Nathanial “Nat” Turner was an enslaved man who led the only effective, sustained slave rebellion on August 21, 1831 in United States history. Nat Turner was born October 2nd 1800 on the Virginia plantation of Benjamin Turner, who allowed him to be instructed in reading, writing, and religion. He was drawn to religion, prayed often, and read the Bible. He was identified as having "natural intelligence and quickness of apprehension, surpassed by few". When Benjamin Turner died in 1810, Nat became the property of his son, Samuel, and was placed under a harsh overseer, from whom he ran away. He lived in the woods for a month before, as he says, receiving a message from the Holy Spirit that he should return. Sometime later, he received another message from the Spirit and a vision of "White spirits and Black sprits engaged in battle" and understood what his mission was and how to achieve it.
The next few years he devoted himself further to prayer and fasting in order to make himself worthy of his calling. At some point, he married Cherry (also given as Chary), who was also a slave of Samuel Turner. When Samuel Turner died in 1823, Nat was sold to a Thomas Moore while his family was sold to one Giles Reese. By 1830, Turner had been sold to Joseph Travis, whom he describes as "a kind master". Believing in signs and hearing divine voices, Turner was convinced by an eclipse of the sun (1831) that the time to rise up and revolt had come. Despite the surface appearance of calm, however, slavery was becoming an increasingly intractable problem in an age of revolution. Slave rebels, led by Toussaint L'Ouverture, had used the ideology of American and French revolutionaries to emancipate and negotiate for the enslaved people in creating a second republic in the new world, Haiti.
There had been other insurrections and slave revolts before Turner's. In the Colonial era, Bacon's Rebellion (1676) and the Stono Rebellion (1739), among others. Gabriel Prosser, 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. 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. Vesey and Prosser in 1800 were both betrayed before their revolts could be launched and were executed shortly afterwards.
Turner revealed his plan to four confidantes – Henry, Hark, Nelson, and Sam – who brought in others. Turner's plan was to kill all the Whites, freeing the slaves, and then (perhaps) disappear into the swamplands of Southampton. Whether Turner was aware of how Prosser and Vesey were betrayed is unknown, but he was keenly aware of the possibility of someone leaking the news of his plans before he could act. He, therefore, told only the four men he knew he could trust absolutely. So when 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 organization, communication, and supplies.
These four brought three others to the meeting the morning of August 21st in the swampy woodlands around Cabin Pond. 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. The group ate a meal and they began, planning as Turner calls it, "the work of death" by killing everyone in the Travis house. As they moved house to house and plantation to plantation, they freed the slaves. The rebels then attacked several farms near the starting point of the revolt, killing nearly all the Whites and gathering slaves to join them. Some were impressed into service, some protected their White masters or family members, and some ran off to inform White authorities.
By the afternoon of August 22nd, Turner had approximately 70 men under his command. This was far less than he had hoped for. In two days and nights they marched throughout Southampton County in Virginia, killing at least 55 people, possibly as many as 65 or more - had been murdered. until the morning of August 23rd, when the local militia caught up with them at the Belmont Plantation. The militia had more men, more guns, and had brought up artillery, and so the rebels were quickly scattered, hunted down, and either killed or taken to jail. Turner eluded a massive manhunt for two months until 30 October 1831, when his hiding place was discovered by one Benjamin Phipps, and he was imprisoned at the Jerusalem jail the next day.
Turner's fate was sealed as soon as he was apprehended. Turner was tried on November 5, 1831, for "conspiring to rebel and making insurrection". He pled not guilty; however, his lawyer made no arguments to defend Turner and called no witnesses. Turner was hanged on November 11, 1831, in the county seat of Jerusalem. To the White community, he was a dangerous criminal who had been justly executed, but, to the Blacks and abolitionists, he was a freedom fighter. He was represented by lawyer, Thomas R. Gray, who interviewed him and took down his famous Confessions. The interviews were compiled in a pamphlet entitled "The Confessions of Nat Turner: The Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southampton, Virginia."
Doomed from the start, Turner’s insurrection was handicapped by lack of discipline among his followers and by the fact that only 75 Blacks rallied to his cause. In a matter of a few days the rebellion was squashed. In a matter of a few days the rebellion was squashed. Nat Turner's rebellion was one of the bloodiest and most effective in American history. It ignited a culture of fear in Virginia that eventually spread to the rest of the South, and is said to have expedited the coming of the Civil War. Retaliation was swift and, in the days following, White mobs and militia, not only in Virginia but in other slave-holding states, killed Blacks indiscriminately. At least 120 enslaved and free Black residents of Southampton County were murdered in retaliation. The daily slaughter of Blacks – often by beheading – continued for two weeks. In one case a severed head was put on display at a Southampton County crossroad.
The killings continued until General Richard Eppes of the local militia restored order, forbidding any further retaliation by Whites against the Black community. This was not done out of compassion, however, but because of the value-as-property of most of the Black population. Turner's wife was tortured for days as authorities tried to find out where he might be hiding. Cherry had no idea but did have some documents Nat had given her for safekeeping, which included names of co-conspirators and plans for the taking town of Jerusalem and, possibly, equipping his men with guns and ammunition from the armory there.
In the immediate aftermath of the rebellion, however, many Southern states, tightened restrictions on African Americans. Laws that included prohibiting educating slaves and requiring White ministers preside over congregations of Black people, among many other Slave Laws, were already on the books after Gabriel's Rebellion in 1800 and were intensified after the publication of David Walker's "Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World" in 1829. After Nat Turner's Rebellion, these laws were expanded upon and intensified. Both Black and White abolitionists such as David Walker, Theodore Dwight Weld, William Lloyd Garrison, and others, were blamed by Southern authorities for inciting the rebellion through their written works.
Although Nat Turner did not end slavery as he may have hoped, he nonetheless shook the institution to its core. Pro-slavery advocates began calling for greater restrictions on free Blacks and slaves in the South and made more demands on Northern whites to cease their interference with the servile institution. It became clear to the Whites that many slaves were willing to die for freedom. Northern abolitionists, however, viewed the uprising differently and intensified their efforts to end slavery throughout the nation. Turner never cites an immediate inspiration for his uprising other than spiritual revelation and his belief that he had been called by God, from a young age, to perform a great deed. Turner often conducted religious services, preaching the Bible to his fellow slaves, who dubbed him "The Prophet". To Turner, this was the liberation of his people from chattel slavery.