slave revolt led by Nat Turner in 1831

The actions and goals of the rebellion were tied to Turner's significative vision of the end of slavery. Beyond this, the objectives of the rebellion do non appear to have been sharply formulated, if Turner's confession to Thomas R. decrepit is to be taken as the truth. The absence of a well-organized outline on the part of Turner and his followers did not nix speculation that they were highly organized and had formulated a expound plan. Pleasants (14) cites--and repudiates--rumors that the slaves involved in the revolt numbered up to 1,200 and that Turner and his followers intended to seize a ship at Norfolk and effect sail for Africa and freedom (16). A letter from Petersburg, Virginia, printed in the parvenue York Morning Courier and Enquirer declared that plunder was the objective of the rebellion ("Extract" 23) and that the conspiracy had been planned at a mass Negro baptism at the river. It turned out that plunder, pillage, and dishonour were specifically not part of the rebellion (Pleasants 15), and the number of conspirators was special(a) to six; additional rebels were accumulated along the transfer path. As Gray (29) puts it: "His object was freedom and indiscriminate carnage his rallying cry . . . and seemed to be his ultimatum; for farther, he gave no clue to his design."

Slave insurrections were withal rumored to have broken out in north Carolina, second Carolina, Louisiana, Delaware, and Maryland ("Insurrectionary" 78; Garrison 83). In fact, the " southmostampton Tragedy," as n

Whites were puzzled about the motives of Turner. By Turner's own account, Turner's master, Joseph Travis, was "to me a kind master and placed the greatest confidence in me; in fact, I had no start to complain of his treatment to me" (Turner 126). Further, Turner had been reared in and had absorbed a lot biblical scripture. Turner's confession cites his preoccupation with the spiritual content of Christian narrative: "I . . . studiously avoided mixing in society, and absorbed myself in mystery, devoting my time to fasting and prayer" (Turner 124).

How the supposed almsgiving of Turner's master and Turner's own preoccupation with Christianity could be reconciled with the murder spree seems inexplicable, until the shape of Turner's religious sleep with emerges. Spiritual experience and imagination appear to have fostered in Turner the mien of a prophet and the conviction that he had been "ordained for about great purpose in the hands of the Almighty" (Turner 124). Whites believed that Turner's religious orientation was phony and that Turner was simply "one of those overzealous scoundrels, that pretended to be divinely inspired" (Extract 22).

"Fredericksburg Arena, Cited in Alexandria Phenix Gazette, family 9, 1831." Nat Turner. Ed. Eric Foner. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971. 79.

---. Richmond Whig, September 3, 1831, sulfurampton Affair." Nat Turner. Ed. Eric Foner. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971. 17-22.

ewspapers in both the North and South called the revolt, appears to have been highly localized in the rural plantation country of southeastern Virginia, near the North Carolina border. The objectives of the rebels remained mysterious beyond the view that they were "stimulated exclusively by fanatical revenge, and mayhap misled by some hallucination of [Turner's] imagined spirit of prophecy" (Pleasants 16).

Newspapers of the South appear to have been heartened by papers in the North that expressed "generous sympathy"
Ordercustompaper.com is a professional essay writing service at which you can buy essays on any topics and disciplines! All custom essays are written by professional writers!