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Nat Turner (October 2, 1800—November 11, 1831) was a American slave whose 1831 slave rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia was crushed. The rebellion, though defeated, was the most remarkable instance of black resistance to enslavement in the antebellum South and was a major cause of the American Civil War.
Turner was born in Southampton County, Virginia. He grew up deeply religious and was often seen fasting and praying. He frequently received visions which he interpreted as being messages from God. These greatly influenced his life. For example, when Turner was 21 years old he ran away from his master, but returned a month later after receiving a vision. He became known among fellow slaves as "The Prophet."
In February 1831, there was a solar eclipse. Turner took this to mean that he should begin preparing for a rebellion. He and his friends originally intended the rebellion to occur on July 4, Independence Day, but it had to be postponed due to an illness.
On August 13, there was an atmospheric disturbance in which the sun appeared bluish-green. This was the final sign, and a week later, August 21, the rebellion began. Starting with a trusted few fellow slaves, Turner's resistance force ultimately numbered more than 40 fighting men, both slaves and free men, mostly on horseback. Nat Turner and his fighters traveled from slave plantation to slave plantation, freeing slave owners and their families. Fifty-five white people were killed in the revolt.
The revolt was violently suppressed within 48 hours. Following his rebellion, Turner eluded capture for months. On October 30 he was discovered and arrested. On November 5, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. He was hanged and skinned on November 11 in Jerusalem, Virginia.
In total, 55 blacks suspected of having been involved in the uprising were murdered. In the aftermath, hundreds of blacks, many of whom had nothing to do with the rebellion, were beaten, tortured and murdered by pro-slavery mobs.
The state legislature of Virginia considered abolishing slavery, but in a close vote decided to retain slavery and instead support a repressive policy against slaves and free blacks. The freedoms of all black people in Virginia were tightly curtailed, and an official policy was instated that forbade questioning the slave system, on the grounds that any discussion might encourage similar slave revolts.
In the end, no slave uprising before or after inflicted such a severe blow to the ranks of slave owners. Nat Turner is regarded as a hero by large numbers of African Americans and pan-Africanists worldwide.
Nat Turner finally became the focus of historical scholarship in the 1940s, when historian Herbert Aptheker was publishing the first serious scholarly work on instances of slave resistance in the antebellum South. Aptheker stressed how the rebellion was rooted in the exploitative conditions of the Southern slave system. He traversed libraries and archives throughout the South, managing to uncover roughly 250 similar instances, though none of which reached the scale of the Nat Turner uprising.
William Styron's 1968 novel The Confession of Nat Turner was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.