Turner made clear, according to the Richmond Enquirer, that "indiscriminate slaughter was not their intention after they obtained a foothold, and was resorted to in the first instance to strike terror and alarm. From there the rebellion could spread, aided by a network of enslaved black Christians and perhaps by divine intervention as well. Having rallied supporters and gathered up more horses and weapons, they could march on Jerusalem, the county seat, and take the arsenal, which would give them a substantial beachhead of resistance. He hoped that this brutal show of force would be so swift as to prevent any warning and so compelling as to convince others to join in the cause. His intention, Turner explained, was to move through the countryside from household to household, killing whites regardless of age or sex. Taking this as another sign, he brought together a handful of collaborators on Sunday, August 21, and told them of his plan for a terrorist attack. Then, on August 13 he awoke to find the sun a dim reflection of itself, changing from one hazy color to another. He laid plans with others to act on the holiday of July 4, but when he fell ill, the date was allowed to pass. The confessions of nat turner, the leader of the late insurrection in southampton, virginia. "And my father and mother strengthened me …saying in my presence, I was intended for some great purpose, which they had always thought from certain marks on my head and breast." While one can question the validity of Turner's recollections and the motivations of the disillusioned and desperate Gray (who rapidly published his lurid transcript at a profit), the confession has an underlying ring of truth and represents one of the most extraordinary firsthand texts in American history.Īccording to this account, Turner experienced a powerful vision in 1825 in which he "saw white spirits and black spirits engaged in battle, and the sun was darkened -the thunder rolled in the Heavens, and blood flowed in streams." Three years later another vision told him to prepare to slay his "enemies with their own weapons." But it was not until February 1831 that a solar eclipse Nat Turner Most of what is known about the man is drawn from his Confessions, a remarkable autobiographical statement taken down by a young lawyer named Thomas Ruffin Gray during the rebel's final days in jail. Confident from childhood that he had a special role to play, Nat Turner found outward confirmations for his messianic thoughts and eventually determined that his personal calling coincided with the most pressing public issue of the day -the termination of racial enslavement. Turner learned to read as a small boy, and he built a strong and composite faith from listening to the African beliefs retained within his family and the Christian values of his first master, Benjamin Turner. She told her son at an early age that, on the basis of his quick intelligence and the distinctive lumps on his head, he seemed "intended for some great purpose." Tradition suggests his mother was born and raised in Africa. Turner had been born in Southampton on October 2, 1800, only five days before the execution of black revolutionary Gabriel Prosser in Richmond, and as a boy he must have heard stories of Prosser's intended insurrection. Almost all of the latter, whether young or old, lived in perpetual bondage, including Nat Turner, a slave of Joseph Travis. In 1831 Virginia's Southampton County, bordering on North Carolina, contained roughly 6,500 whites and 9,500 blacks. Indeed, some suggest that it represented the first major battle of the long war to end slavery. It had repercussions throughout the South, redrawing the lines of the American debate over slavery in ways that led toward all-out civil war within a generation. Undertaken in 1831 in Virginia, Turner's Rebellion claimed more lives than any similar uprising. Nat Turner (Octo–November 11, 1831) led the most significant slave revolt in U.S.
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