Turner escaped and eluded the white captors for six weeks before eventually being caught.īefore his brutal execution, Nat Turner was beaten and tortured while Thomas R. By that time, fifty to sixty whites had been killed. Eventually, the white local militia organized and suppressed the revolt by killing and capturing the slave rebels. On August 22, 1831, starting with the Turner enslavers, Turner and his organization of slaves went from plantation to plantation killing white enslavers while freeing Blacks as they moved. From this position, Turner was able to connect and mass organize the slaves on the Turner plantation. “Discovery of Nat Turner.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections.Īs a result of his religious convictions and visions (which he described as divine messages from God), Turner became the plantation preacher. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library. Like in the case of Denmark Vesey, whites in Virginia identified a correlation between literacy and Black free citizenry, so after Nat Turner’s mass organized insurrection, many laws were passed in Virginia that “legally mandated illiteracy” for Blacks. Whites also speculated that Turner read other works by African American figures such as, David Walker’s The Appeal that inspired his rebellion. Turner learned how to read and write at a young age and spent much of his time studying the Bible. Nat Turner was described as intelligent and cunning with quick apprehension skills. Nat Turner was born into slavery to the Turner family, Benjamin Turner and eventually Samuel Turner, in Southhampton County, Virginia, on October 2, 1800. Nat Turner’s legacy and history has been fragmented through unreliable sources and an undeniably white supremacist history, but in the eyes of Henry Highland Garnet and many of the Buffalo National Colored Convention delegates, Nat Turner’s legacy was burned into the mind and imagination as a hero, prophet, and legendary trickster. “Nat Turner & his confederates in conference.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library.
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