Nat Turner

He learned to read and write young, and the adults around him treated the ability as a sign of something. Turner was born into slavery in Southampton County, Virginia, a rural plantation district with more Black residents than white, and he was raised close to a grandmother he was much attached to. He knew almost nothing about his father, who was thought to have escaped north while the boy was small. He fasted, prayed and worked through the Bible instead of taking the ordinary amusements of the quarters. At 21 he ran from Samuel Turner and stayed gone a month, then came back on his own — he later said the Spirit had told him his wishes were fixed on this world and not on the kingdom of Heaven.

He preached to other enslaved people, who called him the Prophet, and he baptized a white follower named Ethelred T. Brantley. Working in Thomas Moore's field he heard a noise in the heavens and understood that he was to take up the yoke and fight the Serpent. A solar eclipse in 1831 settled the timing. On the night of August 21 he and a small band began at the Travis farm and moved house to house for four days, killing 55 white men, women and children — the deadliest revolt by enslaved people in American history. Militia and local mobs answered by killing Black people who had nothing to do with it, a figure the record puts somewhere between 36 and 120. Turner hid under a fallen tree until October 30, when a farmer named Benjamin Phipps found him.

The reprisals fell hardest on people who had not lifted a hand, and on his own household. Turner had married a woman called Cherry, probably in the early 1820s. When Samuel Turner died in 1823 the family was split apart — Nat sold to Thomas Moore, Cherry and the children to Giles Reese. By 1831 his son was held on a farm near the Travis place, and that February John Reese pledged the boy as collateral against a family debt. One historian dates Turner's approach to his co-conspirators to the days just afterward. When the rising failed, Southampton authorities beat and tortured Cherry to find him, and a Richmond paper reported that September that papers had been given up by his wife under the lash. Historians still argue over how many children they had, and over who his wife was.

They hanged him at Jerusalem on November 11, 1831, and took him apart. Some sources say he was beheaded as a warning. An account preserved among Black Virginians says he was dragged and whipped to death through several towns. His body was dissected and flayed and his skin worked into souvenir purses. A Dr. S. B. Kellar claimed to have paid Turner 10 dollars for the corpse in jail, then scraped the bones and hung the skeleton as a specimen, which Virginia newspapers rediscovered in 1897. Two skulls have since been put forward as his. One went to a former mayor of Gary, Indiana, in 2002, back to Turner descendants in 2016, and then to the Smithsonian for DNA testing.

Nat Turner's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Nat Turner's Rebellion other
  Four days in Southampton County — the deadliest slave revolt in United States history 1831
• The Confessions of Nat Turner book
  Dictated in jail to the attorney Thomas R. Gray, who published it under his own name 1831
• Turner's Bible other
  Donated in 2012 to the National Museum of African American History and Culture 1831

• October 2, 1800 aged 0 Born into slavery on Benjamin Turner's land in Southampton County The county held more Black people than white.
• 1810 aged ~10 Benjamin Turner dies and his son Samuel inherits Nat
• 1821 aged ~21 Escapes at 21 and returns after a month He said a vision had told him to go back to the service of his earthly master.
• 1823 aged ~23 Samuel Turner dies and the family is broken up Nat was sold to Thomas Moore, his wife Cherry and the children to Giles Reese.
• February 1831 aged 30 John Reese pledges Turner's son as collateral for a family debt One historian dates Turner's approach to his co-conspirators to the days just after.
• August 21, 1831 aged 30 The rebellion begins at the Travis farm Four days, 55 white people killed, and a reprisal that took between 36 and 120 Black lives.
• October 30, 1831 aged 31 Benjamin Phipps finds him in a hollow under a fallen tree Thomas Wentworth Higginson later wrote that he was found emaciated, ragged, a mere scarecrow.
• November 5, 1831 aged 31 Tried for conspiring to rebel and making insurrection His lawyer made no argument and called no witnesses.
• November 11, 1831 aged 31 Hanged at Jerusalem, Virginia His body was dissected and flayed, and the skin was made into purses.

• Denmark Vesey 1767–1822
  Free Black carpenter executed for organizing a large planned slave revolt in Charleston. earlier conspiracy
• William Lloyd Garrison 1805–1879
  Editor of The Liberator and founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society. launched The Liberator the same year
• Frederick Douglass 1818–1895
  Former slave who became a leading abolitionist, orator, and advocate for equal rights. invoked him
• John Brown 1800–1859
  Militant abolitionist whose raid on Harpers Ferry sharpened sectional conflict preceding the Civil War. took the argument up in arms
• Harriet Beecher Stowe 1811–1896
  Author of Uncle Tom's Cabin whose novel galvanized the abolitionist movement. wrote a novel drawn from the revolt