Premium Essay

What Are The Causes Of Nat Turner's Rebellion

Submitted By
Words 252
Pages 2
The Southampton Insurrection was an infamous slave rebellion in Southampton, Virginia. The rebellion took place on August 22, 1831, led by Nat Turner, a rebellious, slave preacher who gathered around seventy slaves with the goal of murdering many white slaveholders and their families. From Nat Turner’s perspective, he was freeing his own people from their abusive masters with the attempt of seeking the basic American principles of freedom and equality. This 19th century slave uprising proved to be one of the worst slave uprisings in American history due to the many casualties and deaths among blacks and whites during the event and after. The issue of slavery in America caused many of these slave revolts to be common throughout rural southern plantations and led to the rise of abolitionism among black and white politicians in the North. …show more content…
Oates, John Pleasants, Tony Horwitz, John W. Cromwell, William Sidney Drewry, and Dr. Molefi Kete Asante all of which give diverse criticism over Turner’s

Similar Documents

Premium Essay

Fires of Jubilee Pt 4

...Jubilee Pt.4 In The Fires of Jubilee Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion: Stephen Oates gives an account of the brief but deadly slave revolt in and around Southampton, Virginia. His controlling theme is that of religion and the profound influence that it had on the development of Nat Turner's charismatic persona and his rationale for engaging in a project of deliberate murder of people who had at least in the context of slavery as a given of Turner's experience, treated him quite decently. The effects of Nat Turner's rebellion were profound. The insurrection of Nat Turner was inspiration for all slaves, even if just 60 whites were killed to the 140 blacks. I am impressed by his courage. The attitudes of many plantation owners changed as a result of Nat. Many people had believed that slaves would never think of hurting their "loving, Christian" master. What Nat did scared many whites tremendously. The Virginia state legislature actually debated freeing all slaves to avoid future conflict. Of course this never happened but this was the first time that such an idea had ever been discussed. Many slave holders blamed the rebellion on the abolishment movement. The same year of Nat's rebellion, William Lloyd Garrison began publishing "The Liberator". Some people attributed this to the cause of the killings. Laws were passed that forbid teaching slaves to read or write. An educated slave could be a dangerous slave. Within time, the fury of Nat's rebellion diminished. The tariff issue became...

Words: 593 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

The Fires of Jubilee

...Jubilee Pt.4 In The Fires of Jubilee Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion: Stephen Oates gives an account of the brief but deadly slave revolt in and around Southampton, Virginia. His controlling theme is that of religion and the profound influence that it had on the development of Nat Turner's charismatic persona and his rationale for engaging in a project of deliberate murder of people who had at least in the context of slavery as a given of Turner's experience, treated him quite decently. The effects of Nat Turner's rebellion were profound. The insurrection of Nat Turner was inspiration for all slaves, even if just 60 whites were killed to the 140 blacks. I am impressed by his courage. The attitudes of many plantation owners changed as a result of Nat. Many people had believed that slaves would never think of hurting their "loving, Christian" master. What Nat did scared many whites tremendously. The Virginia state legislature actually debated freeing all slaves to avoid future conflict. Of course this never happened but this was the first time that such an idea had ever been discussed. Many slave holders blamed the rebellion on the abolishment movement. The same year of Nat's rebellion, William Lloyd Garrison began publishing "The Liberator". Some people attributed this to the cause of the killings. Laws were passed that forbid teaching slaves to read or write. An educated slave could be a dangerous slave. Within time, the fury of Nat's rebellion diminished. The tariff issue became...

Words: 345 - Pages: 2

Premium Essay

Nat Turner's The Fires Of Jubilee

...The dichotomy of the philosophy of the United States Constitution and the Institution of slavery existing together in the same society led to many explosive events, one of them was Nat Turner’s fierce rebellion. The Fires of Jubilee was researched and written by Stephen B. Oates his expertise being biographies of 19th century historical figures. The book is written as a dramatic narrative, but the research into the ambiguous character of Nat Turner and the events surrounding his life is thorough and extensive. A more perfect and horrendous thought experiment about political ethics, divinity, and morality and could not have been imagined than the real life events that preceded, culminated in, and followed the slave rebellion of Southampton...

Words: 1192 - Pages: 5

Premium Essay

Nat Turner's Rebellion Research Paper

...Nat Turner was born a week before Gabriel Prosser was executed. Prosser was a leader in a failed slave revolt to free slaves in Virginia.Turner was born in Southampton County, Virginia, on October 2, 1800. Nat Turner was an interesting individual he was intelligent and superstitious of what nature tells him. Turner was a preacher that would go to plantations across Virginia to preach to the slaves. This is what helped him get word to slaves of the revolt he was going to do. This revolt was one of the bloodiest and most effective ones that occurred in the south.  Turner was sold out three times, his first master being Benjamen Turner, second was Samuel Turner and his final owners would be the Travis family. When Samuel Turner was his master he ran away from the plantation in the year 1821. Thirty days hiding in the woods, he had a visiion that instructed him to "return to his earthly master" (Nat Turners Rebellion)....

Words: 615 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Nat Turner's Slave Revolution Dbq

...“The Union, without a living, vital Constitution, is but a vain and empty name,”(Document 5). During the 1860-1861 the South had seceded from the Union, what led up to the secession of the states was the ongoing conflict of slavery. The North and South’s differences were growing, and during these issues, many people argued that slavery was unconstitutional, which had brought up even more issues between the North and South, and it had ultimately led to the secession of the South from the Union. Secession was the withdraw of eleven Southern states from the Union. When the states had spilt, the North had remained as the Union and the South had formed what they called, a Confederacy. The secession of the states didn’t last long when the North...

Words: 1394 - Pages: 6

Premium Essay

What Role Did The Slave Rebellion Play In The Abolitionist Movement

...Introduction: Slavery in the United States tore the nation in two. 3 Slave rebellion, both violent and nonviolent, played an enormous role in the abolitionist movement. The social, political, and economic impact of the rebellions, reached far beyond the Civil War, giving black Americans a new-found identity. A day in the life of a slave was tiring. They worked from sunrise to sunset and rarely had a day off, if lucky once a month. They would spend their limited free time mending their huts, relaxing and making pots and pans. The slaves were not allowed to read or write, and only some were allowed to go to church. They had no choice, no freedom and no money. They had to do exactly what their slave masters would tell them to do. They would...

Words: 1551 - Pages: 7

Premium Essay

Short Summary: Nat Turner And John Brown

...NAT TURNER and JOHN BROWN SLAVERY There is a lot of stuff that people hate in this world one of the things that I hate the most would have to be slavery. Here are the lives of two men there names are Nat Turner and John Brown. These are the stories of the extraordinary men. 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...

Words: 536 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Causes of Civil War

...Causes of the American Civil War (Colonial America to the 1850s) A lot of important events and people have paved the way towards the American civil war. Each event that ever happened within the time period of 1790 to 1850 all lead to the civil war. Some example of key people and events would be the following: the bill of rights being ratified, the fugitive slave act, the cotton gin, Tennessee, John Adams, George Washington, Gabriel's Rebellion, Ohio, the Louisiana Purchase, the Embargo act, the International slave trade, James Madison, the Battle of New Orleans, Reverend Allen, Missouri compromise, Demark Vesey's Conspiracy, Africans losing their boats, Monroe Doctrine, Nat Turner's revolt, The Alamo, Gag rule, Trail of tears, Harriet Tubman, California. All of these are some major events that caused the civil war itself. All of these events had also contributed to the rise of the English colony and the break off point from the mainland in Europe. All of the events/ people mention previously are going to be used to tell how the American civil war started and how each led to a chain reaction of other events that occurred. These events will each tell a story of its own and slowly build up to the civil war itself. Other events along the way will show up as a result of an event occurring. Both the north and the South had different events which lead up to the civil war but we will mostly focus on the more major events that took place. The Rise of...

Words: 3043 - Pages: 13

Premium Essay

Civil War

...president, he and the Republican Party had a long list of things they wanted to accomplish right away, which included the Homestead Act, and Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. The ongoing bickering and intense hatred between the North and South before the civil war was so distinct that you could cut the tension with a knife. In 1820, forty years before the Civil war, it was the beginning of a monster to come. As the country rapidly moved west into new territories, there had to be a decision made. Were the new territories going to be slave states or Free states? This argument was what fueled the fire for forty years to come. The Missouri Compromise was thought to be the ultimate fix to the slave issue. Any state about the 36 30 parallel was to be a free state and any state below the line was to be a Slave State. As states started to become part of the union, both the North and the South were antsy to see what the decision was going to be. A couple decades later when Franklin Pierce was awarded the presidency, the southerners’ were the big dogs in charge. He immediately wanted to expand into foreign...

Words: 1686 - Pages: 7

Premium Essay

Civil Rights Leaders

...Civil Rights The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was accompanied, or followed, by civil unrest and armed rebellion. The process was long and tenuous in many countries, and many of these movements did not fully achieve their goals although, the efforts of these movements did lead to improvements in the legal rights of previously oppressed groups of people. Table of Contents Malcolm X…………………………..pg. 3 - 5 Martin Luther King Jr. ……………pg. 6-7 Rosa Parks ………………………….pg. 8- 10 Stokely Carmichael…………………pg. 11-14 Marcus Garvey………………………pg. 15-17 Frederick Douglass…………………..pg. 18-20 John Brown…………………………pg. 21- 23 Medgar Evers ………………………pg. 24- 25 Nat Turner…………………………..pg. 26- 27 Homer Plessy……………………..pg. 28-30 Malcolm X [pic] Malcolm X May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965), born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz,was an African-American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers, he was a courageous advocate for the rights of blacks, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans. Detractors accused him of preaching racism, black supremacy, and violence. He has been called...

Words: 3949 - Pages: 16

Premium Essay

Civil War

...over economic issues such as the tariff, a national bank, and government-supported public works (called internal improvements in the nineteenth century) proved divisive but posed no serious threat to the integrity of the Union. Despite fissures along ethnic and class lines, the majority of Americans had much in common. They were white, Christian, spoke English, and shared a heritage forged in the crucible of the Revolutionary War. Questions relating to the institution of slavery set the stage for secession and war. Most men and women at the time would have agreed with Abraham Lincoln’s assertion in his Second Inaugural Address that slavery “was, somehow, the cause of the war.” Alexander H. Stephens, the Confederacy’s vice president, minced no words when he proclaimed in March 1861 that slavery “was the immediate cause of the late rupture and the present revolution” to establish southern independence.[1] The framers of the United States Constitution had compromised regarding slavery, creating a democratic republic that sought to ensure its citizenry’s freedoms while also reassuring the South that individual states would have the power to maintain and regulate slavery within their boundaries. The paradox of white liberty that rested in part on a foundation of black slavery was thus imbedded in the origins of the United States. Debates over the expansion of slavery into federal territories, which were tied to the South’s effort to maintain an equal number of free and slave states...

Words: 2066 - Pages: 9

Premium Essay

Slavery In America

...Introduction By the 19th century, slavery had become entrenched in the culture of the United States. Slaves toiled endlessly in the southern states and yearned for their freedom. They learned from various insurrections that violent resistance (such as Nat Turner’s rebellion in 1831 ) usually resulted in death. People needed to figure out more secretive, and thus, safer, ways to fight back against their white owners. However, without organization, it was impossible for larger numbers to escape. Abolitionists (people who believed slavery should be outlawed) in the North and South needed to work together to provide a way to move more slaves from plantations to free states. These people established a series of places and a system of codes designed...

Words: 1983 - Pages: 8

Free Essay

African American Business

...To a larger degree, historians have examined the white American businesspeople about the economies and market cultures. This paper going to talk about the African American business and consumer cultures, such as blacks’ culture and entrepreneurship, African American and immigrant self-employment in the United States. Also the African Americans’ buying behavior like the selling strategy makes it success to African American, and what is the reason. At the end going to talk about cross-cultural business, how to do business in the African American community. Known African American’s culture and background history is always helps to be success to avoid the mistakes which you shouldn’t do. Directly relating African American History and African American Business leaders, Pharrell Williams would be the perfect example of how the Black history influences the ways of business in the African American community. A lot of people might argue that he is not business man but he is the biggest entertainment business leader. “Every one of us is an amalgamation not only of all our ancestors, but of their decisions, and in 1831, Ambrose Hawkins was contemplating moving his family from America to Africa. Had he done so, his son Joseph would have been raised in Liberia instead of North Carolina and never would have become Pharrell Williams’s third great-grandfather. As it happens, Ambrose did go to Liberia, but opted for a solo round trip, rather than a family migration. If not for this last minute...

Words: 3061 - Pages: 13

Free Essay

Vocabulary and Main Characters

...the first waxwork exhibition in Lyceum Hall, London Chalotte Dundas, a wooden ship with a single paddle-wheel, covers 20 miles of the Forth and clyde Canal, the world's first steam vessel. 1805 October 21 Battle of Trafalgar, Nelso defeats Franco-Spanish fleet, but is mortally wounded. 1807 Mar 25 Slave Trade abolished in all British possessions June 4 Federick Winsor illuminates part of pall Mall with gas lighting. 1811 Regency Act in favour of Prince of Wales because of George III's insanity. Mar organised machine-breaking (Luddism) in Nottingham Jane Austen publishes Sense and Sensibility Fashionable women reject tight corsets and petticoats 1812 Mar Publication of first 2 cantos of Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage causes sensation: "I woke one morning and found myself famous" autumn Countess Lieven, wife of russian ambasador, introduces waltz to London 1813 Jane Austen publishes Pride and Prejudice Smooth-wheeled steam locomotive Puffing Billy, ivented by William Hedley 1814 Dulwich Picture Galler open to publi 1 day a week, England's first public art gallery Sir Walter Scott publishes Waverley, his first novel 1815 June 18 Wellington and Blucher defeat Napoleon at battle of Waterloo Sir Humphrey Davey invents miner's safety lamp 1816 British Museum purchases Parthenon Marbles from Lord...

Words: 4602 - Pages: 19

Free Essay

Pop Culture

...Cultural Moves AMERICAN CROSSROADS Edited by Earl Lewis, George Lipsitz, Peggy Pascoe, George Sánchez, and Dana Takagi 1. Border Matters: Remapping American Cultural Studies, by José David Saldívar 2. The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture, by Neil Foley 3. Indians in the Making: Ethnic Relations and Indian Identities around Puget Sound, by Alexandra Harmon 4. Aztlán and Viet Nam: Chicano and Chicana Experiences of the War, edited by George Mariscal 5. Immigration and the Political Economy of Home: West Indian Brooklyn and American Indian Minneapolis, by Rachel Buff 6. Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East,1945–2000, by Melani McAlister 7. Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown, by Nayan Shah 8. Japanese American Celebration and Conflict: A History of Ethnic Identity and Festival, 1934–1990, by Lon Kurashige 9. American Sensations: Class, Empire, and the Production of Popular Culture, by Shelley Streeby 10. Colored White: Transcending the Racial Past, by David R. Roediger 11. Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico, by Laura Briggs 12. meXicana Encounters: The Making of Social Identities on the Borderlands, by Rosa Linda Fregoso 13. Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight, by Eric Avila 14. Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom, by Tiya Miles 15. Cultural Moves: African Americans and the Politics of...

Words: 98852 - Pages: 396