Nat Turner's Anti-Slavery Movement

The invention of the mechanical cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793 revolutionized the production of cotton. With the ability to pick and clean cotton faster, plantation owners had to plant more cotton plants to produce more and keep up with demand, thus this created a need for more slaves to not only plant and harvest the larger crops but help in other duties on the plantation. By 1860, the explosion of slavery in the United States amounted to approximately four million slaves. The Southern States, also known as the Confederacy, believed that slavery was necessary and defended slavery. The Northern States, also known as the Union, believed that slavery was morally wrong and should be abolished. During this period many important figures both
In “Give me Liberty” we read about an example of a rebellion that was organized by a Virginia slave named Gabriel. He organized a group of men and women, poorly armed with knives, axes, clubs and few guns and marched toward the City protesting slavery. Within two days, the militia and army troops dispersed the group killing sixty-six. The best known of all slave rebels was Nat Turner. Turner was a slave preacher, he traveled conducting religious services. He organized a group of slaves who went from farm to farm assaulting the white people, most of them women and children. By the time the militia could put down the uprising his group had killed 60 white people. He was captured and condemned to die. He became a martyr for the anti-slavery
Southern ministers and their allies argued that all humans were the descendants of Adam and Eve and existed as a result of a single creation, as described in the Bible. These ministers claim that blacks were the descendants of Noah’s son Ham and Noah’s grandson Cannan. After the flood, according to the biblical story, Noah cursed Canaan, and proslavery ministers claimed that the biblical ‘curse of Cannan’ was that Canaan and all his descendants became black and were doomed forever to be “servants” of their brothers.” Moreover, Finkleman states, “Dr. Samuel Cartwright of New Orleans was perhaps the most creative of all. He argued that blacks and all other nonwhites were among the “other creatures” that God placed in the Garden of Eden before the creation of Adam. Cartwright claimed that the biblical story of Eve and the Tree of Knowledge had not involved a serpent but rather ‘the negro gardener’ who handed Eve the apple.
While the bible scriptures make an interesting argument towards proslavery. The scriptures do not mention having only slaves of a certain race or color. It mentions buying slaves from “all nations around you.” If this was true, then it would mean that even the white people can be bought as slaves. If we are to abide by the bible then slave owners should have abided by Exodus, 21:20 which states, “And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with