Nat Turner Biography
(1800–1831)
Nat Turner was the leader of a violent slave rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia, in 1831.
Synopsis
Nat Turner, born into slavery on October 2, 1800, on a Southampton County plantation, became a preacher who claimed he had been chosen by God to lead slaves from bondage. On August 21, 1831, he led a violent insurrection. He hid for six weeks but was eventually caught and later hanged. The incident ended the emancipation movement in that region and led to even harsher laws against slaves.
Early Life
Born on October 2, 1800, in Southampton County, Virginia, Nat Turner made history as the leader of one of the bloodiest slave revolts in America. He was born on the Virginia plantation of Benjamin Turner, who allowed him to be instructed in reading, writing, and religion. His mother was named Nancy, but nothing is known about his father.
As a small child, Turner was thought to have some special talent because he could describe things that happened before he was even born. Some even remarked that he "surely would be a prophet," according to his later confession. His mother and grandmother told Turner that he "was intended for some great purpose." Turner was deeply religious and spent much of his time reading the Bible, praying and fasting.
Over the years, Turner worked on a number of different plantations. He ran away from Samuel Turner, his former owner's brother, in 1821. After thirty days hiding in the woods, Turner came back to Turner's plantation after he received what he believed to be a sign from God. After Samuel Turner's death, Nat Turner became the slave of Thomas Moore and then the property of his widow. When she married John Travis, Nat Turner went to work on Travis's lands.
Slave Rebellion Leader
Believing in signs and hearing divine voices, Turner had a vision in 1825 of a bloody conflict between black and white spirits. Three years later, he had what he believed to be another message from God. In his later confession, Turner explained "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. " Turner would receive another sign to tell him when to fight, but this latest message meant "I should arise and prepare myself and slay my enemies with their own weapons."
Turner took a solar eclipse that occurred in February 1831 as a signal that the time to rise up had come. He recruited several other slaves to join him in his cause. On August 21, 1831, Turner and his supporters began their revolt against white slave owners with the killing the Travis family. Turner gathered more supporters—growing to a group of up to 40 or 50 slaves—as he and his men continued their violent spree through the county. They were able to secure arms and horses from those they killed. Most sources say that about 55 white men, women and children died during Turner's rebellion.
Initially Turner had planned to reach the county seat of Jerusalem and take over the armory there, but he and his men were foiled in this plan. They faced off against a group of armed white men at a plantation near Jerusalem, and the conflict soon dissolved into chaos. Turner himself fled into the woods.
Death and Legacy
While Turner hid away, white mobs took their revenge on the blacks of Southampton County. Estimates range from approximately 100 to 200 African Americans were slaughtered after the rebellion. Turner was eventually captured on October 30, 1831. He was represented by lawyer Thomas R. Gray, who wrote down Turner's confession. Turner pled not guilty during his trial, believing that his rebellion was the work of God. He was sentenced to death by hanging, and this sentence was carried out on November 11, 1831. Many of his co-conspirators met the same fate as Turner.
The incident put fear in the heart of southerners, ending the organized emancipation movement in that region. Southern states enacted even harsher laws against slaves instead. Turner's actions also added fuel to the abolitionist movement in the north. Noted abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison even published an editorial in his newspaper The Liberator in support of Turner to some degree.
Turner's image has changed and evolved over the years. He has emerged as a hero, a religious fanatic and a villain. Turner became an important icon to the 1960s black power movement as an example of an African American standing up against white oppression. He was also the subject of William Styron's 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Confessions of Nat Turner. But others have objected to Turner's indiscriminate slaughtering of men, women and children to try to achieve this end.
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As historian Scot French told The New York Times, "To accept Nat Turner and place him within the pantheon of American revolutionary heroes is to sanction violence as a means of social change. He has a kind of radical consciousness that to this day troubles advocates of a racially reconciled society. The story lives because it's relevant today to questions of how to organize for change."
10 Things You May Not Know About Nat Turner’s Rebellion
MAY 24, 2016 By Christopher Klein
Nat Turner's Rebellion
In August 1831, one of America's largest slave uprisings strikes fear in the South and prompts some to call for an end to the institution of slavery.Armed with hatchets and knives, slave and educated minister Nat Turner and seven of his followers launched a violent rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia, on August 21, 1831. Over the course of the ensuing 48 hours, the insurrection grew in size as the number of slaves participating in the uprising—and the number of killings—mounted before the local militia finally crushed it. That wasn’t the end of the violence unleashed by the insurgency, however. Take a look back at Nat Turner’s Rebellion, and explore 10 surprising facts about the bloodiest slave revolt in U.S. history.
Turner was an educated minister as well as a slave.
Turner reportedly told Thomas Ruffin Gray in a jailhouse interview published in “The Confessions of Nat Turner” that when he was three or four years old, he could provide details of events that occurred before his birth. His astonished mother and others took the comments as signs that he was a prophet and “intended for some great purpose.” The young slave showed “uncommon intelligence” and was taught to read and write. His deeply religious grandmother nurtured his spiritual development. “To a mind like mine, restless, inquisitive and observant of every thing that was passing, it is easy to suppose that religion was the subject to which it would be directed,” said Turner, who regularly read the Bible and preached to his fellow slaves.
He once ran away from his master—and returned a month later.
When Turner was 21, he followed in his father’s footsteps and escaped from his owner. To the astonishment of his fellow slaves, however, the future rebel leader came back to the plantation after spending 30 days in the woods because, as Turner reportedly told Gray, “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.”
Turner claimed to have been divinely chosen to lead the rebellion.
The divine message to return to his master wasn’t the last that Turner would claim to have received from God. He reportedly confessed to Gray that he received divine visions to avenge slavery and lead his fellow slaves from bondage. The most vivid of these visions came on May 12, 1828, when Turner “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.”
An eruption of Mount St. Helens may have triggered the launch of the rebellion.
When the daytime sky went dark on February 12, 1831, during a solar eclipse, Turner believed it a sign from God to begin the planning for his uprising. After meeting secretly for months with fellow plotters, the daylight sky once again took on an odd appearance on August 13, 1831. As Patrick H. Breen details in his new book “The Land Shall Be Deluged in Blood: A New History of the Nat Turner Revolt,” newspapers from Georgia to New York printed accounts of the the sun “shorn of its beams” and shedding “a grayish-blue light on the earth.” Through the hazy light, a sunspot was also visible to the naked eye. While Turner took the sun’s strange appearance as a sign to proceed with the insurrection, its true cause was an atmospheric disturbance that could have been tied to an event nearly 3,000 miles away—that year’s eruption of Mount St. Helens in the state of Washington.
The slaves may have killed as many as 60 men, women and children.
The rebellion began when Turner’s small band of hatchet-wielding slaves killed his master, Joseph Travis, along with his wife, nine-year-old son and a hired hand as they slept in their beds. Realizing they had left one family member alive in the house, two slaves returned to the Travis home and killed “a little infant sleeping in a cradle” before dumping its body in the fireplace. As they swept through the countryside, Turner’s men freed slaves as they continued the killings. Upwards of 75 of them joined the uprising over the ensuing two days and killed dozens of whites.
After eluding the militia for two months, Turner was captured by a farmer.
Hundreds of federal troops and thousands of militiamen quelled the uprising after 48 hours and captured most of its participants—except for Turner himself. In spite of an intense manhunt, the ringleader remained hidden in the woods just miles away from the Travis farm, where the rebellion began, for two months. On October 30, 1831, Benjamin Phipps was walking across a nearby farm and noticed “some brushwood collected in a manner to excite suspicion,” according to a Richmond newspaper, below an overturned pine tree. When Phipps raised his gun, a weak, emaciated Turner emerged from the foxhole and surrendered.
More than 50 slaves were executed in the rebellion’s aftermath.
Dozens of slaves stood trial for their participation in the rebellion. While some were acquitted, more than 50 were convicted and sentenced to death by a collection of 20 judges—all slaveholders. In addition, revenge-minded white mobs lynched blacks who played no part in the uprising. While some historians have estimated that the mobs killed between 100 and 200 slaves, Breen estimates the death toll closer to 40. He points out that slaveholders wished “to protect their enslaved property” and a week after the revolt the Virginia militia issued an order prohibiting the killing of slaves in an attempt to reign in the vigilantes.
The divinely inspired Turner ironically met his end in a town named Jerusalem.
After his arrest, Turner was taken to the seat of Southampton County, a small town called Jerusalem (present-day Courtland, Virginia). Six days after his capture, he stood trial and was convicted of “conspiring to rebel and making insurrection.” Sentenced to death, Turner was hanged from a tree on November 11, 1831.
Turner may have been skinned after his execution.
Turner’s body did not receive a formal burial, but details about what did happen to the body are not known. As Tony Horwitz reported in the New Yorker, according to several reports, the rebel leader’s corpse was given to doctors for dissection and his body parts distributed among white families. As recounted by John W. Cromwell in a 1920 article in the Journal of Negro History, “Turner was skinned to supply such souvenirs as purses, his flesh made into grease, and his bones divided as trophies to be handed down as heirlooms.”
In the wake of the rebellion, states passed laws making it illegal to teach African-Americans how to read or write.
“Nat Turner’s revolt contributed to the radicalization of American politics that helped set the United States on its course toward the Civil War,” writes Breen. In Virginia, the rebellion marked the end of a nascent abolitionist movement. Months after the insurrection, the Virginia legislature narrowly rejected a measure for gradual emancipation that would have followed the lead of the North. Instead, pointing to Turner’s intelligence and education as a major cause of the revolt, measures were passed in Virginia and other states in the South that made it unlawful to teach slaves and free African-Americans how to read or write.
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Nat Turner was an enslaved African American who led a rebellion of slaves and free blacks in Southampton County, Virginia on August 21, 1831. Wikipedia
Born: October 2, 1800, Southampton County, VA
Died: November 11, 1831, Courtland, VA
Spouse: Cherry Turner (m. ?–1831)
As I lay here watching Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property a few thoughts ran through my mind. I felt compelled to record these thoughts.
"In the documentary a few historians give their opinions about slavery, but one statement really strikes me as odd. This statement is coming from a white woman who thus far seemed to really be against slavery and the ill treatment of Blacks at the hands of whites. Concerning Nat Turner she says that slavery is wrong and the worse thing you could do, but murder is wrong as well.
What strikes me as odd is that she is in essence saying that regardless of how wrong, bad, or evil slavery is killing should not be used to gain one's freedom. This is absurd!"
Let us suppose that you captured a female lion and took it home with you. You then put this lion in a cage in your back yard. Around the cage you erect a very high fence so that you can allow the lion enough room to run around. However, every time you let the lion out of the cage the lion tries to escape. Sometimes the lion tries to attack you.
Because the lion was pregnant, she eventually gives birth. You then get rid of the mother lion and raise two of the lion cubs hoping that they will not try to escape. You figure that if they never had their freedom they will not want to escape nor will they try to attack you since you are raising them and treating them kindly.
At first the lions seem much calmer than the mother was.
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