion also stiffened pro-slavery, anti-abolitionist convictions that persisted in that region until the American Civil War (1861–65). 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. Nathanial “Nat” Turner (1800-1831) was an enslaved man who led a rebellion of enslaved people on August 21, 1831.
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