**Please be aware that this post contains graphic accounts of murder**
The name Nat Turner will probably ring a faint bell in the back of the mind of many Americans. However, I doubt that many would be able to tell you why history remembers the name of Nat Turner. He sometimes makes it into some footnotes of american history books, hence most people having a fuzzy recollection of the name, but his true impact on American history is very seldom covered.
Born into slavery in 1800, Nat Turner (as his name was recorded by his owner) never knew his father, who it is believed escaped slavery sometime when Nat was a child. Nat grew up in Virginia, in the early 1800's. Despite being enslaved, he was taught to read and write at a young age and was described as having "natural intelligence and quickness of apprehension, surpassed by few". He grew up religious, and was often found reading bible stories, fasting or praying. Nat would also often have visions, which he interpreted as being from God. Nat often listened to those visions with one example coming when he was 21. Nat ran away from the plantation on which he lived, but after a month on the run, he returned delirious with hunger. He would claim that he had had a vision where God told him to return to the service of his earthly master.
Nat would read the bible and preach to other enslaved people, and even some whites, and came to be known by them as "the prophet". By 1828, Nat was convinced he was ordained to
be an instrument of God after having received visions that convinced him that he was to slay his enemies with his own weapons. He said that he then entrusted his vision to 4 others, who turned out to be 4 fellow slaves. In 1831, Nat witnessed a solar eclipse, which he saw as a black hand covering the sun, and took this as a sign that the time had come for him to fulfill the purpose which God had given him. He purchased weapons, and began to plan his revolt.
Originally wanting to execute his revolt on July 4, he was unwell then and instead used the extra time to solidify his plans. Then on August 13 there as an atmospheric disturbance which caused the sun to turn a bluish green color (it is possible this was the result of residual ash from an eruption from Mount St Helen's in present day Washington State) and he took as a sign from God that the time had come. A week later on August 21, his revolt began.
Muskets and firearms were to difficult to obtain and would bring unwanted attention, so the group used hatchets, knives, axes and blunt objects as weapons. Nat Turner ordered his group to kill whites indiscriminately, not caring about age or gender, because he wanted to incite fear in whites in the area. They first attacked the farm house where members of the Travis family (who Nat's owner often loaned him out to) lived. Attacking the house in the predawn hours of Aug 22, Nat and 6 others attacked the Travis family while they slept, hacking them to death. The men took firearms and horses from the Travis property and left, before remembering that the Travis family had a baby, for which they returned to the home to kill before finally moving on. Over the next few hours, Nat's band of men would grow from 6 to 70 men, and would move as a disorderly mob from plantation to plantation killing the white inhabitants.
The alarm bells quickly sounded in Southampton County, and whites quickly organized together, backed by militia to combat the insurrection. However, the rebellion would not be put down until Turner and his band had killed over 60 whites, in one instance even beheading school children. Turner managed to escape and hide in a swamp for 6 weeks before being captured.
The scale and brutality of the insurrection, not surprisingly, caused immense fear and anger among whites. In the aftermath of the rebellion, close to 200 blacks (some free, some enslaved) would be killed or beaten by groups of whites in retaliation for perceived participation in the rebellion, whether these blacks actually were involved or not was not a detail the whites ever got around to figuring out. After being captured, Turner and 18 others would be tried and hung for their crimes.
White slave owners quickly realized that their worst nightmare had become reality. A charismatic, educated enslaved black man had revolted against the system, and had put terror in the hearts of whites. Despite even having been considering freeing their slaves out of fear of this exact situation before the rebellion, slave owners in Virginia quickly learned the other way. Instead of freeing their slaves, they passed incredibly restrictive laws known
as black codes. These codes made it illegal to teach blacks to read or writ; they forbade blacks from gathering in groups, including church services without a white person present, and severely restricted the movement of blacks without written permission. These laws applied not only to enslaved blacks, but to free blacks as well. Other slave states would follow and enact similarly harsh black codes in attempt to keep the institution of slavery in check.
The Nat Turner rebellion, and the aftermath, would forever change the course of American history. The black codes enacted by whites in the aftermath worked, no other slave revolts ever gained in size and strength the way Turner's rebellion did. Despite the codes, the rebellion brought to light the dangers inherent in the slave system and would also harden the opinions of white southerners that freeing enslaved blacks was simply too dangerous, essentially eliminating the possibility of the slavery issue ever being decided in the US without bloodshed.
Despite the immense impact of this event on the course of American history, it is often overlooked when people discuss what led the country to Civil War. Maybe it is ignored because no one wants to remember women and children being murdered in their beds, or maybe it is ignored because it nullifies all claims southerners had about slavery being a good thing for blacks or that blacks were content, even happy, in slavery. It certainly does not fit into the "lost cause myth" pushed by southerners after the war.
However, to truly understand the impact of slavery on and the slave system on our country, incidents like Nat Turner's rebellion need to be studied and remembered, because these kind of incidents are valuable pieces to the puzzle of why the Civil War would need to be fought nearly 30 year later. Incidents of slave revolts forever change the narrative that slavery was a benevolent system that benefited all involved, to the true reality of it being an inhumane institution that dehumanized one race while raising another to dizzying heights of wealth and power.
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