Nat Turner's Rebellion

Compare and Contrast: Nat Turner’s Rebellion In the essay, I have chosen to investigate the rebellion in Southampton, Virginia, known as Nat Turner’s Rebellion. This rebellion took place in August of 1851, and was also the largest slave rebellion in history, in terms of the amount of fatalities in the South. I have studied and gathered information about this rebellion from The Richmond Complier and the Constitutional Whig. Based on these primary documents, I will compare, contrast, and bring to light original thoughts based of my readings. These two accounts are similar in fewer ways than they are different; however, there are a few major connections worth noting. The first, and most obvious, similarity is that these are both primary newspaper articles written around the same time. Although these newspapers may have been reputable at the time, and for the most part had all of their facts correct, there were still some parts about the papers that were confusing or lacked evidence. This is most likely the case because so many people passed their miniscule knowledge of the rebellion on to others such that a type of telephone effect took place. Meaning that, one person tells their account to another, and then in turn is passed through a line of people until the last person receives message. Errors naturally accumulate in the passing of accounts, so the final statement differs considerably. These changes can be a result of uneasiness or impatience. With all the hysteria from slaves rebelling, I think that the telephone effect is exactly what happened. Even though these newspaper accounts had most of their facts correct, a few facts were wildly inaccurate. For example, The Constitutional Whig said that there were over 1200 slaves in the rebellion, when in fact only about 50 or 60. Another point that I would like to bring up is that both accounts stated how well armed all of the civilians were. When the word got out, everybody was terrified having never experienced