The Prophet Nat Turner

The year 1800 marked what could only be described as the birth of the turning point in the practice of slavery.  It was in that year a male child was born that would grow into a man who’s very name made slave masters tremble in fear.  Nat Turner was born into slavery in October 2, 1800.  At the young age of 31, Nat Turner led a revolt against those who would seek to enslave African Americans.  

Nat Turner grew up in a religious home, prayed and studied the Bible daily.  At age 25 Turner had a vision that would change his thought process.  "I saw white spirits and black spirits engaged in battle," he recalled, "and the sun was darkened."  Soon after came a day turner was working in the fields.  Turner a self-made preacher believed that GOD had chosen him to avenge slavery in his own words “I was ordained for some great purpose in the hands of the Almighty.”  On the day that Turner was working in the fields, he thought he saw drops of blood on the corn. The drops looked like "dew from heaven" to him. While in the woods, he believed he saw a mysterious alphabet written in blood on the leaves. To Turner these were symbols were signs that "the great day of judgment was at hand."  On May 12, 1828 Turner receive what he thought to be another sign, when he heard a loud clap in the sky. "The spirit instantly appeared and said the serpent was loosened," he later recalled. "The time was fast approaching when the first should be last and the last should be first."  Turner planned his "work of death" on July 4, 1831, but decided to wait for one more revelation.  To him this came on August 13, 1831, when the moon passed in front of the midday sun. To Turner, the eclipse was a divine message. He would not postpone his mission any longer. On August 21, 1831, he decided to fulfill his destiny as an angel of death.

He enlisted five other slaves to assist him in his work.   Hark, Sam, Nelson, Will, and Jack – met in the woods at three o'clock that afternoon. Turner later joined them, and the men planned the slaughter. They agreed not to spare women and children.  The killing spree began in the nearby village of Cross Keys, Virginia. Two hours after nightfall, the men went to the house of Joseph Travis, the slaveholder who held Nat Turner in bondage. Using hatchets, Turner's men murdered Travis, his wife, and three children in their sleep.

Turner’s still small army moved silently through the countryside.  By the end of the emancipation effort they were joined by forty other blacks, including four boys, five free men, and one woman. Over the next day and a half, fifty-nine white men, women and children in Southampton County were axed or beat to death by the growing army.

Soon news of the killing spree reached Washington, D.C., the Federal government sent 3,000 troops to Virginia. This area of Virginia was near the North Carolina border. Fearful of more uprisings, the governor of North Carolina sent a state militia to Northampton County, North Carolina, just south of Cross Keys. The governor’s guards unjustly slaughtered forty innocent slaves and free blacks there.  Hysterical militia units formed throughout the area. One volunteer became so agitated that he accidentally shot one of his fellow patrollers. When slaveholders heard rumors of more revolts, some even murdered their own slaves. But whites had little reason to fear more rebellions, for African Americans were terrified, too.  No one knew the mind set of the Turner Emancipation effort. According to a seventeen year old volunteer guard "Never was there a time when the Negroes were so far removed from revolt, They were ten times more scared than the whites."

Most of Turner's men were killed or arrested within a few days. Meanwhile, Turner took food from Joseph Travis' house and dug a hole under a pile of fence rails. He hid there for six weeks. Two slaves with a hunting dog discovered him, but he managed to escape again. Two weeks later, a white farmer with a shotgun spotted Turner in a small hole he had dug with his sword. The fugitive surrendered his weapon and was taken to the county jail in Jerusalem, Virginia. For three days, Thomas Gray, a journalist, interviewed him in his cell. "The Confessions of Nat Turner" is Gray's written record of Turner's account.

Nat Turner was hanged November 11, 1831,  just two months after the killings, but the effects of his mutiny lasted for decades. No other rebellions occurred, yet whites continued to suspect black ministers of holding secret meetings to plan more revolts. Slave churches were torn down, and white churches enforced segregated seating. For the next twenty years, the laws that governed slaves and free blacks became more brutal and oppressive.

Wealthy planters in eastern Virginia owned almost 20% of all slaves in the United States. But few whites in the piedmont and western parts of the state depended on slave labor. After Nat Turner's revolt, they petitioned lawmakers in Richmond to abolish slavery. "If we are to remain united," wrote one man, "we must have some guarantee that the evils under which you labor shall not be extended to us."  Still the wealthy planters had their way. The planters wanted to protect their investment in human flesh, so they pressured the legislators in Richmond to reject abolition.

To some the name Nat Turner was a grizzly or gruesome figure in African American history.  To others like myself he was definitely a hero, a visionary, who knew that slavery was not going to end itself.  Therefore, much like today it is our own duty to break those chains and shackle that enslave us.  When you consider the time he lived.  He couldn’t march into a court and file a complaint.  He did know that he had to stand up for his beliefs.  How many of us would have had the courage to take back our own freedom or die trying.  Some historians believe that if Virginia had ended slavery in the 1830's, the Civil War might have been avoided. Instead the cruel practice of slavery lasted another thirty years and led to what some say was the bloodiest war in American history.

Story By Jamcnblood (JB)
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