Witness/Narrative: The Slave Rebellion
Witness/Narrative: Nat Turner
I believe I was chosen by God to start the slave rebellion in 1831. Let me guide you through my life and tell you about what happened at that time. I was born October 2, 1800 and sold out three times in my childhood before I was hired to John Travis in the 1820’s. I regularly read the bible and became a preacher of African-American slaves.
When I was a young slave, people said that I showed “uncommon intelligence” and I was also taught to read and write things. When I was 21, I followed in my father’s footsteps and escaped from my owner like he had.
One day, I took a solar eclipse that happened in February of 1831 as a signal that the time to rise up and fight had come. I had other slaves to join me in my cause. On August 21, 1831, the helping slaves and I began our revolt against white slave owners with the killing of the Travis family, who owned me. I was planning to take over the county armory where all the weapons were in Jerusalem, Virginia, and then walk 30 miles to Dismal Swamp, where my former slave helpers would be able to escape from the people who were following them. …show more content…
During the next two days and nights, 75 followers and I rushed violently through Southampton County, murdering about 60 whites or more.
Whites in the local area tried not to get killed by us, and then the state citizen military people, who had 3,000 men, crushed the rebellion I started. Only a few miles from Jerusalem, all of my followers and I were spread out all over the area we were in and were captured or killed. The consequences of the rebellion were that large groups of African-Americans were hanged, even some of them who didn’t fight in the revolt. I was not captured until the end of October, and after confessing that I killed white men and families, I was accused of murder, and sentenced to death. Then on November 11, I was hung in
Jerusalem.
Instead of looking to my intelligence and my education as a major cause of the revolt, measures were passed in Virginia and other states in the South that made it illegal to teach slaves and free African-Americans how to read or write. Therefore, African-American slaves were classified now today in your time as dumb or not educated at all. My action set off a new motion of harsh laws forbidding the movement, education, and group of slaves and stiffened pro-slavery, anti-abolitionist guilt that went by their own opinion in that region until the American Civil War in 1861–65. After my death in Southampton, the people of Southampton put signs up saying “Nat Turner’s Insurrection” telling the people that I made history.
I believe I was chosen by God to start the slave rebellion in 1831. Let me guide you through my life and tell you about what happened at that time. I was born October 2, 1800 and sold out three times in my childhood before I was hired to John Travis in the 1820’s. I regularly read the bible and became a preacher of African-American slaves.
When I was a young slave, people said that I showed “uncommon intelligence” and I was also taught to read and write things. When I was 21, I followed in my father’s footsteps and escaped from my owner like he had.
One day, I took a solar eclipse that happened in February of 1831 as a signal that the time to rise up and fight had come. I had other slaves to join me in my cause. On August 21, 1831, the helping slaves and I began our revolt against white slave owners with the killing of the Travis family, who owned me. I was planning to take over the county armory where all the weapons were in Jerusalem, Virginia, and then walk 30 miles to Dismal Swamp, where my former slave helpers would be able to escape from the people who were following them. …show more content…
During the next two days and nights, 75 followers and I rushed violently through Southampton County, murdering about 60 whites or more.
Whites in the local area tried not to get killed by us, and then the state citizen military people, who had 3,000 men, crushed the rebellion I started. Only a few miles from Jerusalem, all of my followers and I were spread out all over the area we were in and were captured or killed. The consequences of the rebellion were that large groups of African-Americans were hanged, even some of them who didn’t fight in the revolt. I was not captured until the end of October, and after confessing that I killed white men and families, I was accused of murder, and sentenced to death. Then on November 11, I was hung in
Jerusalem.
Instead of looking to my intelligence and my education as a major cause of the revolt, measures were passed in Virginia and other states in the South that made it illegal to teach slaves and free African-Americans how to read or write. Therefore, African-American slaves were classified now today in your time as dumb or not educated at all. My action set off a new motion of harsh laws forbidding the movement, education, and group of slaves and stiffened pro-slavery, anti-abolitionist guilt that went by their own opinion in that region until the American Civil War in 1861–65. After my death in Southampton, the people of Southampton put signs up saying “Nat Turner’s Insurrection” telling the people that I made history.