Nat Turner, Black Prophet by Kaye and Downs
In 1831, the enslaved of Southampton County, Virginia, rose in rebellion. By the time the insurrection was put down, more than 100 people were killed. The leader of the rebellion, a preacher called Nat Turner, was tried, convicted and hung after a long interview in his cell by a court-appointed white attorney who published the discussion as The Confessions of Nat Turner.
The late historian Anthony E. Kaye (Pennsylvania State University) researched the Turner rebellion, gathering oral legend and providing social context. Working from Kaye’s findings, Gregory P. Downs (University of California, Davis) wrote Nat Turner, Black Prophet. It’s a fascinating look into the fear, hope and muddling along that permeated the slave system. Hope for Blacks came from the American Revolution and the War of 1812, when the British freed enslaved people who fought with them against the enslavers, and the successful slave revolt that brought independence to Haiti.
During Turner’s childhood, an increasing number of slaveholders began freeing some of their “servants,” giving the boy a promise that would never be fulfilled. By the time he reached adulthood, the trend toward freedom had been reversed by the increasing prosperity and expansion of the plantation system. Apparently (records are unclear), Turner’s wife was sold to a distant owner. He was passed from hand to hand and whipped. But Turner had another impetus to rebel. He believed the Holy Spirit handed him the mission of uprooting slavery by fire and sword.
Unlike many previous historians, Kaye and Downs take seriously Turner’s idea of himself as a prophet guided by visions unseen by other eyes. They also review his rebellion as a war whose imagery, in Turner’s sermons, was steeped in the biblical Apocalypse as well as the Exodus. Kaye and Downs examine Turner in the context of early 19th century Protestantism, especially the Methodism to which he was exposed in a denomination that was biracial but firmly in white hands.
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