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==== Nat Turner's Rebellion ====

The most well-known of all the antebellum revolts is Nat Turner’s Rebellion in Southhampton, County, Virginia. Because of the severity of the revolt as well as the taking down of Turner’s Confessions, this event often stands in as if it were the only revolt that occurred. Nevertheless, Turner and his band were responsible for approximately sixty deaths of whites in the region—a larger number when we consider the casualties of all other revolts. The roving band was subdued after two days and Turner was subsequently captured, jailed and hanged. Beyond that, Turner’s revolt reveals a number of critical historical insights. Firstly, the figure of Turner himself is quite interesting as he was saw his work as divinely inspired. It was a clear embrace of the spiritual implications of slavery and freedom. Secondly, the fact that slavery had so intensified that a revolt of this scale was saw as necessary by large segments of the Black community. Thirdly, it calls into question the nature of revolutionary violence. Whites remembered the revolt because of its brutal nature, while Blacks saw this sort of violence as necessary to undermine and undo an inherently violent system.

The questions raised by Nat Turner’s revolt energized the conversations that were being held about resistance in the abolitionist community. Free Blacks participated in these conventions where the questions was raised and debated with the likes of David Walker, Henry Highland Garnet, and Frederick Douglass. As these debates occurred, resistance continued on the ground in the South in big and small ways, leading to the repressive measures that outlawed reading and gathering for unsupervised meetings. Ultimately, as the nation debated the future of slavery, white abolitionists like John Brown came to decide that slavery had to be destroyed by force. In 1859, he led his infamous raid on Harper’s Ferry with the plan to arm and organize enslaved Africans and create a new country. Though it was destroyed by the U.S. Army, Brown’s raid and its connections to enslaved Africans, indicated that this question was likely not going to be resolved by debate and compromise. Two years later, the United States was at war with itself over that very issue.