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Fires of Jubilee

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Submitted By quan22122
Words 394
Pages 2
Dequan Green
Fire of Jubilee 3
Kimbrough
November 9, 2015

The title of the third chapter, "Day of Judgment," is religiously self-explanatory, in that it describes the progress of the murder spree undertaken with Nat Turner's leadership. The chapter titled "Legacy" deals with the aftermath of the rebellion, which was marked by a profoundly reactionary response and a further hardening of attitudes toward slavery, both pro and con.
Even in the early period of the American republic the lines of contentious slavery discourse had been drawn, with slavery-friendly grand juries accusing foes of slavery such as the Quakers of "agitating" unrest in the slaves and the Quakers responding "that it was not their pronouncements but the slave system itself that caused Negro unrest. The basis for opposition to slavery came from certain religious quarters, and it was articulated in religious terms. Meanwhile, in this context, there was the maturing figure of Nat Turner, referred to as the "smart nigger" of Southampton, Virginia. His personality appears to have been distinctive in various ways. As Oates explains, Turner was "generally regarded him with mixture of disdain, curiosity, indulgence, humor, and even a little respect. They let him have a last name. That is important because slaves either had no last name or were given the surname of their masters.
Unlike many slaves, he was able to read. In his powerless situation and in a society that valorized Christianity and Christian texts in general, his reading preferences tended toward religion. Equally, they tended toward the apocalyptic; that appears to have been a function of the desperation of Turner's situation as a slave. The whole matter was aggravated by two events--one institutional and one natural and local in Southampton. By 1831, public discourse of slavery and antagonistic North-South debate had heightened,

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