nat turner significance essay

Le 21 août 1831, Nat Turner, un prédicateur noir en esclavage, déclenche en Virginie l’une des plus grandes révoltes serviles de l’histoire des Etats-Unis. Sa fin tragique en a fait un symbole de la résistance à l’esclavage, et une inspiration pour de nombreux activistes et artistes jusqu’à nos jours. Nat Turner est né dans l’esclavage le 2 octobre 1800, dans le Comté de Southampton en Virginie. Comme de nombreuses personnes partageant sa condition, il passe de maître en maître au gré des ventes ou des successions. Mais sa force et sa différence est d’être parvenu à apprendre à lire et écrire. Sa lecture passionnée de la Bible le convainc de devenir prédicateur, ce qui lui permet de se déplacer d’église en église pour prêcher l’Ecriture. Mystique, il entend des voix, cherche des signes dans les phénomènes naturels et se persuade qu’il a une mission divine à accomplir : délivrer ses frères et sœurs de l’esclavage. 1831 est pour lui l’année décisive : en février, il pense recevoir un appel de Dieu dans le ciel – une éclipse solaire. C’est pour lui le signe qu’il faut commencer à préparer la révolte. Grâce à son charisme il rassemble autour de lui un groupe d’esclaves décidés. Initialement planifié pour le 4 juillet, jour de fête nationale aux Etats-Unis, le soulèvement débute finalement dans la nuit du 21 août 1831. Pour impressionner le pays, Nat Turner est résolu à employer la violence. Avec ses disciples, il tue son maître et la famille de celui-ci, puis va de plantation en plantation, où ils assassinent en tout plus d’une cinquantaine de personnes, hommes, femmes, enfants, et libèrent les personnes qui y sont esclaves. Ce n’est que deux jours plus tard que les autorités parviennent à faire cesser les attaques, qui a répandu l’effroi dans toute la région. L’attaque convoque en effet le souvenir de la révolution haïtienne, trois décennies plus tôt, et de son issue fatale pour les colons blancs. Arrêtés, les rebelles sont capturés, jugés et exécutés. Après une cavale de plusieurs semaines, Nat Turner sera lui-même arrêté en octobre et exécuté le 11 novembre 1831, dans la ville de Jerusalem en Virginie. Les meurtres d’esclaves se poursuivront encore pendant des mois, alors que le pouvoir blanc cherche à rétablir son emprise. En Virginie comme dans d’autres Etats esclavagistes, des lois sont votées pour criminaliser le fait d’apprendre à lire et écrire à une personne réduite en esclavage. Mais le souvenir de la révolte de Nat Turner ne s’effacera pas. En 1832, un avocat blanc, Thomas Ruffin Gray, publie le témoignage qu’il aurait recueilli de sa bouche après son arrestation sous le titre « Les confessions de Nat Turner ». Même si ce texte est marqué par le biais esclavagiste de l’avocat, il reste une source exceptionnelle sur les événements de Southampton et la source principale sur le désormais célèbre prédicateur. C’est sur cette base que, plus d’un siècle plus tard et sur le conseil de James Baldwin, le romancier William Styron écrira une fiction à la première personne également intitulée « Les confessions de Nat Turner ». Son roman sera récompensé du prix Pultizer 1968, mais fera polémique, notamment parce qu’il décrit Turner fantasmant sur le viol d’une femme blanche, ce que rien dans les sources historiques sur le prédicateur ne permet de supposer. Avec le temps le nom de Nat Turner est devenu un synonyme de la résistance violente à l’esclavage, qu’on retrouve cité dans les textes de nombreux musiciens et rappeurs américains. En 2016, ce sera le réalisateur africain-américain Nat Parker qui se saisira lui aussi de l’histoire de Nat Turner, en adaptant sa biographie dans un film où il jouera lui-même le prédicateur et qu’il intitulera « The Birth of a Nation », en référence à la superproduction pro-KKK du même titre de DW Griffith (1915). Mais ni les suppositions romanesques de William Styron, ni le portrait moins tourmenté que Nat Parker donne du révolté de Southampton ne sauraient épuiser l’énigme que constitue sa vie et son équipée de 1831. Mystique, meurtrier, révolté, le Nat Turner historique reste un personnage complexe et opaque, aux intentions largement indéchiffrables.

Sources d'informations

• La traduction française des « confessions de Nat Turner » a été publiée aux éditions Allia :  https://www.editions-allia.com/…/…/confessions-de-nat-turner
• Un article de The Atlantic datant d’août 1861 sur la révolte de Nat Turner   https://www.theatlantic.com/…/nat-turners-insurrect…/308736/
• Un débat, arbitré par James Baldwin, entre William Styron et l’acteur africain-américain et militant des droits civiques Ossie Davis (1968)   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCkpiRM0G4g
• A propos des débats autour du livre de William Styron et du film de Nat Parker   https://www.jeuneafrique.com/…/litterature-nat-turner-lecl…/

• History Classics
• Your Profile
• Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window)
• This Day In History
• History Podcasts
• History Vault

By: History.com Editors

Updated: June 27, 2023 | Original: December 2, 2009

Nathanial “Nat” Turner (1800-1831) was an enslaved man who led a rebellion of enslaved people on August 21, 1831. 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. The rebellion also stiffened pro-slavery, anti-abolitionist convictions that persisted in that region until the American Civil War (1861–65).

Turner was born on the Virginia plantation of Benjamin Turner, who allowed him to be instructed in reading, writing, and religion. 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.

Did you know? Fifty-six Black people accused of participating in Nat Turner's rebellion were executed, and more than 200 others were beaten by angry mobs or white militias.

Insurrection

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. 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 large but disorganized insurrection that resulted in the murder of an estimated 55 white people.

Afterwards, Turner hid nearby successfully for six weeks until his discovery, conviction, and hanging at Jerusalem, Virginia, along with 16 of his followers. 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 .

Sign up for Inside History

Get HISTORY’s most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week.

By submitting your information, you agree to receive emails from HISTORY and A+E Networks. You can opt out at any time. You must be 16 years or older and a resident of the United States.

More details : Privacy Notice | Terms of Use | Contact Us

Nat Turner’s Rebellion

Written by: Patrick Breen, Providence College

By the end of this section, you will:.

• Explain the continuities and changes in the experience of African Americans from 1800 to 1848

Suggested Sequencing

This Narrative explores the idea of slavery and abolitionism and can be used along with the William Lloyd Garrison’s War against Slavery and Frederick Douglass’s Path to Freedom Narratives, as well as the David Walker, “An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World,” 1829 and Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass , 1845 Primary Sources.

In February 1831, four slaves in Southampton County, Virginia, went to a clandestine meeting called by an enslaved preacher named Nat Turner. When they got there, Turner told them the time had come to launch a slave revolt. All agreed. Over the next few months, the conspirators planned to launch the revolt on the Fourth of July, a date that implicitly invoked Thomas Jefferson’s claim that “all men are created equal.” As the day approached, however, Nat Turner fell ill. Independence Day passed without any noticeable unrest among the slaves.

Despite the surface appearance of calm, however, slavery was becoming an increasingly intractable problem in an age of revolution. Slave rebels had used the ideology of American and French revolutionaries in creating a second republic in the new world, Haiti. Also inspired by revolutionary ideology, Gabriel, an enslaved blacksmith outside Richmond, Virginia, had organized a conspiracy in 1800 that planned to capture Richmond’s armory and, if possible, Virginia’s governor, James Monroe. Another slave told his master about this conspiracy, allowing whites to quash it before it began. The largest slave revolt in U.S. history had occurred in Louisiana in 1811, when hundreds of slaves took up arms and headed for New Orleans. Two whites were killed before this revolt was brutally put down, resulting in the deaths of nearly ninety-five African Americans whether or not they were involved in the plot. In 1822, whites uncovered evidence that Denmark Vesey, a free black man in Charleston, South Carolina, was at the heart of a plan for scores of enslaved persons to revolt and perhaps flee to Haiti. Thirty-five enslaved persons were hanged and another thirty-one were transported out of South Carolina.

This 1888 sketch depicts the German Coast of Louisiana Uprising of 1811 led by Charles Deslondes, whose force grew to more than one hundred rebellious slaves. (credit: “On to Orleans: The Negro Insurrection” from The New York Public Library, https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47de-18d2-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99)

It is unknown how much the Southampton rebels knew about any of these earlier revolts or conspiracies, but they knew enough to intuit one thing. As one of them explained, “the negroes had frequently attempted, similar things, and confided their purpose to several, and that . . . it always leaked out.” So when Nat Turner approached his first four recruits with the idea of a slave revolt, they decided they would neither tell other slaves nor stockpile arms. Instead, they sought an answer to what seemed an insoluble problem: overcoming the whites’ advantages in numbers, organization, communication, and supplies. Their solution was to launch a surprise attack so bloody and stunning that news of the revolt would rouse Virginia’s enslaved population to rally to the rebel’s banner.

The rebels understood that the revolt would likely fail, but they were ready to die fighting for their freedom. One early recruit explained why he joined them: “his life was worth no more than others, and his liberty as dear to him.” Nat Turner was as clear-eyed about the odds as the other recruits, but he had an additional reason to undertake what appeared to be a suicidal mission: He believed God wanted him to launch the revolt. Like many of his generation, Turner was a millennialist – he believed the end of time described in the Bible was at hand. According to Turner, God used nature to provide clues to what was about to happen. Thus, in August 1831, an unusual appearance of the sun (which a woman in Richmond described as being “as blue as any cloud you ever saw”) convinced Turner that the time to strike had come.

On Sunday, August 21, 1831, five conspirators gathered with two new recruits for a feast, at which they decided they would begin with a predawn attack against the farm where Nat Turner lived. Prodded by his own men, Turner struck the first blow. The rebels killed the entire family in their sleep, but on remembering “a little infant sleeping in a cradle,” they returned to finish the job. The rebels then attacked several farms near the starting point of the revolt, killing nearly all the whites and gathering slaves to join them. By Monday morning, August 22, they had turned toward Jerusalem, Southampton County’s seat. At each farm the rebels visited, they killed almost all the whites who had not fled. Turner himself killed one person, Margaret Whitehead, whom he caught after she had evaded the other rebels. The highest toll occurred at Levi Waller’s farm. Waller hosted a school on his farm, and when word of the revolt reached him, he instructed the children to gather together. But the rebels arrived before he could prepare a defense and killed ten children and Waller’s wife.

For about eighteen hours, the rebels were unchecked. They killed at least fifty-five whites, making Nat Turner’s Rebellion the deadliest slave revolt in the history of the United States. But they were notably less successful in another task: recruiting fellow slaves. As they traveled east, Turner’s army gathered free black and enslaved men who lived on the farms they visited. Their number increased to as many as five dozen, but most refused to join the revolt, even at the largest plantations. And the rebels faced another problem. News of the revolt did not lead to the spontaneous uprising they hoped for. Most blacks in Southampton simply were not ready to risk their lives in a revolt, especially one that faced such long odds.

While the rebels were adding a few people at a time, whites quickly rallied from all directions. By the middle of the day on Monday, August 22, several armed white groups were in pursuit. One small force encountered the rebels at a farm just outside Jerusalem. After a brief skirmish, the whites retreated. The rebels set off in pursuit but were ambushed by a second group of armed whites who had been drawn to the sound of fighting. After this defeat, Turner’s army was reduced to about twenty men. After another defeat on Tuesday morning, August 23, 1831, Turner was separated from the remnant of his army. The revolt was over.

This 1831 depiction of Nat Turner’s Rebellion shows enslaved persons attacking men, women, and children, and a group of armed whites ending the revolt.

Whites from southern Virginia and parts of North Carolina regained control of Southampton within two days, but immediately after the revolt, whites throughout the country were on edge. As a result, they responded brutally. One newspaper editor who had travelled to Southampton County admitted that the white retribution was “hardly inferior in barbarity to the atrocities of the rebels.” Whites also reported using torture. Even enslaved persons who had helped whites were not necessarily safe. For instance, white interrogators had not believed one enslaved man, Hubbard, when he told them he had saved his mistress from the rebels. They were about to execute him when his mistress appeared and assured Hubbard’s tormentors his account was true.

Slaveholders in Southampton soon realized the danger of “an indiscriminate slaughter of the blacks who were suspected.” If any slaveholder could kill any enslaved person on a mere suspicion, the wealth embodied in slave property could disappear overnight. As a result, soon after the revolt, the military and political leaders turned their attention to preventing the lynching of suspected blacks. About three dozen blacks were killed without trial, violating even the pretense of a rule of law. But whites achieved the goal of the limiting the killing of enslaved persons because of their value as property. As Richard Eppes, a leader of the militia forces, later boasted, “I put an end to this inhumane butchery in two days.” Within a week, Eppes had formalized the prohibition on killing blacks by proclaiming martial law. In his declaration, he promised to prosecute any white who killed any enslaved person not actively resisting white authority.

By stopping the killing, white leaders ensured that the surviving rebels would be tried. The trials were by no means fair – the accused slaves were tried by an unsympathetic court of slaveholders – but the most remarkable thing about them was the protections the court offered the accused. Thirty enslaved persons and one free black were convicted, but a dozen of them escaped the gallows when the governor, following the recommendation of the court, commuted the sentences of those who had contributed little to the rebels’ cause. Others had their sentence commuted because they were young or reluctant rebels. In the end, Southampton executed eighteen enslaved persons and one free black.

Nat Turner himself remained at large until October 30, 1831, when he was finally captured and brought to the county seat of Southampton. While in jail awaiting trial, he spoke freely about the revolt, and local lawyer Thomas R. Gray approached him with a plan to take down his story. The Confessions of Nat Turner was published within weeks of Turner’s execution on November 11, 1831.

The title page of The Confessions of Nat Turner, an account of Turner’s life and motives for the rebellion, was published shortly after his execution.

Because the revolt reminded whites about the dangers of slavery, approximately two thousand Virginians petitioned their legislature to do something to end the practice. Thomas Jefferson’s grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, introduced a gradual emancipation bill that failed by a narrow margin. It was the last time Virginia would consider a proposal to gradually eliminate slavery until after the end of the Civil War. The Virginia assembly passed restrictions on free African Americans’ rights and religious practice. With this decision, a window of opportunity to abandon slavery in Virginia, and perhaps the rest of the upper South, was shut.

In 1832, Thomas R. Dew, a professor at the College of William and Mary, penned a review of the legislative debate in Virginia in which he argued against reform and said slavery was the proper foundation for a rightly ordered society. This line of thinking was taken up by later southern writers such as George Fitzhugh and politicians such as James Henry Hammond. They developed the new idea that slavery was a positive good, a position that put these southern “fire-eaters” (as pro-secession Southerners were labeled by northerners) in direct conflict with the abolitionists, who called for the immediate end of the immoral system of slavery.

Review Questions

1. Nat Turner is best characterized as

• a runaway slave who arrived in Southampton County, Virginia, intent on leading a slave revolt
• an enslaved preacher who led a revolt against slaveowners
• an enslaved man who led the fight for abolition in Virginia
• a free black man who encouraged local enslaved persons to revolt

2. Despite poor odds for success, what indication did Nat Turner say led him to believe the time was right to lead a slave rebellion?

• Several enslaved people independently came to Turner and whispered that they would join a revolt if he would lead it.
• He believed God used nature to give him a sign that the time had come.
• Unrest among slaves led many to be ready to risk everything to gain their freedom.
• Plantation owners throughout the South had gradually become much harsher in their treatment of enslaved workers by 1830.

3. When Nat Turner’s slave rebellion began in August 1831, the rebels killed

• men, women, children, and infants
• only exceptionally harsh overseers and plantation owners
• enslaved persons who did not join the revolt
• enslaved persons who threatened to inform plantation owners about the identity of the rebels

4. One major result of Nat Turner’s Rebellion in Virginia was

• the abolition of slavery in the state
• a law outlawing the import of more enslaved people
• the passage of legislation allowing slavery to disappear by attrition
• a debate in the legislature about whether to abolish slavery

5. Thomas Dew’s influence on the issue of slavery in Virginia came from his belief that

• slavery was immoral and needed to be abolished immediately
• slavery was immoral but should be eliminated gradually
• slavery was a moral good and needed to be preserved
• slaves were inferior

6. Which best describes the white response to Nat Turner’s Rebellion?

• Whites responded brutally, but after a few days, leaders were able to limit the retribution.
• Whites were relatively subdued at first, but as the extent of devastation became clear, they sought ever more brutal retribution.
• The white response was surprisingly mild.
• Whites sought vengeance however they could get it.

Free Response Questions

• Explain to what extent slave rebellions were successful in the South.
• Explain the impact of Nat Turner’s Rebellion on Virginia.

AP Practice Questions

“This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act, and that day. This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years old. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. . . . There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. The eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending disastrous times; but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she is still in the impressible stage of her existence. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny?”

Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” July 5, 1852

Refer to the excerpt provided.

1. based on the excerpt, what attributes did frederick douglass believe were missing in america’s story up to that time.

• Courage and independence
• Hope, confidence, and success
• Inspiring stories of political freedom for some
• Wisdom, justice, and truth

2. Why does Douglass repeatedly use the word “your,” “your national independence”. . . “your political freedom”. . . “your great deliverance,” in this address to an audience he calls “fellow citizens”?

• He does not believe the nation is truly independent.
• He rejects the idea that all people are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
• He sarcastically regards the Declaration of Independence as based on flawed principles.
• His choice of wording repeatedly reminds the audience that the freedom they celebrate does not extend to enslaved people.

Primary Sources

Douglass, Frederick. “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” July 5, 1852. http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july/

Gray, Thomas R. The Confessions of Nat Turner . Baltimore, MD: Thomas R. Gray, 1831.

The Richmond Constitutional Whig , August 29 1831. https://www.natturnerproject.org/constitutional-whig-aug-29

The Richmond Constitutional Whig . September 26,1831. https://www.natturnerproject.org/constitutional-whig-sept-26

“Trial Records of Nat, alias Nat Turner,” Southampton Oyer and Terminer Trials. https://www.natturnerproject.org/southampton-ot–trial-of-nat-alias

Suggested Resources

Aptheker, Herbert. American Negro Slave Revolts . New York: Columbia University, 1943.

Breen, Patrick H. The Land Shall Be Deluged with Blood: A New History of the Nat Turner Revolt . New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Breen, Patrick H. “Nat Turner’s Revolt.” Encyclopedia Virginia . https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Revolt_Nat_Turner_s_1831

Greenberg, Kenneth S., ed. Nat Turner: A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory . New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Roth, Sandra N. The Nat Turner Project . http://www.natturnerproject.org

Related Content

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

In our resource history is presented through a series of narratives, primary sources, and point-counterpoint debates that invites students to participate in the ongoing conversation about the American experiment.

Art depicts Nat Turner and his companions planning their slave rebellion, which would kill at least 55 people in Virginia and inspire an ongoing debate over Turner's legacy.

Nat Turner’s Slave Uprising Left Complex Legacy

A string of recent events has brought the leader of an 1831 slave rebellion back into the news.

Nat Turner was an African-American slave preacher in Virginia who led the bloodiest slave rebellion in American history.

In the 185 years that followed the rebellion, Turner’s place in history has been reinterpreted, revised, maximized, and minimized. His legacy is still debated , and even more so today, with Turner’s Bible now on display in the new National Museum of African American History and Culture and the release of the feature film The Birth of a Nation , chronicling Turner’s life and revolt.

The Slave Revolt and the Historical Record

On August 21, 1831, Turner led a small army that used axes, hatchets, knives, and muskets to kill 55 white Virginians. By August 23, the revolt was suppressed and his followers were apprehended. Turner escaped and hid in the woods for two months until he was captured and taken to the jailhouse in the county seat of Jerusalem, today the town of Courtland, Virginia.

Thomas Ruffin Gray's "The Confessions of Nat Turner" was based on an interview Gray conducted with Turner before Turner was killed. Some historians believe Gray took liberties with his pamphlet and it may not represent an accurate portrayal of Turner.

Much of our knowledge of Turner comes from Courtland. Between his trial and execution, he was interviewed by lawyer Thomas Ruffin Gray. The interviews were compiled in a pamphlet entitled "The Confessions of Nat Turner: The Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southampton, Virginia ." This serves as the main historical record of who Nat Turner the man may have been. But it’s an imperfect record.

Some historians think Gray took personal liberties with how he presented Turner, and they believe the authenticity of the pamphlet may be compromised. Many other popular ideas about Turner were shaped by a work of outright fiction: William Styron’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Confessions of Nat Turner, which was released in 1967 . The volume remains controversial as its Caucasian author takes on the voice of the black slave preacher turned revolutionary and steeps it with a fevered sexual obsession for white women.

Since then, Turner has remained little more than a footnote in some history books, a fact that may very well enable his legacy to evolve as the United States continues to grapple with the legacy of slavery.

The Beginnings and an Early Prophecy

Nat Turner was born into slavery on October 2, 1800, on the Benjamin Turner family plantation in Southampton County, Virginia. He was born with several marks on his chest that family members regarded as the marks of a prophet. Having learned to read at an early age, he was considered an intellectual at the time, as it was highly frowned upon to teach slaves to read.

Throughout his life, Turner would look to the Bible to better understand the reason behind the enslavement of his people. His wisdom and natural orating skills led him to become a respected preacher among the surrounding slave community. Early on, he interpreted that the Bible said that slaves should remain subservient to their earthly masters, but a series of prophetic visions changed his views.

Rise Up: The Legacy of Nat Turner airs Friday 10/9c on the National Geographic Channel.

“I had a vision … I saw white and black spirits engaged in battle, and the sun was darkened … the thunder rolled in the heavens and flowed in the streams,” Gray quotes Turner as saying in "The Confessions of Nat Turner ." “I discovered drops of blood on the corn as though it were dew from heaven.”

You May Also Like

Finding the Bones of Nat Turner, American Rebel

Lincoln was killed before their eyes. Then their own horror began.

This writer just traced his enslaved ancestors all the way to Africa. Here’s how.

These visions convinced Turner that it was his destiny to unite black men and women, both enslaved and free, to overthrow their masters. For years he waited for a sign from God to begin the fight for freedom. On February 12, 1831, Turner saw a solar eclipse. Upon seeing this "sign," Turner discussed his plans with four other slaves, and they set the date for July 4. Turner fell sick, however, and that date passed. Around August 13, he witnessed a second atmospheric disturbance in which the sun appeared bluish green from volcanic dust in the air.

Nat Turner's Bible and Other Artifacts in the National Museum of African American History and Culture

On August 21, Turner met with a group of fellow conspirators in the swampy woodlands around Cabin Pond. The group ate a meal and took a vow to kill all slave owners they encountered, including women and children. They decided the first victims would be Turner’s current master, Joseph Travis, and his family, and that Turner should deliver the first blow.

The group traveled from farm to farm, slaughtering whites and freeing blacks. Many of the enslaved chose not to join the revolt, and some even fought to protect their masters. At most stops the rebel force grew, at one point reaching around 40 recruits. Over the next two days they killed at least 55 whites. Turner's presumed goal was to reach Jerusalem, where he believed there was an armory that his forces could use to further their rebellion.

The group never made it to Jerusalem and within two days were scattered and captured by the local militia. Turner eluded capture for two months by hiding out in the woods. Records show that out of the 53 suspected to be involved, more than 50 were brought to trial, 18 were executed, 12 were transported and sold South, and 21 were discharged to return to their masters. Of the four free blacks brought to trial, one was executed and the other three found not guilty.

Turner’s Capture

It is written that Turner was discovered hiding out on October 30 by farmer Benjamin Phipps. He surrendered to Phipps and was taken to be tried. On November 5, 1831, he was sentenced to death for "conspiring to rebel and make insurrection." On November 11 he was hanged.

Desperate to regain control in the wake of the rebellion, white militias unleashed a wave of violence and intimidation against both enslaved and free blacks throughout the region. Many innocent people who had nothing to do with the insurrection were killed as a result of this campaign. In one case a severed head was put on display at a Southampton County crossroad. To this day, the street located outside Courtland, Virginia, bears the name Blackhead Signpost Road. In Virginia, strict laws were passed to further limit the right of blacks to gather.

A Changing Legacy and a Memorial

It is rumored that after Nat Turner was hanged, he was then decapitated, quartered, and skinned. Allegedly his skull and brain were sent off for study, his fat was rendered to wagon-wheel grease, and pieces of his tanned skin were given out as souvenirs. This would have been done in an attempt to crush Turner’s legacy and prevent him from being exalted as a martyr.

But Turner’s story is now undergoing a resurgence. The new film presents Turner as a patriot. And his descendants and the descendants of survivors of the revolt are back in the news debating the legacy .

Today in Courtland, monuments stand in honor of the Confederate military, and its battle flag can still be seen waving across the South. There’s a plaque noting the rebellion happened, but those who see Nat Turner as a hero believe that just as the Confederate memorials stand to benefit descendants of southern soldiers, it is only fair that descendants of the enslaved should have a place to pay homage to figures like Nat Turner, who gave his life to fight for their freedom.

Related Topics

• AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
• DISCRIMINATION
• HISTORY AND CIVILIZATION
• AFRICAN AMERICANS

This Black artist’s vibrant quilts inspired generations of U.S. artisans

10 million enslaved Americans' names are missing from history. AI is helping identify them.

Juneteenth is America’s second Independence Day—here’s why

Séances at the White House? Why these first ladies turned to the occult

Gettysburg was no ordinary battle. These maps reveal how Lee lost the fight.

• Paid Content
• Environment
• Photography
• Perpetual Planet

History & Culture

• History & Culture
• History Magazine
• Mind, Body, Wonder
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Your US State Privacy Rights
• Children's Online Privacy Policy
• Interest-Based Ads
• About Nielsen Measurement
• Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information
• Nat Geo Home
• Attend a Live Event
• Book a Trip
• Inspire Your Kids
• Shop Nat Geo
• Visit the D.C. Museum
• Learn About Our Impact
• Support Our Mission
• Advertise With Us
• Customer Service
• Renew Subscription
• Manage Your Subscription
• Work at Nat Geo
• Sign Up for Our Newsletters
• Contribute to Protect the Planet

Copyright © 1996-2015 National Geographic Society Copyright © 2015-2024 National Geographic Partners, LLC. All rights reserved

In the Matter of Nat Turner

• Christopher Tomlins

50% off with code FIFTY

Before you purchase audiobooks and ebooks

Please note that audiobooks and ebooks purchased from this site must be accessed on the Princeton University Press app. After you make your purchase, you will receive an email with instructions on how to download the app. Learn more about audio and ebooks .

Support your local independent bookstore.

• United States
• United Kingdom

In the Matter of Nat Turner: A Speculative History

A bold new interpretation of Nat Turner and the slave rebellion that stunned the American South

• Race, Justice & Equity

• Look Inside
• Request Exam Copy
• Download Cover

In 1831 Virginia, Nat Turner led a band of Southampton County slaves in a rebellion that killed fifty-five whites, mostly women and children. After more than two months in hiding, Turner was captured, and quickly convicted and executed. In the Matter of Nat Turner penetrates the historical caricature of Turner as befuddled mystic and self-styled Baptist preacher to recover the haunting persona of this legendary American slave rebel, telling of his self-discovery and the dawning of his Christian faith, of an impossible task given to him by God, and of redemptive violence and profane retribution. Much about Turner remains unknown. His extraordinary account of his life and rebellion, given in chains as he awaited trial in jail, was written down by an opportunistic white attorney and sold as a pamphlet to cash in on Turner’s notoriety. But the enigmatic rebel leader had an immediate and broad impact on the American South, and his rebellion remains one of the most momentous episodes in American history. Christopher Tomlins provides a luminous account of Turner’s intellectual development, religious cosmology, and motivations, and offers an original and incisive analysis of the Turner Rebellion itself and its impact on Virginia politics. Tomlins also undertakes a deeply critical examination of William Styron’s 1967 novel, The Confessions of Nat Turner , which restored Turner to the American consciousness in the era of civil rights, black power, and urban riots. A speculative history that recovers Turner from the few shards of evidence we have about his life, In the Matter of Nat Turner is also a unique speculation about the meaning and uses of history itself.

Getting to Know Nat Turner

Awards and recognition.

• Winner of the Francis Parkman Prize, Society of American Historians
• Winner of the Richard Slatten Award for Excellence in Virginia Biography, Virginia Museum of History & Culture (Virginia Historical Society)

"[An] expertly constructed work, one of the handful of books on Turner destined to become essential reading for understanding the events of August 1831."—Douglas R. Egerton Le Moyne, American Historical Review

"[ In the Matter of Nat Turner ] succeeds in challenging established assumptions about Turner’s intellectual world, and it is likely that, with its publication, historians will be much more inclined to pay more attention to the importance of religion in Turner’s rebellion."—Enrico Dal Iago, Journal of American History

"A major achievement. Tomlins is a brilliant historian, and his study is full of many new insights that make significant contributions to our understanding. Most importantly, Tomlins is one of the only historians to pay careful attention to the mind of the rebel leader. . . . Tomlins has given us a well-researched, always interesting and intellectually stimulating new book on Nat Turner. We should be deeply grateful for this extraordinary, sparkling work of history."—Kenneth S. Greenberg, Journal of the Early Republic

"You can peel off layers, break off pieces and grab chunks out of In the Matter of Nat Turner, A Speculative History by Christopher Tomlins and have what I call a good book chew. Indigestion only comes because it makes you think about what you’re chewing."—Arelya J. Mitchell, The Mid-South Tribune

" In the Matter of Nat Turner offers a new reading of the well-known and much written-about document purporting to record the confession of the leader of an 1831 slave rebellion in Virginia, set in the context of a thick reconstruction of the local legal and political debates about slavery and representation. Christopher Tomlins makes the argument that previous interpreters have failed to take Turner seriously as a religious thinker, reducing his visionary religious narrative to nothing more than a cover for his political objectives. . . . In the Matter of Nat Turner is a very ambitious and complex book."—Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, Journal of the American Academy of Religion

"An ambitious and deeply researched intellectual achievement… In the Matter of Nat Turner stands as an exemplar and benchmark of both the depth and imagination with which we ought to engage Nat Turner and the perils imposing our own facticity upon him in the process."—M. Cooper Harriss, Religious Studies Review

"[ In the Matter of Nat Turner ] is a book about the Nat Turner revolt as much as it is about the craft of writing history. By framing his arguments in Benjaminian terms, Tomlins succeeds in addressing questions of subaltern voices, archival silences and the limits of historical narrative . . . Tomlins makes a compelling case."—Sebastian Jobs, Annual Bulletin of Historical Literature

"[A] remarkably interesting book…[ In the Matter of Nat Turner is] endlessly fascinating . . . [Chris Tomlins] takes us on an illuminated mystery tour of this most mysterious of events and much else besides. . . . Enriching."—Paul Harvey, Church History

" In the Matter of Nat Turner is a tour de force . . . . Tomlins’s book shows how historical speculation and conjecture can be done in a way that is nonetheless solidly grounded in biblical, philosophical, anthropological, and historical context."—Angela Fernandez, Legal History

"For those looking for a provocative set of speculations about Turner’s religiosity, [ In the Matter of Nat Turner ] provides much about which to think and argue."—Vanessa M. Holden, Journal of Social History

"[A] profound new book… In the Matter of Nat Turner is a book teeming with insight. Tomlins’ provocative analysis of Turner’s own ideas will no doubt generate fruitful debate and have to be reckoned with by scholars in a variety of fields. But beyond that, Tomlins provides us with a powerful model for how to write history that both links individual biography with broader structural analysis and that centers the perspective of those long excluded."—Aziz Rana, Legal Form

"Christopher Tomlins’ In the Matter of Nat Turner offers new insights into the thinking of Nat Turner and then employs those insights to meditate upon the discipline of history itself. Through his searching study of the actors and events of 1831, Tomlins interrogates contemporary historians’ own thinking and practice, their blind spots and erasures, their commitment to a disciplinary machine that yields often crushingly familiar answers. For these reasons, In the Matter of Nat Turner deserves a readership not only among historians of the antebellum South, but also among all interested in history as a modern knowledge form."—Kunal Parker, Radical Philosophy

"An important, 'speculative' work of intellectual history for all academic collections."— Choice Reviews

"This book is not only tremendously enjoyable, but also a very useful addition to the field of slavery and the history of resistance and rebellion in the Americas."—Laura Sandy, Slavery and Abolition

" In the Matter of Nat Turner provides a master class in what it means to explore the unwritten, to engage with the fragmentary, and to expand the potentialities of historical research."—Honor Sachs, Law and History Review

"[A] brilliant and challenging book. . . . Tomlins crafts a new major interpretation in this ‘intellectual history of Nat Turner,’ centered on a compelling account of Turner’s faith and its collision with the emerging political and economic order of antebellum Virginia. . . . A richly rewarding book."—Randolph Scully, Journal of Southern History

"A skillful reading and imagining of the sources . . . [and] a compelling retelling of Nat Turnerʼs life, beliefs, and intellect as well as the political significance of his rebellion."—Tamika Nunley, William & Mary Quarterly

"Tomlins has succeeded in writing a distinctive sort of intellectual history. . . . In the Matter of Nat Turner offers much more than a new analysis of Turner’s Confessions ."—Bradford J. Wood, North Carolina Historical Review

"An incredibly complex, erudite, and thought provoking book."—Bruce E. Baker, Journal of Religious History

"Intelligent, important, and timely."—Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize – winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

"Tomlins has applied the research rigor, creative methods, and astute analysis required to discern the broad import of Nat Turner's rebellion and the particular linkage of religion and politics. The result is a lucid and compelling account that unleashes for readers the historical and theoretical significance of Turner for the contemporary study of American religion, race, and social power."—Sylvester A. Johnson, author of African American Religions, 1500–2000: Colonialism, Democracy, and Freedom

"A fascinating and original work of historical interrogation, In the Matter of Nat Turner is a mélange of philosophy, literary analysis, theology, forensics, and speculative imagination that opens up new vistas of space and time existing beyond the pale of Western law and logic. By penetrating and dismantling the narratives that have made the most consequential antebellum slave rebellion 'legible,' Christopher Tomlins brings fresh insights into Turner's rebellion, reveals what our standard heroic stories obscure, and challenges historians everywhere to plumb depths to which few scholars have dared to go."—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original

"The sharpest and most insightful interpretation of Nat Turner's rebellion in the scholarly literature. Tomlins's wonderful and important book makes a fundamental contribution to our understanding of one of the canonical events in American and African American history."—James Sidbury, author of Becoming African in America: Race and Nation in the Early Black Atlantic

"With skill and erudition, Christopher Tomlins takes apart Nat Turner's image as a bugbear of popular white imagination and renders an elegiac historical meditation on the enslaved prophet and his crusade. This brilliant book unpacks the legal, political, philosophical, religious, and historical significance of Turner's rebellion like no other."—Manisha Sinha, author of The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition

Stay connected for new books and special offers. Subscribe to receive a welcome discount for your next order. 

50% off sitewide with code FIFTY  |  May 7 – 31  |  Some exclusions apply. See our FAQ .

• ebook & Audiobook Cart

• Search Menu
• Sign in through your institution
• Author Guidelines
• Open Access Options
• Why Publish with JAH?
• About Journal of American History
• About the Organization of American Historians
• Editorial Board
• Advertising and Corporate Services
• Self-Archiving Policy
• Dispatch Dates
• Journals on Oxford Academic
• Books on Oxford Academic

Article Contents

• < Previous

In the Matter of Nat Turner: A Speculative History

• Article contents
• Figures & tables
• Supplementary Data

Enrico Dal Lago, In the Matter of Nat Turner: A Speculative History, Journal of American History , Volume 109, Issue 1, June 2022, Pages 159–160, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jaac165

• Permissions Icon Permissions

Scholarship on Nat Turner and his 1831 rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia, has increased in recent years. Widely acclaimed works such as Patrick H. Breen's The Land Shall Be Deluged in Blood (2016) have helped us a great deal in understanding the protagonist and the context of the most successful slave rebellion in the antebellum U.S. South. Christopher Tomlins's In the Matter of Nat Turner builds on these recent works, but, at the same time, it is highly original in its approach and interpretation of both Turner and the rather sketchy documentary evidence historians have on him.

Tomlins sets out, at the start of his book, to write “an intellectual history of Nat Turner” (p. xii). To do this, he goes back to the one fundamental source we are left with: The Confessions of Nat Turner (1831), published by Virginian lawyer Thomas Ruffin Grey, and based, supposedly, on his conversation with the slave rebel as he awaited execution. Tomlins criticizes scholars who have dismissed this source as biased and unreliable, and, instead, he engages in a forensic analysis of the text, which, through deconstruction, leads him to recover what he believes to be the real Turner and to conclude that “he is first of all a Christian” (p. xiii). Thus, in Tomlins's view, Turner comes across very much the same as in The Confessions of Nat Turner , as a man who lived and breathed the Bible in its antebellum southern evangelical interpretation, who had a sophisticated understanding of Christian theology, and who was inspired, in particular, by the book of Revelation and the Gospel of Luke. This is the extraordinary value of Tomlins's work: by going beyond and against the interpretations of historians and also novelists—especially William Styron—who have privileged the political aspect of Turner's rebellion and dismissed the religious element as little more than a smoke screen, Tomlins has been able to bring back to light and restore the crucial role that the Bible and Christian theology played in Turner's intellectual world. Seen in this light, the rebellion of August 1831 that led to the killing of fifty-five white men, women, and children was an extension and translation into action of Turner's faith and of his belief in divine violence and retribution.

Email alerts

Citing articles via.

• Process - a blog for american history
• Recommend to your Library

Affiliations

• Online ISSN 1945-2314
• Print ISSN 0021-8723
• Copyright © 2024 Organization of American Historians
• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Institutional account management
• Rights and permissions
• Get help with access
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

The American Yawp Reader

Nat turner explains the southampton rebellion, 1831.

In August, 1831, Nat Turner led a group of enslaved and free Black men in a rebellion that killed over fifty white men, women, and children. Nat Turner understood his rebellion as an act of God. While he awaited trial, Turner spoke with the white attorney, Thomas Ruffin Gray, who wrote their conversations into the following document.

I was struck with that particular passage which says : “Seek ye the kingdom of Heaven and all things shall be added unto you.” I reflected much on this passage, and prayed daily for light on this subject—As I was praying one day at my plough, the spirit spoke to me, saying “Seek ye the kingdom of Heaven and all things shall be added unto you.”

Question —what do you mean by the Spirit.

Answer —The Spirit that spoke to the prophets in former days—and I was greatly astonished, and for two years prayed continually, whenever my duty would permit—and then again I had the same revelation, which fully confirmed me in the impression that I was ordained for some great purpose in the hands of the Almighty. Several years rolled round, in which many events occurred to strengthen me in this my belief. At this time I reverted in my mind to the remarks made of me in my childhood, and the things that had been shewn me—and as it had been said of me in my childhood by those by whom I had been taught to pray, both white and black, and in whom I had the greatest confidence, that I had too much sense to be raised, and if I was, I would never be of any use to any one as a slave. Now finding I had arrived to man’s estate, and was a slave, and these revelations being made known to me, I began to direct my attention to this great object, to fulfil the purpose for which, by this time, I felt assured I was intended. Knowing the influence I had obtained over the minds of my fellow servants, (not by the means of conjuring and such like tricks—for to them I always spoke of such things with contempt) but by the communion of the Spirit whose revelations I often communicated to them, and they believed and said my wisdom came from God. I now began to prepare them for my purpose, by telling them something was about to happen that would terminate in fulfilling the great promise that had been made to me—About this time I was placed under an overseer, from whom I ran away—and after remaining in the woods thirty days, I returned, to the astonishment of the negroes on the plantation, who thought I had made my escape to some other part of the country, as my father had done before. But the reason of my return was, that the Spirit appeared to me and said I had my wishes directed to the things of this world, and not to the kingdom of Heaven, and that I should return to the service of my earthly master—“For he who knoweth his Master’s will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes, and thus, have I chastened you.” And the negroes found fault, and murmured against me, saying that if they had my sense they would not serve any master in the world. And about this time I had a vision—and I 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—and I heard a voice saying, “Such is your luck, such you are called to see, and let it come rough or smooth, you must surely bare it.” I now withdrew myself as much as my situation would permit, from the intercourse of my fellow servants, for the avowed purpose of serving the Spirit more fully—and it appeared to me, and reminded me of the things it had already shown me, and that it would then reveal to me the knowledge of the elements, the revolution of the planets, the operation of tides, and changes of the seasons. After this revelation in the year 1825, and the knowledge of the elements being made known to me, I sought more than ever to obtain true holiness before the great day of judgment should appear, and then I began to receive the true knowledge of faith. And from the first steps of righteousness until the last, was I made perfect; and the Holy Ghost was with me, and said, “Behold me as I stand in the Heavens”—and I looked and saw the forms of men in different attitudes—and there were lights in the sky to which the children of darkness gave other names than what they really were—for they were the lights of the Savior’s hands, stretched forth from east to west, even as they were extended on the cross on Calvary for the redemption of sinners. And I wondered greatly at these miracles, and prayed to be informed of a certainty of the meaning thereof—and shortly afterwards, while laboring in the field, I discovered drops of blood on the corn as though it were dew from heaven—and I communicated it to many, both white and black, in the neighborhood—and I then found on the leaves in the woods hieroglyphic characters, and numbers, with the forms of men in different attitudes, portrayed in blood, and representing the figures I had seen before in the heavens. And now the Holy Ghost had revealed itself to me, and made plain the miracles it had shown me—For as the blood of Christ had been shed on this earth, and had ascended to heaven for the salvation of sinners, and was now returning to earth again in the form of dew—and as the leaves on the trees bore the impression of the figures I had seen in the heavens, it was plain to me that 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. About this time I told these things to a white man, on whom it had a wonderful effect—and he ceased from his wickedness, and was attacked immediately with a cutaneous eruption, and blood oozed from the pores of his skin, and after praying and fasting nine days, he was healed, and the Spirit appeared to me again, and said, as the Saviour had been baptised so should we be also—and when the white people would not let us be baptised by the church, we went down into the water together, in the sight of many who reviled us, and were baptised by the Spirit—After this I rejoiced greatly, and gave thanks to God. And on the 12th of May, 1828, I heard a loud noise in the heavens, 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.

Nat Turner, Confessions of Nat Turner… (Baltimore: 1831), 9-11.

Available through the Internet Archive

Transatlantica

Revue d’études américaines. American Studies Journal

Accueil Numéros 1 L’esclavage à l’écran / Slavery o... The Birth of a Nation (Nate Parke...

The Birth of a Nation (Nate Parker, 2016): The Tale of Nat Turner’s Rebellion

Cet article est consacré aux mémoires de l’esclavage dans The Birth of a Nation de Nate Parker. À travers une étude narrative qui examine la manière dont le réalisateur utilise le genre du film biographique (ou biopic) pour faire de l’esclave rebelle un héros, cet article analyse l’impact des images sur la construction d’une figure historique controversée. Les films de plantation et autres représentations cinématographiques des Noirs ont laissé une empreinte visuelle dont le réalisateur conteste la légitimité en développant une esthétique de l’esclavage qui prend le contrepied des représentations existantes.

This essay examines the memories of slavery shaped by Nate Parker in The Birth of a Nation . It shows how Parker uses the biopic as a narrative frame to turn the slave rebel into a hero and analyzes the impact of the visuals over the construction of a historically controversial figure. Parker, the essay argues, has devised an aesthetic of slavery that aims to counter the visual legacy of the plantation genre and other existing representations of blackness.

Entrées d’index

Mots-clés : , keywords: , texte intégral.

• 1 The author wishes to express her gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful crit (...)

1 The historiography of slavery long focused on the transatlantic slave trade and the institution of slavery as an economic system that produced a dehumanizing view of the enslaved people. 1 Nineteenth-century proslavery historians such as James Schouler described the enslaved Africans as “a black servile race, sensuous, stupid, brutish, obedient to the whip, children in imagination” (Schouler 239), giving ground to racist stereotypes that have plagued American literary and visual culture—the Uncle Tom, the Sambo, the coon, the mammy, and the pickaninny among others (Guerrero 15-17). In American Negro Slave Revolts (1943), Herbert Aptheker provided a corrective to this perception by bringing to light “records of approximately two hundred and fifty [slave] revolts and conspiracies in the history of American Negro slavery.” Aptheker pointed out the causal relation between acts of rebellion and the “degradation, exploitation, oppression, and brutality” of slavery, thus emphasizing the political awareness of the enslaved and their capacity to resist (Aptheker 162, 139). In Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (1959), Stanley Elkins stressed the devastating effects of forced servitude (which he compared to a totalitarian institution) on the black personality. Elkins’s thesis of black victimization was at odds with the ideological shifts of the 1960s and 1970s, which foregrounded the creative resistance of blacks in the context of the Black Power movement. Herbert Gutman’s The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925 (1976) revealed the persistence of a specific African American cultural heritage despite uprootedness, whereas Richard Price’s Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas (1973) and Eugene D. Genovese’s From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making of the Modern World (1979) “laid to rest the myth of slave docility and quiescence” (Genovese xxiii) and documented instances of marronage —“the living proof of the existence of a slave consciousness that refused to be limited by the whites’ conception or manipulation of [authority]” (Price 2). More recently, Robert L. Paquette has remarked that “slaves resisted wherever slavery existed. They resisted as individuals and in groups. They resisted passively and violently. They organized acts of collective resistance that were essentially their own” (Paquette 272).

2 See Claire Dutriaux’s essay in the same issue of Transatlantica .

2 These historiographical developments in the study of slavery seem to have had little influence on filmmaking. From The Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1915) to Jezebel (William Wyler, 1938) and Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939), Hollywood cinema has contributed to the circulation of racial stereotypes: racist characterization has thrived in the Hollywood plantation genre in particular (Bogle). In the 1960s and 1970s the civil rights movement ushered in a new range of representations, including the rebellious Kunta Kinte (LeVar Burton/John Amos) in the TV miniseries Roots (1977) and the boxer Mede (Ken Norton) in the blaxploitation film Mandingo (Richard Fleischer, 1975). The depiction of the idealized virility of the Mandingo slave resonates with the racist portrayal of black sexuality as animalistic desire in Griffith’s film. Tavia Nyong’o nonetheless argues that Mandingo represents “an astonishing effort to capture and destroy, within the cinematic apparatus, the homoerotic, hypersexualized image of the rebellious black slave” (Nyong’o 175). Sankofa (Haile Gerima, 1993) is the only film that daringly broaches slave revolt as insurrection through characters who continually talk about escape, with Shango (Mutabaruka) voicing the doctrine of the Haitian Revolution and its discourse of universal liberty. 2 While Amistad (Stephen Spielberg, 1997) may stand out as “an attempt to revise the codes surrounding the notion of black armed revolt” in Hollywood cinema (Stokes, 2013 47), some critics question the ideological slant of a film that fails to challenge the “mainstream American image of the black male body as violent” (Osagie 127).

3 Representing slavery on screen is an arduous task considering the discriminatory power of race-laden images: it entails the risk of reactivating the visually racist discourse that insidiously pervades American cinema. Darieck Scott observes that a “surfeit of signification attends the image of black bodies in the visual field” (Scott 337). Referring to Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks , he argues:

[The black image] is enmeshed within the various overdeterminations which produce it as replete with readable meanings—it is always bearing a story, an explanation, always flaunting its valence as different/difference , evoking the familiar but largely inescapable assumptions of hypersexuality, hyperphysicality, monstrosity, and criminality that shape visual representations of blackness in Western culture. (Scott 341)

In The Birth of a Nation , Nate Parker self-consciously engages with the visual legacy of slavery and revisionist literatures about slavery. The Birth of a Nation is a film conceived in reference to Griffith’s own movie of the same title, aiming both to revise its historical discourse and to counter a racist imagery that has endured through the dissemination of stereotypes across various genres.

4 Following the trend of slave narrative films that has recently flourished, and which the box office success of 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013) epitomized, Parker provides a self-reflexive approach to a text—the 1831 Confessions of Nat Turner —that has sparked many controversies. The filmmaker attempts to retrieve the voice of the enslaved man from the words couched in the pamphlet published by Thomas R. Gray, a white lawyer who recorded Nat Turner’s confession before he was hanged for leading a slave insurrection that caused between 55 to 60 deaths among the white population of Southampton County, Virginia, and even more among the enslaved who were killed in retaliation. Forty black men joined the rebellion, which started with the murder of Turner’s own master and his family on August 21, 1831. Genovese extols the “extraordinary heroism” of slaves who “took the insurrectionary road,” which he understands as “part of the most radical wing of the struggle for […] democracy” (Genovese 1-2). Turner’s struggle was first and foremost inspired by religious beliefs and ideas of the revolution; but it may also have been motivated by the maroons’ stories which the filmmaker includes as part of Turner’s childhood environment.

• 3 “ Being at play with other children, when three or four years old, I was telling them something, whi (...)

5 Nat Turner is celebrated as a hero whom many textbooks call “deeply religious” or “a gifted preacher” (Loewen 181)—although historians have also warned against Thomas Gray’s intrusive intervention in a narrative that cannot be taken at face value. African American literature scholar Mary Kemp Davis calls into question the accuracy of Gray’s transcription when she declares “I don’t believe for a moment that Nat Turner spoke that way” in Charles Burnett’s documentary Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property (2003). Burnett examines the resonance of Turner’s name in collective memory by interviewing writer William Styron, whose own fictional account of the slave rebellion ( The Confessions of Nat Turner , 1967) precipitated a wave of critiques in 1967-1968. The novelist was blamed for falsifying history by expanding on the sexual fantasies Turner allegedly nurtured about Margaret Whitehead, a white woman who was killed during the revolt. Harlem writer William Strickland viewed Styron’s Confessions as “a racist book designed to titillate the fantasies of white America,” while Stokely Carmichael and Rap Brown refused to engage discussion on what they called “the distorted contents of Styron’s book.” “Lies, deception, and distortion,” they added, “is the only thing we can expect from hunkies” (quoted in French 252, 256). Styron responds to these accusations in Burnett’s film by suggesting that Turner “fits into the role each creator wants to make him fit into” because so little is known about him. Turner is a floating signifier whose character can be fleshed out with different traits and qualities. Cartoonist Kyle Baker, for example, explored the subtext of the Confessions in his graphic novel Nat Turner (2008) and imagined the story which Turner supposedly recalled as a child—an unspecified event that had happened before his birth and caused him to be seen as a prophet. 3 Baker situates the mysterious event during the Middle Passage, where an African mother throws her baby overboard to save it from a life of misery. Born in Virginia, Turner never experienced the horrors of the Middle Passage; but the episode is constructed as an act of empowerment connecting Turner’s rebellion to repressed collective memories. The embedded story evokes a diasporic culture which has slipped into oblivion.

6 Parker exploits similar gaps in Gray’s narrative to re-appropriate memories of black experience. The Birth of a Nation traces Turner’s life trajectory from childhood to death, filling in the gaps in the character’s life story through fiction. Using the biopic format to elevate Turner to heroic status, Parker creates narrative and mise-en-scène effects that allow him to describe the slave rebel as the driving force behind historical events that have all too often objectified the enslaved. Parker looks at Sankofa for aural inspiration and at 12 Years a Slave for visuals that exploit the shocking contrast between picturesque sceneries and staged violence, and emphasize the sadistic nature of the white gaze (Wilderson). The film’s carefully constructed visuals show that it fits an ideological project that does not strive for historical accuracy; it is a revisionist slavery film that produces a new image of the enslaved people by highlighting dreams of freedom that prompt some to rebellion. The Birth of a Nation spotlights the exceptional character of Nat Turner, played by Parker himself and portrayed as a messianic prophet and revolutionary leader. As director, Parker attempts to circumvent preexisting imagery of slavery to avoid turning the black body into an object of abjection that might elicit horror and disgust (Chapman 182; Kristeva 4).

Turner: the making of a hero

7 The Birth of a Nation is devoted to the creation of a screen hero, whom the narrative visually singles out amid various crowds. Whether as a child or an adult, Nat Turner stands out in the middle foreground of the screen running toward the camera with a determination that animates every nerve of his body. The similitude between two screen shots, portraying him first as a child and then as an adult, enhances the exceptional character of an individual whose rebellious streak is an ingrained personality trait. In Toward the Visualization of History: The Past as Image , Mark Moss discusses the influence of visual culture on the study of history in the following terms: “Since the advent of film, one of the most common ways of dealing with historical subject matter on film has been to resuscitate the Great Man/Person version of history” (Moss 126). Nate Parker’s biographical film intersects with slave narrative in order to put a new spin on black history: the narrative portrays Turner as an exceptionally talented child who is taught to read by his white owner’s wife Elizabeth (Penelope Ann Miller). The script deviates from Turner’s Confessions , which mention no such experience, suggesting that Parker bases the figure of Turner on a variety of sources that include other slave narratives. Sophia Auld’s reading lessons in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) immediately come to mind.

8 Genovese describes Turner as a man who “projected an interpretation of Christianity that stressed the God-given right to freedom as the fundamental doctrine of obligation underlying a political vision that itself reflected the new ideologies of the Age of Revolution” (Genovese 45-46). Parker characterizes his hero as a preacher whose eloquence is rooted in his reading of the Bible. Although treated as an object whose sermons are commodities to be sold and purchased, Turner is obviously empowered by his literacy, which he uses to articulate a collective sentiment of injustice. Turner’s religious discourse underpins his growing political awareness; the more plantations he visits, the more radical his sermons become. The Christian references add to the subversive tone of the film, pointing out the hypocrisy of a system that abuses religious rhetoric to deprive black men and women of their humanity. Turner’s religious sermon is imbued with the rhetoric of equality that permeates the Declaration of Independence when he addresses a group of enslaved people he invites to pray and sing with him:

Brethren—I pray you sing to the Lord a new song. Sing praise in the assembly of the righteous. Let the saints be joyful in glory. Let them sing aloud on their beds. Let the high praises of God be in the mouths of the saints, and a two-edged sword in their hand, to execute vengeance on the demonic nations, and punishments on those peoples! To bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron! To execute on them this written judgment!

9 The Birth of a Nation is pervaded by a religious iconography that inscribes Turner’s rebellion within the Christian master narrative of love, suffering, and redemptive resurrection. Taïna Tuhkunen argues that “the three-fold theological plot has left its embedded imprints on a long series of ‘leader biopics’ which repeatedly mingle the secular and the ‘real’ with the sacred and the legendary” (Tuhkunen 159). Steven Spielberg used such religious allegories in Lincoln (2012), a biopic which portrays the American president as saint, for instance in the deathbed scene where a Christlike light haloes Lincoln’s dead body. The Birth of a Nation is a work of hagiography that aims to elevate Turner to the pantheon of national heroes by showing his rebellion as an act of sacrifice for the collective good. The visuals consistently emphasize this interpretation: one thinks, for instance, of the support Turner receives from the other enslaved who display candles on their doorsteps on the night after he is publicly whipped, or of the solar eclipse that Turner interprets as a sign from God to start his rebellion. Turner’s revelations are inspired from the Old Testament, including a passage from the Book of Samuel in which the prophet announces the destruction of the Amalek people, which in the Confessions he recalls as follows:

And on the 12 th of May, 1828, I heard a loud noise in the heavens, 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. (Turner 11)

10 Turner embodies the rebellious spirit that runs in the slave community and the film portrays solidarity among the slaves who join the insurrection. The final scene shows a group of rebels outnumbered by armed soldiers in Jerusalem—a city that they never reached according to historical accounts. Parker eschews claims made by historian William Sidney Drewry, who ascribed the failure of the insurrection to “the refusal of the slaves in general to participate,” thereby reactivating the myth of the faithful slave (quoted in French 167). While Parker includes this stereotypical character as the house slave Isaiah (Roger Guenveur Smith)—another addition to the source text—he also points out his isolated status by showing that the enslaved men on the same plantation would rather join the resistance than continue living in bondage. Isaiah’s refusal to join the insurrection does not weaken the solidarity around Turner, although it anticipates the betrayal of the rebellion by a young boy.

11 For New Yorker film critic Richard Brody, Parker’s film is gender-biased because it conveys the men’s perspective only and thereby avoids debates on the possible outcomes of the uprising:

Isaiah […] gets wind of Nat’s plot and, confronting him the next morning, tells Nat that it means death, certain death, for Nat and many other black people. Isaiah speaks brilliantly and incisively to Nat; the preacher, a religious visionary, claims to be acting according to the will of God, and Isaiah warns that Nat may be acting, rather, on his own will, not God’s. Isaiah, whose position makes him privy to much in white society, accurately understands the dangers that Nat and his cohorts face—and the dangers to which they’re exposing the entire population of slaves. Here, too, Parker keeps the perspective on men; he doesn’t visit the cabins where Hark talks with Esther, where the other trusted friends talk with their wives or parents, doesn’t suggest at all that the others have any awareness of the dangers or give any heed to their plot’s effect on their families. (Brody)

Turner’s Confessions do not include political reflections on the aftermath of the revolt. While he recalls the visions that inspired him, Turner quotes from another rebel (Will) to suggest that dreams of liberty moved the men to action: “I saluted them on coming up, and asked Will how came he there, he answered, his life was worth no more than others, and his liberty as dear to him. I asked him if he thought to obtain it? He said he would, or loose [ sic ] his life” (Turner 12).

12 Caroline V. Schroeter objects to the biopic structure of the film which, she contends,

seems to adhere to a model of presenting the historical figure in personalised terms that will “speak to” the audience, but the method he [Nate Parker] employs, which favours evocative close-ups, visual symbolism, directive music etc., threatens to overshadow the political message of black power that, ostensibly, is the film’s raison d’être. Parker’s imperative to present Turner as the focal point, and to conceive of him in Christ-like terms (visually and narratively) results, too, in the diminution of the supporting characters. (Schroeter 147)

As Genovese notes, large uprisings rarely happened without strong leaders who might prevent internal dissension and betrayal (Genovese 8). Among other rebels, Gabriel Prosser in Richmond (1800) and Denmark Vesey in Charleston (1822) planned strategies for their uprisings and provided political and military leadership. Parker uses elaborate visuals and music to legitimize Turner’s fight, which remains a cinematographic taboo topic as suggested by the dearth of films dealing with slave rebellion. In other words, Parker uses the typical biopic techniques—including the Christian narrative of sacrifice—in order to celebrate the memory of Turner. The biopic visually underlines the rebel’s exceptional insight and judgment to transcend the meaning of an insurrection into an act of liberation. The speech he delivers in front of the enslaved men and women who have been made free by the killing of their masters positions him as a guide to freedom. The upward shot and dramatic music heighten the power of his words at a pivotal moment—when men and women have to decide whether they will continue the fight for freedom:

Your earthly master is gone. You are now free men and woman, servants of only the Lord.

Are we dead? No. I say we are now alive, seeing through eyes that have been denied us since being born into the darkness of bondage. Stand with us—that your other captive brothers and sisters may also know freedom. Stand, that our children, for generations to come will know that with the supernatural power of God, we straightened our backs against the works of the evil one.

The enslaved as agents of subversion and resistance

13 Parker calls attention to acts of subversion and resistance among the enslaved. The opening sequence of The Birth of a Nation portrays a community of maroons meeting in the woods to celebrate Nat Turner’s African ancestry in a ceremony where the elders acknowledge the special status of a child bearing the three marks of wisdom, courage, and vision on his chest, which designate him as a leader and a prophet. This inaugural scene challenges Eurocentric readings of slavery by introducing ethnicity in the lives of the enslaved as an emancipation path. Few fiction films actually mention the maroons who “settled in the wilderness, lived there in secret, and were not under any form of direct control by outsiders” (Diouf 1). Historian Sylviane A. Diouf explains that “autonomy was at the heart of their project and exile the means to realize it” (Diouf 2). The reference to marronage accounts for Turner’s filmic dreams of liberty. The same sequence filmed in the woods at night appears in a dream and in a flashback later in the film, both suggesting the existence of an alternative world and pointing out the compelling power of the African imagination over the bleak reality of slavery. Marronage also conveys an ideal of freedom that cannot be compromised by running away to the North while other people remain enslaved in the South. It helps convey the radical understanding of freedom which the film espouses through the portrayal of Turner’s rebellion—a vision also inherited from Turner’s father, who is forced to flee after accidently killing a slave hunter in a fight for his own life. Young Nat witnesses the scene when his father catches the man’s gun and runs for his life; the scene portrays his father as a slave rebel rather than an Uncle Tom. The sequence that follows shows patrollers visiting Turner’s mother and grandmother to question them about the boy’s father’s escape, but all remain silent and claim ignorance. Survival is bound to deceit, which is one of the first lessons the child learns about slavery as he himself shares in the secrecy.

14 The film delves into slavery as a racial system of labor exploitation which the enslaved make every attempt to subvert. Close-ups on Nat’s hands as he is forced to pick cotton after his master’s death convey the objectification of the boy; a long shot of the cotton fields suggests the life of labor awaiting him whereas an aerial tracking shot over the cotton flowers conveys his lack of prospects. An imperceptible cut turns his bleeding child’s hands into an adult’s, embedding the time lapse of his teenage years into an ellipsis. The camera captures the expert adult hand as it picks cotton quickly without shedding a drop of blood; Turner may have become a model slave, but he is also shown preaching in front of the other enslaved, thereby appearing as representative of a community that bonds together through praying and singing. “Let us bow our heads,” he says in an invitation to collectively pray for the Lord, a message which, by the end of the film, he subsequently revises and transforms into a call for rebellion. The sequence serves to highlight Turner’s sense of leadership and his authority over the enslaved. The Birth of a Nation follows a causal narrative that allows Nate Parker to emphasize enslaved men’s ability to generate action; Turner’s vision of blood oozing out of a corn cob may be an illumination but it leads him to rebellion. The film shows that Turner’s religious consciousness develops into a rebellious instinct as he visits more and more plantations, witnessing the horrors of a slave system that produces misery among his fellow enslaved.

15 Parker uses intertextuality to add significance to images that have become clichés through overmediatization. Images of victimization are used to enhance resistance. The scene where a white dog attacks Turner is reminiscent of an iconic photograph by Bill Hudson showing a police dog attacking an African American civil rights demonstrator in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963. Whereas civil rights photography conveyed, in the words of Martin A. Berger, “the determined efforts of the white press to frame the civil rights movement as nonthreatening” by showing (active) white agents exercising power over (passive) blacks, Parker reframes the photograph in close-ups that emphasize protective gestures to signify resistance on Turner’s part (Berger 7). The re-appropriation of such visuals not only testifies to the enduring legacies of the past over the present, suggesting that contemporary police brutality is rooted in the racial (if not racist) history of the nation, but it also relates images of antebellum victimization to the civil rights narrative, connecting individual and invisible acts of slave resistance to the long collective struggle. The close-up on the swollen face of Turner’s wife Cherry (Aja Naomi King) lying in bed after she has been brutalized and raped is also reminiscent of press photographs of Emmett Till in his coffin that were used to display the racist motivations behind segregation and support the civil rights struggle. Likewise, Turner’s scarred back after he is whipped for baptizing a white man evokes the lacerated back of Gordon, an enslaved man who joined the Union Army in 1863 after he ran away. The Army surgeon made a photo of his back that became part of abolitionist visual culture. The intertextual nature of the visuals in the film reveals that The Birth of a Nation is a deliberate attempt to challenge the standard patterns in slavery-themed Hollywood films—including Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained (2012) which, Karen A. Johnson contends, “reinscribes past ideological myths about slavery” by presenting Django (Jamie Foxx) as “the exceptional black” in counterpoint to the “docile and content enslaved individuals” (Johnson 213). The Birth of a Nation challenges stereotypes by highlighting the agency of the enslaved. While the biopic underscores Turner’s exceptional abilities as a leader, the film does not endorse a hierarchy opposing house and field servants. The only racial hierarchy that stands out entrenches the color line as a barrier between the slave quarters and the “big house” of the plantation.

Revising the Hollywood slave narrative

16 While The Birth of a Nation follows a classical Hollywood narrative structure, it reverses the racial order in cinematic terms by foregrounding white stereotypes of the redneck. Rather than assigning black people to a position of “otherness,” Nate Parker turns white people into the “other” by filming from the point of view of the enslaved. The camera is positioned on the side of the black characters and the composition of shots delineates space along racial lines. Camera movements are fluid in the slave quarters when following young Nat Turner as he runs through the alleys where the women do their chores, whereas still long shots convey the rigidity of the plantation system. The plantation mansions loom in the distance, making the enslaved the estranged spectators of a life of comfort lived indoors. The same distance, however, allows for some autonomy on the part of the slaves, whose dreams cannot be controlled, as suggested by the dreams of flight entertained by Turner as a child. Historian John M. Vlach argues that the enslaved “were under control but they were not totally coerced by that control because, while they were being held down, they were also being held out and away from the center of authority” (Vlach 222). The Birth of a Nation explores the interstices in the slave system, the liminal spaces where the enslaved can carve out pockets of resistance. Mise-en-scène captures those spaces in the woods and around the plantations, where the enslaved escape surveillance and carry out ancestral traditions and ceremonies. The intimate sequences between the newlywed Nat and Cherry contribute to the film’s melodramatic tone while depicting feelings of love that humanize the characters.

17 The film is a slave narrative that aims to undercut the “melodrama of black and white” which historian John Blassingame defines as “miscegenation and cruelty, outraged virtues, unrequited love, and planter licentiousness” characterizing most abolitionist literature (Blassingame 373). Borrowing from Henry James, literary scholar Robin Bernstein refers to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) as a book that created a “‘state of vision, of feeling and of consciousness’—that is to say, subjectivation” about slavery by exploiting the innocence of childhood (Bernstein 14). “The violence of slavery,” Bernstein argues, “constituted an attack on Topsy’s natural innocence, which could be partially restored—transmitted—through the loving touch of a white child” (16). Parker refuses to indulge in the melodramatic tropes of slave narratives by proleptically positioning young Samuel Turner as a potential threat in the opening sequence. The hide-and-seek game the black and white children play creates tension as the camera focuses on the white boy’s two feet when he opens the door of the shack where Nat is hiding, foreshadowing the menace that the white man (Armie Hammer) later comes to embody. Long shots further convey an unbridgeable distance between the boys, exhibiting the race and class differences through sets and clothes. Filmed from young Nat’s point of view, the mansion where the white boy lives stands in forbidden territory in the distance. Subjective shots undermine the representation of an idealized antebellum Southern life, conveying the boy’s estrangement from white culture as symbolized by the mansion which he approaches when there is no chance to be seen—as implied by the cut showing that a book has disappeared on the front porch and is now in the hands of the audacious boy.

18 The director eschews an overly intimate portrayal of his characters to avoid excessive sentimentality. Parker neither plays up intense emotionalism to arouse sympathy with the wretched characters—be they raped and whipped black women and men, or terrorized Southern belles—nor does he visually or narratively linger on the melodramatic elements of the genre. Contrary to 12 Years a Slave , in which Steve McQueen highlights the misfortunes of enslaved life through aural and visual elements that make sadism visible (Wilderson 146), including a musical score that “brings terrible, frightening splendor” and long shots that put labor on display (Redmond 157), Parker tones down the spectacle of slavery by using cuts that leave rape unseen.

19 Parker downplays melodrama by avoiding round characterization and using such stereotypes as the redneck who, Williamson writes,

drinks hard liquor—and not at cocktail parties. He’s theatrically lazy but remains virile. He nearly always possesses the wherewithal for physical violence—especially involving dogs and guns. He’s gullible when skepticism would be wiser, and he’s stupid when smart would be safer. He reminds us symbolically of filth, of disgusting bodily functions. (Williamson 2-3)

The film captures the leering gazes of the men during an auction where an African American woman is put on display for all to visually and imaginarily consume. The woman is explicitly sold as a sexual object in a scene which the film does not sentimentalize; she does not have a name or a voice. There is no heart-wrenching scene of separation between a mother and her children. The crude scene depicts a blunt system that turns human beings into commodities to be bought and sold. However, the close-ups on the white men’s smiling faces and ogling eyes emphasize their rugged and rough facial features; the actors chosen to embody the white men express no emotion but lust. Their vicious gaze betrays the evils of the “peculiar institution.”

20 The biographical narrative focus on Nat Turner is expressed by the many close-ups on his face, a self-conscious strategy to avoid lingering, voyeuristic gazes at the violence perpetrated against black bodies—including Turner’s when he is publicly whipped. The close-up may even be read as resistance to the white objectifying gaze in that case, isolating Turner’s Christian words from his listeners through camera movements that undermine the power of the Bible (or the Gospel of Luke), which he reads out in order to ensure the submission of the enslaved to their masters and to promote solidarity among them by nurturing a sense of bonding when all of them join in collective prayer, thereby overturning the expected effect of his preaching. The camera also focalizes on Turner’s face when he is hanged after he turns himself in, a technique used by Parker to avoid reactivating the spectacle involved in many lynching photographs. Leigh Raiford examines these photographs and draws on Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish to observe that punishment must mark the victim’s body: “Through a macabre exhibition of torture,” she writes, “lynching simultaneously retraced the always already inscribed mark of infamy, the victim’s blackness, while celebrating the triumph of mob law” (Raiford 39). By excluding the crowd from the scene, which is cropped from the frame in the close-up, Parker undermines the spectacle of lynching and retains Turner’s humanity. The extreme close-up undercuts objectification by capturing signs of life in opposition to the cruelty of a jeering crowd. Interestingly, pioneering filmmaker D.W. Griffith had aptly explored an innovative use of close-ups to deepen characterization and support narrative development by making the emotional reactions of his characters visible at dramatic moments (Stokes, 2007 76). In counterpoint, Parker uses close-ups of Turner as a recurring means to restrain the drama when the spectacle of horror becomes too painful to bear. In the New Yorker , Richard Brody is more critical of the close-up as it appears in Parker’s The Birth of a Nation :

In a scene that’s another pivot of the film, another pivot that relentlessly personalizes Nat’s story, Sam orders him to be whipped; Nat is lashed to a post with his arms outstretched like Christ on the cross, and Parker shows Nat’s agony with extreme closeups on Nat’s—on Parker’s own—face. Similarly, when Nat is hanged—after passing through his own Via Dolorosa, assailed by the braying crowd of whites—Parker puts the camera, absurdly and pompously, in extreme closeup on Nat’s face. Though, early in the film, Parker’s intense identification with Nat Turner leads to remarkable moments of psychological complexity, it also leads, later in the film, to a self-aggrandizement that distorts the drama, the image, and, for that matter, the spirit of the film.

With Parker casting himself in the role of Nat Turner following a script that the director also authored, Brody contends, the film’s directorial choices reveal the filmmaker’s own “traits of character—arrogance, vanity, and self-importance” (Brody). As suggested in this essay, however, the close-up may have another purpose when considered as part of a filmic strategy devised to challenge conventional framing.

21 Some of the final sequences of The Birth of a Nation depict the aftermath of the rebellion, in particular the lynching of several black men and women. Once again, the camera pans on their faces before they are hanged; rather than voyeuristically filming dead black bodies, Parker focuses on the image of a rope tightening with the weight of a humanized person being hanged. Another sequence reveals corpses dangling from the branches of trees, just like the “strange fruit” Nina Simone sings about on the extradiegetic score, creating an atmosphere of mourning. The camera tracks backward and movement once again counters objectification while offering a moment of contemplation. The sheer number of bodies indicates the massacre that followed the rebellion.

22 Adopting a transnational approach that analyzes and compares how the past of slavery impacts memorializing processes, Elisa Bordin and Anna Scacchi observe that the United States seems to deal reluctantly with the memories of slave rebellions:

Differently from the Caribbean, where rebels and freedom fighters have traditionally been celebrated both in the public and the private sphere, although not always in the service of progressive politics, in the US public memory slave rebels are still considered racially divisive and problematic. (Bordin and Scacchi 13)

The memory of Nat Turner certainly arouses ambiguous feelings among some Americans who question the sense of a rebellion which is sometimes reduced to a “carnage.” Scot French examines how the tale of Nat Turner was translated into a painting series by Lawrence Jacobs, a mural by Charles White, and other works by African American artists; French also notes that “a far less flattering picture of Turner and his followers emerged from the other side of the color line” (French 201, 207). A commemorative plaque was set up in Virginia, insisting on the deadly consequences of the uprising by mentioning the number of white casualties and black rebels punished by law. Yet, these facts fail to convey the spirit of the revolt, which Nate Parker aimed to capture in The Birth of a Nation . The film stands out as an attempt to revise the slavery narrative by highlighting the heroic struggle of the enslaved as rebels whose desire for freedom will not be subdued by constraint.

23 Although the tale of Turner’s rebellion is also one of defeat leading to increased repression, the hanging of the rebel leader at the end of The Birth of a Nation is followed by a cut to an image of a black soldier fighting for the Union in the Civil War, which serves to demonstrate the impossibility of crushing the slave’s rebellious spirit. The film’s perspective differs from that of the normative narratives about emancipation, which often promote the actions of leading white abolitionists at a political level as illustrated in Spielberg’s Lincoln . Parker’s film portrays Turner as an enlightened slave rebel and hero whose fight provides a corrective to the representation of slaves as passive or content. Celeste Marie-Bernier contends that Turner’s memory has served differing political agendas—“from his demonic appearances in proslavery atrocity literatures to his circulation as a divine symbol in hagiographic texts written to inculcate race pride and endorse black fights for civil rights” (Bernier 72). The Birth of a Nation puts another spin on the tale of Nat Turner, turning him into a martyr whose fight for freedom the director aims to have acknowledged in the nation’s racial narrative.

Bibliographie

APTHEKER, Herbert. American Negro Slave Revolts . New York: International Publishers, 1993.

BERGER, Martin A. Seeing through Race: A Reinterpretation of Civil Rights Photography . Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.

BERNIER, Celeste-Marie. Characters of Blood: Black Heroism in the Transatlantic Imagination . Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012.

BERNSTEIN, Robin. Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights . New York: New York University Press, 2011.

BLASSINGAME, John W. The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South . Revised edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.

BOGLE, Donald. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Black in American Films . New York: Viking Press, 1973.

BORDIN, Elisa, and Anna SCACCHI, eds. Transatlantic Memories of Slavery: Reimagining the Past, Changing the Future . Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2015.

BRODY, Richard. “ The Cinematic Merits and Flaws of Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation .” The New Yorker , 9 October 2016. Accessed 15 March 2018.

CHAPMAN, Matthieu. Anti-Black Racism in Early Modern English Drama: The Other “Other.” New York: Routledge, 2017.

DIOUF, Sylviane A. Slavery’s Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons . New York: New York University Press, 2014.

ELKINS, Stanley M. Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959.

FRENCH, Scot. The Rebellious Slave: Nat Turner in American Memory . Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.

GATES, Henry Louis, Jr. “ Did African-American Slaves Rebel? ” 22 April 2013. Accessed 15 March 2018.

GENOVESE, Eugene D. From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making of the Modern World . Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979.

GUERRERO, Ed. Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film . Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993.

GUTMAN, Herbert G. The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925 . New York: Vintage Books, 1976.

JOHNSON, Karen A. “ Django Unchained : An Analysis.” From Uncle Tom’s Cabin to The Help : Critical Perspectives on White-Authored Narratives of Black Life . Eds. Claire Oberon Garcia, Vershawn Ashanti Young, and Charise Pimentel. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, p. 211-226.

KRISTEVA, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection . New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.

LOEWEN, James W. Lies My Teacher Told Me, Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong . New York: The New Press, 1995.

MOSS, Mark. Toward the Visualization of History: The Past as Image. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2008.

NESBITT, Nick. Universal Emancipation: The Haitian Revolution and the Radical Enlightenment . Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008.

NYONG’O, Tavia. Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life . New York: New York University Press, 2019.

OSAGIE, Iyunolu Folayan. The Amistad Revolt: Memory, Slavery, and the Politics of Identity in the United States and Sierra Leone . Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000.

PAQUETTE, Robert L. “Slave Resistance.” The Cambridge World History of Slavery . Vol. 4. Eds. David Eltis, Stanley L. Engerman, Seymour Drescher, and David Richardson. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017, p. 272-295.

PRICE, Richard, ed. Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas . Garden City: Anchor Press, 1973.

RAIFORD, Leigh. Imprisoned in a Luminous Glare: Photography and the African American Freedom Struggle . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011.

REDMOND, Shana L. “Tip Toes and River Rolls: Overhearing Enslavement.” Black Camera , vol. 7, no. 1, 2015, p. 150-161.

SCHOULER, James. History of the United States of America, under the Constitution . Vol. 2. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1882.

SCHROETER, Caroline V. “Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation : Classical Hollywood Cinema or Independent Rebellion?” Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media , no. 13, 2017, p. 135-155.

SCOTT, Darieck. “The Not-Yet Justice League: Fantasy, Redress, and Transatlantic Black History on the Comic Book Page.” Migrating the Black Body: The African Diaspora and Visual Culture . Eds. Leigh Raiford and Heike Raphael-Hernandez. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017, p. 329-348.

STOKES, Melvyn. American History through Hollywood Film: From the Revolution to the 1960s . London: Bloomsbury, 2013.

STOKES, Melvyn. D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation : A History of “the Most Controversial Motion Picture of All Time.” Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

TUHKUNEN, Taïna. “Biographical Motion Pictures and the Resuscitation of ‘Real Lives.’” Women Activists and Civil Rights Leaders in Auto/Biographical Literature and Films . Eds. Delphine Letort and Benaouda Lebdai. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, p. 153-170.

TURNER, Nat. The Confessions of Nat Turner, the Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southampton, Va . Baltimore: Published by Thomas R. Gray, 1831.

VLACH, John Michael. By the Work of Their Hands: Studies in Afro-American Folklife . Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991.

WILDERSON, Frank B., III. “Social Death and Narrative Aporia in 12 Years a Slave .” Black Camera , vol. 7, no. 1, 2015, p. 134-149.

WILLIAMSON, J.W. Hillbillyland: What the Movies Did to the Mountains and What the Mountains Did to the Movies . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

1 The author wishes to express her gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful critical feedback.

3 “ Being at play with other children, when three or four years old, I was telling them something, which my mother overhearing, said it had happened before I was born—I stuck to my story, however, and related somethings which went, in her opinion, to confirm it—others being called on were greatly astonished, knowing that these things had happened, and caused them to say in my hearing, I surely would be a prophet” (Turner 7).

Pour citer cet article

Référence électronique.

Delphine Letort , «  The Birth of a Nation (Nate Parker, 2016): The Tale of Nat Turner’s Rebellion  » ,  Transatlantica [En ligne], 1 | 2018, mis en ligne le 08 septembre 2019 , consulté le 27 mai 2024 . URL  : http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/12096 ; DOI  : https://doi.org/10.4000/transatlantica.12096

Delphine Letort

Le Mans Université

Articles du même auteur

• Sankofa (Haile Gerima, 1993) : la mémoire de l’esclavage dans la conscience diasporique [Texte intégral] Paru dans Transatlantica , 2 | 2012
• Smoke (Paul Auster et Wayne Wang, 1995) : une œuvre à la croisée des arts [Texte intégral] Paru dans Transatlantica , 2 | 2010

Droits d’auteur

Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 . Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.

• Auteur·rices
• Par rubrique
• Présentation
• La rédaction
• Soumettre un dossier thématique
• Présentation des rubriques
• Instructions aux auteur·rices
• Procédure d’évaluation
• Feuille de style

Numéros en texte intégral

• 2 | 2023 What Does Literature Feel Like? / Queering the City
• 1 | 2023 Passeurs de la littérature des États-Unis en France, 1917-1967 (2)
• 2 | 2022 Passeurs de la littérature des États-Unis en France (1) / L’héritage de Michel Foucault aux États-Unis
• 1 | 2022 City Ruins in American War Narratives / Women’s Sites of Struggles for Self-Determination
• 2 | 2021 Left-wing Radicalism in the United States: A Foreign Creed?
• Hors-série | 2021 Numéro anniversaire : 20 ans de la revue
• 1 | 2021 Line Breaks in America: the Odds and Ends of Poetry
• 2 | 2020 Places and Cultures of Capitalism: Histories from the Grassroots
• 1 | 2020 Conjunctions of the Literary and the Philosophical in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century American Writing
• 2 | 2019 Creating the Child Audience: Media and the Invention of Modern American Childhood
• 1 | 2019 Gone With the Wind after Gone With the Wind
• 2 | 2018 Les mots pour le dire. Vocabulaire politique et propagande dans une perspective transatlantique
• 1 | 2018 Slavery on Screen / American Women Writers Abroad: 1849-1976
• 2 | 2017 (Hi)stories of American Women: Writings and Re-writings / Call and Answer: Dialoguing the American West in France
• 1 | 2017 Morphing Bodies: Strategies of Embodiment in Contemporary US Cultural Practices
• 2 | 2016 Chroniques ordinaires de la fin du monde
• 1 | 2016 Modernist Revolutions: American Poetry and the Paradigm of the New
• 2 | 2015 The Poetics and Politics of Antiquity in the Long Nineteenth-Century / Exploiting Exploitation Cinema
• 1 | 2015 The Voting Rights Act at 50 / Hidden in Plain Sight: Deep Time and American Literature
• 2 | 2014 Aesthetics of Theory in the Modern Era and Beyond / Photographie documentaire
• 1 | 2014 Exile and Expatriation
• 2 | 2013 Jeux et enjeux du texte
• 1 | 2013 Revisiting the Gilded Age / Littérature et philosophie
• 2 | 2012 Cartographies de l'Amérique / Histoires d'esclaves
• 1 | 2012 Le roman policier, littérature transatlantique / Maisons Hantées
• 2 | 2011 Sport et société / Animals and the American Imagination
• 1 | 2011 Senses of the South / Référendums populaires
• 2 | 2010 The Businessman as Artist / New American Voices
• 1 | 2010 American Shakespeare / Comic Books
• 2 | 2009 Benjamin Franklin / Richard Powers
• 1 | 2009 Homage to Michel Fabre
• 1 | 2008 Amérique militante
• 2 | 2007 Plotting (Against) America
• 1 | 2007 Democratic Aesthetics
• 2 | 2006 Révolution
• 1 | 2006 Beyond the New Deal
• 1 | 2005 Couleurs d'Amérique
• 1 | 2003 State of the Union
• 1 | 2002 Jeune République
• 1 | 2001 Autour du 11 septembre

Tous les numéros

Informations.

• Mentions légales et Crédits
• Politiques de publication

Suivez-nous

Lettres d’information

• La Lettre d’OpenEdition

Affiliations/partenaires

• Revue soutenue par l’Institut des sciences humaines et sociales (InSHS) du CNRS, 2023-2024

ISSN électronique 1765-2766

Voir la notice dans le catalogue OpenEdition  

Plan du site  – Mentions légales et Crédits  – Liens  – Flux de syndication

Politique de confidentialité  – Gestion des cookies  – Signaler un problème

Nous adhérons à OpenEdition Journals  – Édité avec Lodel  – Accès réservé

You will be redirected to OpenEdition Search

Understanding the Gospel of Nat Turner

The leader of the deadly slave revolt had a deep Christian faith that propelled his rebellious actions

Patrick Breen

On August 27, 1831, the Richmond Compiler asked: “Who is this Nat Turner?” At the time, Turner was hiding in Southampton, Virginia, not far from the site where he launched the most important slave revolt in American history. Nat Turner’s Revolt, which had taken place just five days earlier, had left more than 50 whites dead; by the time the trials finished, a similar number of suspected rebels were either killed extra legally or condemned and executed.

Even when Nat Turner was captured, on October 30, 1831, the Compiler’s question had remained unanswered. As a result, a white lawyer, Thomas R. Gray, arranged to go to the jail where Turner was held awaiting his trial and take down what Turner described as “a history of the motives which induced me to undertake the late insurrection.”  Over the last decade, scholars working with other sources and doing close textual analysis of The Confessions of Nat Turner have become increasingly confident that Gray transcribed Turner’s confession, with, as Gray claimed, “little or no variation.” 

While The Confessions of Nat Turner remains the ur-text for anyone who wants to understand Nat Turner, this 5,000-word account creates as many questions as it answers. As a result, the document has become a springboard for artists who want to imagine the life of the most famous American to rebel against slavery.  In 1967, the novelist William Styron published a novel based upon Turner’s Confessions.  The novel both won immediate acclaim including a Pulitzer Prize and caused an uproar, as black scholars including John Henrik Clarke took issue with the way that Styron imagined that the rebel leader was inspired in part by his frustrated sexual longings for a white woman.    

The Land Shall Be Deluged in Blood: A New History of the Nat Turner Revolt

This week, a new re-imagining of Nat Turner’s story hits the big screen as Birth of a Nation opens in theaters nationwide.  Filmmaker and actor Nate Parker portrays Southampton’s most famous son as a “warm, encouraging preacher,” in the words of the New Yorker’s Vinson Cunningham .  Nate Parker portrayal highlights the religiosity of the slave rebel leader whose personal Bible has been put on display for the first time at the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture.   But what do we really know about Turner’s religion? 

Fortunately, Turner’s Confessions , recorded by Thomas R. Gray, provides important clues to Turner’s central religious beliefs.

Most slaves could not read.  Some of them owned Bibles anyway, which could then serve as tangible reminders of the “Good News” contained within. Turner, on the other hand, learned how to read as a child, and his Bible was the book that he knew intimately.  When captured after the revolt, Turner readily placed his revolt in a biblical context, comparing himself at some times to the Old Testament prophets, at another point to Jesus Christ. In his Confessions , Turner quoted the Gospel of Luke twice, and scholars have found many other passages in which his language echoed the language of the Bible including passages from Ezekiel, Joshua, Isaiah, Matthew, Mark, and Revelation. Like many 19th-century American Protestants, Turner drew his inspiration and much of his vocabulary from the Bible.

While Turner valued the Bible, he rejected the corollary that scripture alone was the only reliable source of guidance on matters religious and moral.  Turner believed that God continued to communicate with the world.  Turner describes two other ways that God communicated with him. First, God communicated directly to him: at one point, “the Lord had shewn me things that had happened before my birth.” At another point, “the Holy Ghost had revealed itself to me.” On May 12, 1828, “the Spirit instantly appeared to me.” When asked by Gray what Turner meant by the Spirit, Turner responded “The Spirit that spoke to the prophets in former days.” Turner saw himself as a modern prophet.

Turner believed that God also communicated to him through the natural world. His neighbors saw stars in the sky, not realizing that according to Turner, they were really “the lights of the Saviour's hands, stretched forth from east to west.”  More often Turner looked at prodigies—or unusual natural phenomena—as indirect messages from God.  In a field one day, he found “drops of blood on the corn as though it were dew from heaven.”  When he saw “leaves in the woods hieroglyphic characters, and numbers, with the forms of men in different attitudes, portrayed in blood,” he was reminded of “figures I had seen in the heavens.” 

The most consequential signs appeared in the months prior to the revolt. In February, Southampton, located in southern Virginia, experienced a solar eclipse, which Turner interpreted as a providential signal to start recruiting potential rebels. With the eclipse, “the seal was removed from my lips, and I communicated the great work laid out for me to do, to four in whom I had the greatest confidence,” the first conspirators to join his plot. In August, a sun with a greenish hue appeared across the eastern seaboard. Turner immediately understood this peculiar event as a signal from God that the time to begin the revolt had arrived. 

Turner’s views on private revelation were not unlike those of his contemporaries Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, and William Miller, the father of the Adventist movement. Turner’s views were clearly unacceptable to the whites who controlled Southampton’s interracial churches.  Throughout the region, Protestant churches run by whites ministered to both whites and blacks.  Often these churches’ black members met separately from its white members, but on communion day the entire church black and white came together to commemorate Jesus’s last supper.  When Turner tried to join one of these churches, the church refused to baptize the religious slave who saw himself as a prophet.

Although it is not surprising that whites rejected Turner’s religious views, they were also suspect in the black community. In part, this was because at one point his vision seemed too close to the proslavery religion that most slaves rejected.  While he was in his 20s, Turner ran away from his owner.  When he was in the woods, the Holy Spirit appeared to Turner and ordered him to “return to the service of my earthly master—‘For he who knoweth his Master's will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes, and thus, have I chastened you.’”  When the slaves heard Turner quote the slaveholders’ favorite passage from Luke, the slaves themselves rejected Turner’s claims to prophesy.  “The negroes found fault, and murmurred against me, saying that if they had my sense they would not serve any master in the world.” 

This was not the only time that the religious Turner found himself at odds with the men who would join his revolt.  In the spring of 1831, when Turner and his co-conspirators were deciding the day for the revolt, the rebels selected Independence Day with its obvious political resonances.  Turner, who saw the revolt in Biblical terms, never reconciled himself to this date. As July 4th approached, he worried himself “sick” and postponed the revolt.  Likewise, on August 21, 1831, Turner met for the first time rebels whom he had not personally recruited.  He asked Will—who would become the most enthusiastic of the rebels—why he joined the revolt. Will responded “his life was worth no more than others, and his liberty as dear to him.” Will professed no loyalty to Turner and gave no hint that he believed in Turner’s religion.  Perhaps for similar reasons, when blacks referred Turner at the trials, they called him Captain Nat or General Nat, instead of alluding to his religious position as a preacher or a prophet.

Perhaps Turner’s religious separation from the black community can help make sense of perhaps the most surprising thing about Turner’s religion: the only disciple that Turner named in his Confessions was Etheldred T. Brantley, a white man.  While there was a tradition of white anti-slavery in the region—only five years before the revolt, Jonathan Lankford was kicked out of Black Creek Baptist church for refusing to give communion to slaveholders—it seems unlikely that Brantley, who was not involved in the revolt, was converted by Turner’s antislavery.  Instead it seems more likely that Brantley was drawn by Turner’s millennialism, Turner’s ability to convert Brantley’s heart, and Turner’s success in stopping the outbreak of a disease where blood oozed from Brantley’s pores.

Turner always understood his revolt in religious terms.  When Turner was locked in prison, facing a certain date with Southampton’s executioner, Gray asked, “Do you not find yourself mistaken now?” Turner responded, “Was not Christ crucified[?]”  For Turner, but not necessarily for everyone who joined his revolt, the Southampton Revolt was part of an unfolding modern biblical drama.

Patrick H. Breen teaches at Providence College.  His book, The Land Shall Be Deluged in Blood: A New History of the Nat Turner Revolt , was published by Oxford University Press in 2015. 

Get the latest History stories in your inbox?

Click to visit our Privacy Statement .

Home — Essay Samples — History — Historical Figures — Nat Turner

Essays on Nat Turner

Choosing an nat turner essay topic: a comprehensive guide.

When it comes to writing an essay on Nat Turner, the options are endless. Nat Turner was a historically significant figure and his story has been studied and debated for centuries. Choosing the right Nat Turner essay topic can be a daunting task, but with the right guidance, it can be an enjoyable and enlightening experience.

The Importance of Nat Turner as a Topic

Nat Turner was an enslaved African American who led a rebellion against white slave owners in Virginia in 1831. His actions had a profound impact on the abolitionist movement and the course of American history. By writing an essay on Nat Turner, students have the opportunity to delve into a complex and important period in American history, exploring issues of slavery, race, and resistance. In addition, studying Nat Turner’s life and legacy allows students to engage with questions of power, agency, and the human experience.

How to Choose a Topic

When choosing a topic for your Nat Turner essay, it’s important to consider your own interests and strengths. Are you interested in analyzing historical events, exploring social and political issues, or delving into the human experience? By identifying your own interests and strengths, you can narrow down the wide range of topics related to Nat Turner and choose one that will allow you to engage deeply with the material.

It’s also important to consider the scope of your assignment and the requirements of your instructor. Some essay topics may require a more in-depth analysis, while others may be more focused on historical context or personal reflection. By carefully considering the parameters of your assignment, you can choose a topic that aligns with the goals of the assignment and your own interests.

Recommended Nat Turner Essay Topics

Historical analysis.

• Analyze the events leading up to Nat Turner’s rebellion and its impact on the institution of slavery in the United States.
• Examine the ways in which Nat Turner’s rebellion was portrayed in the media and how these portrayals shaped public opinion.

Social and Political Context

• Explore the social and political climate of the early 19th century and its impact on the lives of enslaved African Americans like Nat Turner.
• Discuss the role of religion in Nat Turner’s life and its influence on his decision to lead a rebellion.

Personal Reflection

• Reflect on the ethical implications of Nat Turner’s actions and the legacy of his rebellion in contemporary society.
• Consider the impact of studying Nat Turner’s life and legacy on your own understanding of American history and culture.

Comparative Analysis

• Compare and contrast Nat Turner’s rebellion with other slave rebellions in American history, such as the Stono Rebellion or the Haitian Revolution.
• Examine the ways in which Nat Turner’s rebellion has been remembered and commemorated in comparison to other historical events.

By choosing a topic that aligns with your interests and the goals of your assignment, you can engage deeply with the complex and important history of Nat Turner. Whether you choose to analyze historical events, explore social and political issues, reflect on personal implications, or engage in comparative analysis, there are countless opportunities to learn and grow through studying Nat Turner’s life and legacy.

Fires of Jubilee Summary

Summary of the fires of jubilee, made-to-order essay as fast as you need it.

Each essay is customized to cater to your unique preferences

+ experts online

The Last Slave Rebellion by Nat Turner

Nat turner: hero or villain, nat turner and david walker in a rebellion war against slavery, nat turner vs celia: who should not be executed, let us write you an essay from scratch.

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

The Story of Nat Turner and Slave Rebellion

Black autobiography a cause for debate from nat turner's confessions, nat turner and his violent slavery oppression, nat turner and the southampton rebellion.

October 2, 1800

November 11, 1831 (aged 31)

Nat Turner's slave rebellion

Nat Turner was born on October 2, 1800, in Southampton County, Virginia, on the plantation of Benjamin Turner. As a small child he could describe things that happened before he was even born. Turner was deeply religious and spent much time reading the Bible and praying. Turner believed in signs and heard divine voices.

On August 21, 1831, Turner and his supporters began a revolt against white owners. He killed his owner's familly. Turner gathered a group of up to 40 or 50 enslaved people. About 55 white men, women and children died during Turner's rebellion. Turner hid for six weeks until his discovery.

Turner was eventually captured on October 30, 1831. He was hung at Jerusalem, Virginia, along with 16 of his followers.

Turner became an important icon to the 1960s Black power movement. Turner has emerged as a hero, a religious fanatic and a villain.

Relevant topics

• Frederick Douglass
• Katherine Johnson
• John Proctor
• Mahatma Gandhi
• Alexander Hamilton
• Cesar Chavez
• Harriet Tubman
• Manifest Destiny

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free