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Episode: BFW Revisited: The Nat Turner Revolt

Author: Liz Covart
Duration: 00:57:19

Episode Shownotes

In our last episode, Episode 399, we discussed Denmark Vesey’s revolt and the way biblical texts and scripture enabled Vesey to organize what would have been the largest slave revolt in United States history if the revolt had not been thwarted before Vesey could put it into action. Early American

history is filled with revolts against enslavers that were thwarted and never made it past the planning stage. But, one uprising that did move beyond planning and into action was the Southampton Rebellion or Nat Turner’s Revolt in August 1831. In this BFW Revisited episode, Episode 133, which was released in May 2017, we met with Patrick Breen, an Associate Professor of History at Providence College. Patrick joined us to investigate Nat Turner’s Revolt with details from his book The Land Shall Be Deluged in Blood: A New History of the Nat Turner Revolt. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/133 Sponsor Links Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Complementary Episodes Episode 016: The Internal Enemy Episode 083: Slavery in Colonial Boston Episode 091: Rumors, Legends, and Hoaxes in Early America Episode 124: Making the Haitian Revolution Episode 125: Death, Suicide, and Slavery in British North America Episode 336: Suviving the Southampton Rebellion Episode 399: Denmark Vesey's Revolt Listen! Apple Podcasts Spotify Google Podcasts Amazon Music Ben Franklin's World iOS App Ben Franklin's World Android App Helpful Links Join the Ben Franklin's World Facebook Group Ben Franklin’s World Twitter: @BFWorldPodcast Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_00
You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. Ben Franklin's World is a production of Colonial Williamsburg Innovation Studios.

00:00:17 Speaker_00
Hello and welcome to Ben Franklin's World Revisited, a series of classic episodes that bring fresh perspective to our latest episodes and add deeper connections to our understanding of early American history. I'm your host, Liz Kovart.

00:00:31 Speaker_00
In our last episode, episode 399, we discussed Denmark Vesey's revolt and the way the biblical texts and scripture enabled Vesey to organize what would have been the largest slave revolt in United States history, if the revolt had not been thwarted before Vesey could put it into action.

00:00:47 Speaker_00
Now, early American history is filled with revolts against enslavers that were thwarted and never made it past the planning stage.

00:00:54 Speaker_00
But one uprising that did move beyond the planning stage and was put into action was the Southampton Rebellion, or Nat Turner's Revolt, in August 1831.

00:01:03 Speaker_00
In episode 133, which released in May 2017, we met with Patrick Breen, an associate professor of history at Providence College.

00:01:13 Speaker_00
Patrick joined us to investigate Nat Turner's Revolt with details from his book, The Land Shall Be Deluged in Blood, A New History of the Nat Turner Revolt.

00:01:23 Speaker_00
Given that we just explored Denmark Vesey's failed uprising, I thought it might be good for us to have a point of comparison. Because like Vesey, Turner was a religious man who also justified his actions using God and scripture.

00:01:36 Speaker_00
So with that, let's revisit episode 133 with Patrick Breen and rediscover the details of the Southampton or Nat Turner's rebellion. Joining us is an associate professor of history at Providence College.

00:02:02 Speaker_00
He's a scholar of race and slavery in the early United States and the foremost expert on Nat Turner's rebellion.

00:02:08 Speaker_00
And today, he joins us to discuss that rebellion with details from his book, The Land Shall Be Deluged in Blood, A New History of the Nat Turner Revolt. Welcome to Ben Franklin's world, Patrick Breen.

00:02:19 Speaker_01
Thanks for having me.

00:02:21 Speaker_00
So, Patrick, your book offers us a detailed account of Nat Turner's rebellion. And I wonder if before we dive into those details, if you would help us get the lay of the land. Would you provide us with a broad overview of Nat Turner's revolt? Sure.

00:02:34 Speaker_01
Nat Turner started a revolt that happened on the night of August 21st, 22nd, 1831, and a small group of slave rebels launched what would become the most deadly slave revolt in American history.

00:02:46 Speaker_01
At the peak of the revolt, the rebels numbered about 60, and they killed about five dozen whites, including men, women, and children.

00:02:54 Speaker_01
On the afternoon of August 22nd, 1831, they encountered their first formal resistance in a series of skirmishes that took place on a farm on the way to Jerusalem, the county seat in Southampton County.

00:03:06 Speaker_01
They were dispersed and for the next couple of days, the surviving rebels tried to regroup and restart the revolt, but their efforts were unsuccessful.

00:03:15 Speaker_01
Most of the rebels were killed or captured within a couple of days, but Nat Turner himself, the instigator of the revolt and its leader was not captured for a few months.

00:03:24 Speaker_00
What do you think makes Nat Turner's revolt significant and different from other slave rebellions and revolts in early American history?

00:03:31 Speaker_01
Well, there's a couple of things. First, it was the most deadly slave revolt, and that's in part because it happened. Most of the revolts that we know about aren't really revolts, they're conspiracies or plots.

00:03:42 Speaker_01
It also is the most famous revolt in American history. There's movies made about it, there's novels, there's plays. This is one that people feel that they know a lot about. And so this is something that's very familiar.

00:03:54 Speaker_01
We also have great sources on the revolt. Thomas R. Gray, a white lawyer in Southampton County, Virginia, took Nat Turner's confessions down. And so this is readily accessible, something that's taught in schools.

00:04:06 Speaker_01
And this is one of the things that's most important to me as a historian. This revolt produced an incredible amount of very useful evidence, and it provides an opportunity to examine how power works in a slave society at a moment of incredible stress.

00:04:19 Speaker_00
So what do these incredible sources tell us about Nat Turner? I mean, who was he and why do we know the Nat Turner revolt as the Nat Turner revolt?

00:04:29 Speaker_01
Well, Thomas Wentworth Higgins, the abolitionist and one of the first people to write about Nat Turner, says the biographies of slaves can't be individualized. There isn't enough we know about each individual. But that's not really right.

00:04:42 Speaker_01
With Nat Turner, we know a lot of things about him. One of the things we have is his confessions where he tells his story about what happens in the slave revolt. We also have other sources, things that he doesn't talk about.

00:04:54 Speaker_01
We have evidence of his wife and children. We know what he looks like, the descriptions that the governor puts out of his appearance when they were trying to capture him after the revolt.

00:05:04 Speaker_01
So we know a lot of material about Nat Turner, much more than we know about a typical slave. Nat Turner was a religious man. He saw himself as someone who clearly worked in a religious vein his entire life.

00:05:18 Speaker_01
His confessions does not tell a conversion story. He's not St. Augustine. He's someone who's always interested in religion. To a mind like mine, he says, restless, inquisitive, and observant of everything that was passing.

00:05:30 Speaker_01
It's easy to suppose that religion was the subject to which it would be directed. He's always, always interested in religion. And that's the key thing about his life. He sees himself as someone who's doing what God is commanding him to do.

00:05:44 Speaker_00
When we think about early American history and slavery, we know that many slaveholders were reluctant to allow their slaves to study the Bible. I wonder if you could tell us how Turner became a religious man given this big obstacle.

00:05:57 Speaker_01
He was always seen as religious, both his family was religious and his master's family was religious. So he was introduced to religion in his community as he was growing up.

00:06:08 Speaker_01
He was not living in a time where the church was being divided and the blacks were being kept out of the church. At this time in Southampton County, Again, this is one of the debates that they're gonna have after the revolt, if this is wise.

00:06:21 Speaker_01
But in Southampton County, they're trying to incorporate blacks into the Christian church, thinking that Christian slaves will be good slaves. Little do they realize, of course, that Christian slaves may be very dangerous slaves too.

00:06:33 Speaker_00
You noted that Turner was a really devout man and in your book I found it curious that at one point Turner gained his freedom from slavery and then he voluntarily returned to it.

00:06:44 Speaker_00
Were Turner's religious beliefs the reason why he returned to slavery after gaining his freedom?

00:06:49 Speaker_01
Yeah, I think if there's any moment that's a pivot in his story, as he tells the story of his life, it's the story of when he ran away. Like many slaves, he ran away. His father, in fact, had run away. He thought he was always seen as special.

00:07:04 Speaker_01
And when he describes himself in his confessions, he sees himself as someone that the other blacks look up to. Everyone in the neighborhood trusted what he calls his superior judgment. They all trusted him. He was a smart guy. He could read.

00:07:17 Speaker_01
They all thought that he was the one. He ran away, and that was not very surprising. Many people run away, but then he came back. And that was fine, too. The black community looked at him and they said, well, why are you back?

00:07:29 Speaker_01
We thought you made it away. Your father made it away. We thought you had made it away. And he tells them in his confession, he relates to it.

00:07:35 Speaker_01
He says, the reason for my return was that the spirit had appeared to me and said that I had my wishes directed to the things of this world and not to the kingdom of heaven, and that I should return to the service of my earthly master.

00:07:48 Speaker_01
And then at this point, he quotes what is the most obnoxious quote from the Bible that the slaveholders invoke. For he who knoweth his master's will and doeth it not shall be beaten with many stripes, and thus I have chastened you.

00:08:02 Speaker_01
At this point, Nat Turner remembers that the other blacks, quote, found fault and murmured against me, saying that if they had my sense, they would not serve any master in the world.

00:08:13 Speaker_01
So at this point, Nat Turner, who always thinks that he's gonna be the leader of the black

00:08:17 Speaker_01
Now it becomes, I don't think a pariah is the right word, but someone on the outside, someone who's an oddball, someone whose authority others in the community don't accept.

00:08:26 Speaker_00
That's really interesting that Turner was a man on the outs and oddball, as you say, because he does end up leading this revolt against slavery, which means he had to gain and gather followers to execute it.

00:08:38 Speaker_00
So would you tell us how Turner came up with the idea to lead a revolt against slavery and how he went about recruiting his army?

00:08:45 Speaker_01
Yeah. No, it's interesting. I mean, when you think of him as a religious figure, the first person he recruits is a white person named Ethel Dred Brantley. Brantley and Turner go get baptized together.

00:08:54 Speaker_01
So his religion is completely not seen as a war on slavery or something like that. It isn't until later that the spirit appears to him and says, it's gonna be time to start the revolt. He says,

00:09:07 Speaker_01
Christ had laid down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and he said, I'm gonna take it on. The time was fast approaching when the first should be last, and the last should be first.

00:09:18 Speaker_01
And at that point, Nat Turner gets the idea there's gonna be a war. Yet even at that point, he doesn't tell anyone about it. It isn't until the year of the revolt, and this is a couple of years before the revolt,

00:09:30 Speaker_01
Until earlier in that year, in February, when there's an eclipse of the sun, does he finally sit down and say, the seal is loosened from my lips.

00:09:38 Speaker_01
And he went and told the four people in whom he had the greatest trust, his best friends, his most loyal supporters, four other slaves, he told them about his plan, and they all agreed to join.

00:09:49 Speaker_00
How do you stage a rebellion with just five people?

00:09:53 Speaker_01
This is actually one of the things that I think is one of the more clever things that Turner realized. There's two ways you have a slave revolt. Either you tell everyone about the slave revolt, and that's a great way to get a big slave revolt going.

00:10:05 Speaker_01
But the problem is you only need one person to betray the slave revolt. And this is why most of those slave plot and conspiracies I mentioned earlier didn't happen.

00:10:14 Speaker_01
You know, these big plots are eventually discovered by whites who are told about them by blacks in the community. Nat Turner always thought that this was a danger. If he told everyone about the plan, it wouldn't happen.

00:10:29 Speaker_01
And according to a newspaper article that's written shortly after the revolt, it explains his reasons for not telling was that the Negroes had frequently attempted similar things, confided their purpose to several, and it always leaked out.

00:10:42 Speaker_01
So Turner decided, we're not gonna do that. We're not gonna have a big revolt. We're gonna have a small conspiracy. Now, of course, this is a huge advantage in keeping the revolt a secret.

00:10:52 Speaker_01
Others aren't gonna find out about the revolt, but it's a huge problem in terms of the actual logistics of the revolt. How are you gonna make the revolt happen? And this is one of the things that the rebels struggled with.

00:11:01 Speaker_01
As they made their decision not to share it widely, then the question comes, how are we gonna get men and material quickly to support our revolution?

00:11:09 Speaker_00
We know that Turner wanted to start a revolt because he's driven by religion. What drove the other four men and the others who would come later to join Turner's plan?

00:11:19 Speaker_01
You know, it's interesting, the whites at the time emphasized the religiosity of his followers. In many ways, they sort of wanna downplay their autonomy and their decisions. They're just people who are following Nat Turner blindly.

00:11:32 Speaker_01
And it's unclear how many of these people are religious. It's interesting that when he expands the circle, it's still only four. Even people living on the same plantation with Nat Turner don't find out about the revolt at the same time.

00:11:46 Speaker_01
So it's a very, very small group. It's unclear how many of these people are religious followers. They may be all religious followers. Some may be religious followers.

00:11:55 Speaker_01
What's interesting is that the night the revolt is starting, there's a dinner, and it's the first time new people are brought into the revolt. And two new people join, and Nat Turner knows these guys. And the first guy is Jack.

00:12:08 Speaker_01
He's the brother-in-law of Hark, who is Turner's right-hand man. And he looks at Jack and says, Jack's just gonna do whatever Hark tells him to, so he doesn't worry about it. The other guy is Will.

00:12:17 Speaker_01
And Will is gonna become the most aggressive revolutionary. He kills more people than anyone else. But Nat Turner doesn't trust him initially. He comes up and says, how did you come to be here? Because Nat Turner thought the revolt was small.

00:12:32 Speaker_01
I thought it was just four people. How did you come? This is one of the most amazing pieces of testimony. Will answers him and says, I'm ready to fight for my freedom.

00:12:41 Speaker_01
He doesn't say anything about how I'm gonna follow Nat Turner or do what Nat Turner says. He says, I'm gonna fight for my freedom. At which point Nat Turner basically asked him, are you ready to die? Will says, I am. Nat Turner says, that's good enough.

00:12:53 Speaker_01
So there are people who are gonna be following Nat Turner because of his religiosity, although it isn't clear how many of them are following for that reason, but there are also people who are gonna be attracted to the cause of fighting for their freedom.

00:13:04 Speaker_01
It's gonna be young men and mostly people from the neighborhood, people who have personal connections to Nat Turner and the other slave rebels.

00:13:12 Speaker_00
Tell us about the start of the rebellion. It sounds like it gets going with about seven participants. So how did these seven men start the revolt?

00:13:21 Speaker_01
They go to the house of Nat Turner's owner, Joseph Travis, and they basically decide, well, we're going to begin here. And they hadn't even really thought about it.

00:13:29 Speaker_01
At first, Harker, well, I can't remember which one of them says, let me just bang down the door and then say, hold on, that's not a good idea. This is the middle of the night. Everyone hears a door being banged down.

00:13:38 Speaker_01
Maybe some whites are going to hear about it. So instead, they snuck in, grabbed some guns. and then snuck up the stairs and killed the family.

00:13:45 Speaker_01
Basically, they moved from plantation to plantation, quietly recruiting and killing over the course of the night.

00:13:52 Speaker_01
By the morning, they had gone to several plantations, they'd grown to about a dozen people, and they decided to start going on horseback, going faster, recruiting. They were no longer trying to be silent, they were free to fire their guns.

00:14:07 Speaker_01
And they were trying to sweep through Southampton County, trying to recruit faster than the whites would be able to organize against them.

00:14:14 Speaker_00
This is really surprising that the revolt just kind of starts and takes place organically, because when you think of a revolt that you need to conduct as secretly as possible with only a few people, you would think that it would need to be well planned out.

00:14:27 Speaker_00
But it sounds like the approach to Turner's revolt was, well, we're going to start the revolt tonight and we just need to figure it out as we go.

00:14:34 Speaker_01
there is that element to it. And I think they actually make some mistakes the first night. I think they lose some of their surprise. And I think part of it is because Nat Turner wants to reinforce his position of authority within the revolt.

00:14:47 Speaker_01
One of the things they do is the night of the revolt, he'd spend some time marching the soldiers. I mean, what is he doing? It doesn't really make sense. It's a

00:14:55 Speaker_01
loss of time when they have time and the whites are all in their bed and, you know, they can recruit blacks without any resistance. But why?

00:15:02 Speaker_01
I think it's partly because he's still feeling a little bit insecure about his position in the black community. I think that is also emphasized in the weapon that Turner picks.

00:15:10 Speaker_01
Now, Turner picks a sword and he describes the sword several times and uses it several times, never effectively. And he's got his choice of any weapon he wants. Why does he pick a sword? I think it's because he wants to be the general. He

00:15:22 Speaker_01
wants to be the person in charge. This is his revolt, and that's something that's really important to him. So there are some elements about it that are really, they're sort of on the fly.

00:15:32 Speaker_01
And I think part of it also is, you know, he sees himself as a religious figure. This revolt starts after a blue-green appearance of the sun the week before. I mean, Nat Turner thinks that God's on his side, that God is gonna support this revolt.

00:15:46 Speaker_01
And he doesn't know exactly what God's plan is for this revolt, but he trusts in God. And so I think that there is sort of less concern about getting all the details right.

00:15:56 Speaker_01
Although I think, you know, in a way, his concern about secrecy was one that ultimately is why this revolt is so famous.

00:16:03 Speaker_00
I wonder if we could explore another element of this revolt for a moment. And that element would be violence. Would you tell us about the violence of this revolt and how that violence may have affected the recruitment of other participants?

00:16:15 Speaker_01
This is one of the things. Whites weren't particularly concerned about the strategy of the revolt. They didn't really try to figure it out. They thought that ultimately Nat Turner was crazy and so what they were doing didn't make sense.

00:16:27 Speaker_01
Nat Turner was clearly religious, but he wasn't I mean, what he was doing, he was doing for reasons. And one of the things that bothered Nat Turner and the men was they saw how long the odds were against them.

00:16:39 Speaker_01
And so they tried to figure out ways that they could make the revolt work. They didn't really come up with a way that was likely to succeed. I mean, I think they were wide-eyed. That's why he says to Will, you know, are you ready to die?

00:16:50 Speaker_01
Because they understand that this is a revolt that's gonna lead to their deaths. But how could the revolt succeed? The idea that they come with is that they think that the black slaves have to hear of the revolt and decide to join it on their own.

00:17:04 Speaker_01
It's the only way that they're gonna get an army together quickly. Well, how are they gonna do that? power of whiteness, the idea that whiteness protects people. This is gonna shatter the illusion, the power of whiteness.

00:17:21 Speaker_01
And so the rebels are gonna join him. And there's a couple of references to this, both in that Turner's own confessions and in the trials of others. But the idea is, as whites are killed, blacks will become more sympathetic.

00:17:35 Speaker_01
And one of the things they say is that the plan to kill women and children is not a permanent part of their plan. They don't wanna just kill all the women and children. What they're gonna do is they're gonna do that until they get enough territory.

00:17:47 Speaker_01
Once they establish themselves, they will stop killing women and children and any men who don't resist. So they're not really going out for blood.

00:17:55 Speaker_01
I mean, it's obviously a very bloody affair and it's gruesome, but the reason they're doing it, the reason they're out for blood is because they think that that's gonna help them recruit black soldiers. Now, I don't think it ultimately works.

00:18:07 Speaker_01
They don't get many recruits from places that they don't visit. Newspapers at the time say, you know, the only recruits that Nat Turner gets are people who actually enlisted when his army went to their plantation. That's not exactly true.

00:18:20 Speaker_01
There's a handful of people who do show up and join the army sort of on their own, but it's not many. And it's certainly not enough to match the whites who are gonna be able to collect and assemble much, much quicker.

00:18:31 Speaker_00
You raised an interesting point earlier in that Nat Turner's army is moving at a quick pace and they're trying to be as quiet as possible. So how do whites and blacks learn that this revolt is happening?

00:18:43 Speaker_01
Well, the rumor mill spreads quickly. For the first day or two, no one really knows what's going on. People hear because there are people who escape and tell other people and the word spreads, but it's really unclear what's going on during the revolt.

00:18:59 Speaker_01
No one has very good information at all. And so people are finding this out in different ways. And the stories they're hearing are different. You know, the word comes to some people that it's a British invasion. Now, what is this?

00:19:11 Speaker_01
Well, the War of 1812, the British were a powerful force in the Chesapeake. But one of the things that some scholars have noted is that the British were associated with abolition.

00:19:20 Speaker_01
So there's a way in which there's sort of an abolitionist tinge to the rumor that the British were there. But of course, the British weren't there. The rumors were wrong, but there was a slave rebel army floating around.

00:19:31 Speaker_01
people, you know, they found out in a haphazard way. There's no communication, there's no amber alerts, there's nothing that's gonna tell everyone exactly what's going on. And in fact, even if it did, no one knew exactly what's going on.

00:19:43 Speaker_01
So it's a position where most people are living in this sort of fog, and they're trying to figure it out.

00:19:49 Speaker_01
And that's a good part of the story about what happens in the immediate aftermath, is people are trying to figure out what's happening after the revolt.

00:19:55 Speaker_00
How quickly did news of this revolt spread? It sounds like there were a lot of rumors or what we call fake news today traveling around as this revolt was taking place.

00:20:04 Speaker_00
But how fast did both real news and fake news spread across Virginia and the United States?

00:20:10 Speaker_01
it's spreading really quickly. The news makes it to Richmond within a day or two, and people are finding out about the revolt. Norfolk, which is about the same distance away to the east, is finding out within a day or two.

00:20:21 Speaker_01
People are finding out quickly, but what they're finding out, they don't know. It's funny, there's this newspaper in Richmond where the editor is just sitting there banging his head.

00:20:29 Speaker_01
You know, we hear one thing, and then we hear another, and then we hear, you know, the third thing contradicts both of them. He says, there are reports in abundance, but where are the facts? They don't know what's going on.

00:20:39 Speaker_01
And this is really where most people are in the days after the revolt. Whites don't know what's going on. The blacks don't know what's going on. And it's very unclear. There are rumors of, you know, not far from the revolt of armies appearing.

00:20:52 Speaker_01
A guy has a heart attack because he hears an army is about to appear in his house. It's like, no, people after the revolt will spot Nat Turner in places like Baltimore and what's now West Virginia. The information is terrible.

00:21:05 Speaker_01
And so people start acting on this false information.

00:21:09 Speaker_00
We know how Nat Turner and his men mobilized. But how did whites mobilize to quell the rebellion?

00:21:15 Speaker_01
what the whites did is they gathered in spots, you know, they would gather and they would try to make a stronghouse. Now, after the revolt, many whites would emphasize the fact that the men were all brave and heroic.

00:21:26 Speaker_01
But of course, there are reports of men who were just completely shattered by this and terrified and couldn't hardly move. But nonetheless, when they gathered together, then the families would be put together under a guard.

00:21:40 Speaker_01
And in many cases, whites would get together and these small units would come together to start chasing down the rebel army. There's these sort of ad hoc groups. They're not even really militia because they're not formally organized.

00:21:53 Speaker_01
They're just men who've got guns and they're chasing down the rebels trying to put down the rebel army. they would end up catching up to Nat Turner at James Parker's house.

00:22:02 Speaker_01
James Parker's house along the way to Jerusalem, not far, a couple of miles outside of Jerusalem, which is the county seat in Southampton, the destination for the rebel army.

00:22:11 Speaker_01
And Nat Turner was there at the gate while some of his men went down to recruit on the plantation. So he's sitting there with some of the guys who were sort of under guard. There were some rebels who didn't really wanna be there.

00:22:23 Speaker_01
And they were out at the gate with Nat Turner while the others went down to recruit some more slaves from James Parker's place.

00:22:30 Speaker_01
While he's there, he gets frustrated at how long it's taking to recruit because they're not just recruiting, they're doing other stuff. So he goes down to get them.

00:22:38 Speaker_01
While he goes down, one of these groups of whites come in and they scatter the group that was left at the gate. And then they come down the hill to attack the group that's at the farm. When they get to the farm, Nat Turner and his men see him.

00:22:52 Speaker_01
One of the whites shoots prematurely. They all look up. there's the whites, and it's not a very large group of whites, much smaller than the number of slaves. And so the slaves turn and they start chasing them, and they drive them from the field.

00:23:04 Speaker_01
But little did they know that there was another group of whites who had happened on the gate and was waiting and basically set up an ambush.

00:23:11 Speaker_01
When Nat Turner's men were chasing the whites back up the drive, they were ambushed by a second group of whites. And it's from this point on that the rebellion has finally met some organized resistance and is going to be dismantled.

00:23:23 Speaker_01
Nat Turner's gonna take the next day, he's gonna be trying to get his troops together. But again, they're gonna go in and they're gonna attack one of these stronghouses.

00:23:30 Speaker_01
They think that there's this house, this plantation that's empty, but they're wrong. The master at it is a guy named Samuel Blunt, and he's bedridden, so he has to sort of stay. And so there's five guys who are staying with him to defend the house.

00:23:44 Speaker_01
When Nat Turner's men show up marching down the driveway at Samuel Blunt's, they are attacked.

00:23:50 Speaker_01
And from that point on, Nat Turner is gonna be separated from the others, and the rebels will never be able to organize again, and the revolt will be ended.

00:24:00 Speaker_00
This sounds like it was a scary, chaotic and uncoordinated event to all who participated in it, whether they participated in Nat Turner's army or in one of the white groups trying to stop it.

00:24:11 Speaker_00
But what about the third group who participated, the civilians of Southampton County? What was it like for both white and black civilians in Southampton to experience this revolt?

00:24:21 Speaker_01
I think most people in Southampton County were terrified, and I think that's both white and black.

00:24:26 Speaker_01
I mean, obviously, the whites are hearing these rumors of giant slave armies and killing everyone, and it's horrifying, and they were killing many people. So there really is a grounds for that.

00:24:36 Speaker_01
Blacks, on the other hand, are hearing the same stories, and many of them, I think, are gonna be equally horrified. There's a story about what happens after the revolt

00:24:46 Speaker_01
There's a slave who's sent by his master to communicate because the whites are in these stronghouses, but they don't wanna walk between them because they're always afraid that the rebels will find them and kill them.

00:24:56 Speaker_01
So what they do is they send a slave to send their messages, and they send this guy named Burwell, and he's gonna deliver the messages. At which point, there's this other guy named Artist who sits there and says, what are you doing?

00:25:09 Speaker_01
You're working for the enemy. This is a slave revolt. vault, you're a slave, what are you doing delivering messages for your master?" And so they get in a fight and the artist finally gets up, he starts chasing Burwell.

00:25:19 Speaker_01
He goes from one plantation to the next and he gets a gun and he starts threatening them and they're shouting and they're fighting.

00:25:24 Speaker_01
And at this other plantation, there's the slaves on the plantation, tell them both to stop it because they say, if there's a big commotion here, it's gonna bring the whites. And what are the whites gonna do?

00:25:34 Speaker_01
Well, they don't know, but they're afraid that the whites are gonna kill them.

00:25:37 Speaker_00
You noted earlier that the rebellion lasted just two days. So how did the rebellion unravel and how did Nat Turner get away?

00:25:45 Speaker_01
It unravels because they aren't able to recruit fast enough, get enough arms to be able to stand up to the whites who are not only gathering whites from the area, those who are brave enough to leave their stronghouses and go elsewhere, but they immediately get support from neighboring counties.

00:26:03 Speaker_01
The militia in other counties is gonna organize and, hey, there's a slave revolt going on next door, we're gonna come. There's gonna be people and militias coming from North Carolina, which is a bordering state.

00:26:12 Speaker_01
And then eventually, there's gonna be troops and sailors coming in from Norfolk, although they're not gonna play a big role in it because the revolt will be suppressed really before the troops. get down.

00:26:22 Speaker_01
So there's gonna be a lot of people coming from a lot of places.

00:26:25 Speaker_01
And within a day or two of the revolt, you're gonna hear these stories about how the whites hear that there's some rebels on the loose, you know, and so there's five rebels up north by Druryville, and they send, you know, 125 people.

00:26:37 Speaker_01
They send a huge contingent out. They have enormous resources within two days. The first day, the second day, they're completely surprised, they're not ready.

00:26:45 Speaker_01
By the second, third, and fourth day, the whites have overwhelming military power in Southampton County. And so there's really no way that the revolt is gonna be able to be sustained.

00:26:55 Speaker_01
I mean, the revolt reaches a peak of maybe 80 soldiers and not all of them are particularly enthusiastic about the revolt, especially when they realize that they're gonna be so overwhelmed by white forces.

00:27:07 Speaker_00
So what did the aftermath of the revolt look like? How many people died in the revolt and how many participants did the armed white units capture?

00:27:15 Speaker_01
So the rebels kill about five dozen whites, and it's hard to say exactly because different sources have different tallies, but it's just under five dozen whites and they do a pretty good job counting them.

00:27:26 Speaker_01
The harder question to answer is what happens in the black community? I mean, there's large vigilante armed groups traveling around. what's gonna happen.

00:27:34 Speaker_01
And historians have tended to move the estimates on the number of people killed up into the hundreds, sometimes even around 200 people, which is Herbert Aptheker's last estimate.

00:27:44 Speaker_01
One of the things I find in my book is that the number is actually much, much smaller. The number of blacks killed without trials after the revolt is probably in the 30s.

00:27:54 Speaker_01
And this, I don't have an exact number, but you can come at it various different ways and you come up with the same numbers. I mean, roughly half of the rebels survived to the trials.

00:28:04 Speaker_01
So it's not the kind of thing where all the rebels are being killed, although clearly, you know, three dozen or so are. There's other sources that talk about what happens in the black community, including property records.

00:28:15 Speaker_01
Census records aren't really helpful because they come only every 10 years, so they don't show how many died in one year, but tax records cover slave property. And the number of slaves who disappear from Southampton is not that large.

00:28:28 Speaker_01
And once you count all the people who leave in the aftermath of the revolt for various reasons, including going to Liberia, it seems like the number is probably in somewhere between 30 and 40, which is, in fact, what all the primary sources said.

00:28:42 Speaker_01
They don't tend to count the number of blacks who are killed in the aftermath exactly, but the numbers they come up with tend to be in the 30s or 40s.

00:28:50 Speaker_01
And that's really uncommon to have a number that's different from that from someone who's set foot in Southampton County.

00:28:56 Speaker_00
Did anyone in Virginia question the institution of slavery either during or after this rebellion? Like, had this thought of, hey, if we ended the institution of slavery, then we wouldn't have to worry about slave revolts like this one?

00:29:08 Speaker_01
Yeah, there's always gonna be people questioning slavery, most notably the slaves.

00:29:12 Speaker_01
But this is the kind of thing that there's not gonna be a lot of evidence of how blacks honestly talk about the revolt after the revolt, because the resources are put together by whites.

00:29:22 Speaker_01
And, you know, there are gonna be investigations into the black community, most notably held by churches saying, you know, does this have the support of the black community?

00:29:31 Speaker_01
And, of course, the answer that they're gonna be told is that, no, it didn't. There's just some of the whites are gonna believe it and some of the whites aren't.

00:29:37 Speaker_01
So there's always gonna be questioning of slavery, especially among blacks, but there's not gonna be a lot of sources on that. There's also gonna be whites who oppose slavery.

00:29:45 Speaker_01
There's a tradition of opposing slavery, an anti-slavery tradition in Southampton County. This goes back to the sort of revolutionary age, but it even happens in 1825, 1826.

00:29:56 Speaker_01
There's a minister named Jonathan Langford who gets dismissed from his church for acting under the influence of Satan, basically because he refused to serve communion to the slaveholders.

00:30:10 Speaker_02
This is

00:30:10 Speaker_01
five, six years before the revolt. So this is something that there are whites who are clearly thinking that slavery may not be a great system. There's not a lot from them after the revolt.

00:30:21 Speaker_01
You know, if Jonathan Langford thinks this proves he was right, he doesn't write it anywhere, at least not anywhere that anyone I know has found.

00:30:27 Speaker_01
But there's a third group that does start talking about slavery in a new way, and it's the whites who feel unsafe. There's a group of whites who are coming out and saying, slavery is a dangerous system. It's not just dangerous for the slaves.

00:30:40 Speaker_01
They weren't very sympathetic to the slaves in the aftermath of the revolt, but it's dangerous for the whites. It's dangerous for women. It's dangerous for children.

00:30:48 Speaker_01
And in many cases, these people are not gonna trust the leaders in Southampton County who are immediately after the revolt or shortly after the revolts are gonna try to say that this is a safe system. We can trust this system.

00:31:00 Speaker_01
Please don't kill any more of our slaves. They're gonna sit there say, these leaders are downplaying the danger of slavery. We know that slavery is dangerous. Look at all these dead people.

00:31:10 Speaker_01
And when the leaders start saying, it's not really that big of an issue, one thing they do is they tell the military coming from Norfolk that they don't have to come anymore. You don't need to come, just go back.

00:31:21 Speaker_01
The whites in Southampton County, they send a petition all the way to Andrew Jackson saying, please override this order. We don't feel safe. Slavery, it's not that it isn't a good system or something like that, it's a dangerous system.

00:31:31 Speaker_01
And so there is this movement to attack slavery, not on the traditional abolitionist grounds that it's an immoral system and it treats the blacks badly, but because it's a dangerous system and it's gonna result in death to whites.

00:31:45 Speaker_00
Now, what about the trials the arrested revolt participants received?

00:31:50 Speaker_00
It seems kind of surprising that whites allowed these rebels a trial, given that, legally speaking, these slaves were property who were not entitled to constitutional protections and rights.

00:32:00 Speaker_01
slaves do have rights, you know, and one of the things they have a right to is a right to a trial. Now, that trial is not anything that we'd consider fair.

00:32:07 Speaker_01
I mean, it's obviously, you know, the people who are gonna be judging you are gonna be completely unsympathetic to you. It's not a fair trial, but you do have a right to a trial.

00:32:17 Speaker_01
And a slave is accused and tried for slave revolt in Virginia, they get tried by a court of Oyer and Terminare. This is a weird court system from England that was sort of obsolete in most cases. It wasn't a very common system.

00:32:32 Speaker_01
It was used for the Salem witch trials, but it certainly wasn't a normal part of the legal system. But the point of the court of Oyer and Terminare, which means, you know, literally hear and determine, was that the judges got to make the decisions.

00:32:44 Speaker_01
there was no jury trial. And so slaves would get a trial, but they would only be tried by slaveholding masters. They wouldn't be tried by the people, the non-slaveholders, maybe the people who are saying, this is a dangerous system.

00:32:58 Speaker_01
This is a really bad system, and we're really unhappy with how the blacks are responding. We wanna lash out against it. There's a trial system that's gonna be created by the slave masters. Now, it's interesting.

00:33:09 Speaker_01
There's very, very few sources that come to us except for through white intermediaries. areas. Almost every source that comes to us comes through a white interview. You know, Nat Turner gives his confessions, but a white man is writing them down.

00:33:22 Speaker_01
There is a couple of sources that come from black waves. And one of the sources that comes entirely from black sources are some WPA interviews that are done in the 1930s.

00:33:31 Speaker_01
There's an interview with a guy named Alan Crawford, who was born a few years after the revolt in Southampton County. And it's funny because when he talks about what happened, he says that they gave the slaves, quote, a fair trial.

00:33:47 Speaker_01
It's like, why is he saying that? You know, this is obviously not a fair trial. Certainly, I wouldn't want to be trapped in this system. But where did he get the sense the trials were fair?

00:33:56 Speaker_01
And this is where I make one of the arguments I make in the book is that this courts wanted to stop the whites from killing slaves.

00:34:04 Speaker_01
After the revolt, any white who felt scared for whatever reason could kill blacks, and there's no danger of ramifications.

00:34:13 Speaker_01
Now, actually, you know, they could be tried for murder if you killed a slave, but there's no way anyone's gonna be convicted of murdering a slave in the days and weeks after a slave revolt.

00:34:23 Speaker_01
the slave masters started to realize that this was a really dangerous system, that their property was at risk.

00:34:30 Speaker_01
And so one of the things I argue that they do is that they use these trials to protect their slaves, not to protect slaves who were involved in the revolts and they didn't wanna let them off. That wasn't it.

00:34:40 Speaker_01
They wanted to protect the slaves from the attacks of whites who were felt free to kill them outside of the legal system. Now, part of this was just plain self-interest.

00:34:53 Speaker_01
If a slave was convicted and executed by the state, the slave master would get compensation. So the slaveholders were essentially getting compensated for those who were convicted.

00:35:03 Speaker_01
And if your slave was just killed by vigilantes, there was no compensation. And part of it was that they were just trying to protect their interests. But in so doing,

00:35:13 Speaker_01
one of the things they were doing was saying that the slave revolt isn't something that everyone needs to go crazy about. We don't need to go through and kill all the blacks after this revolt because that was the danger.

00:35:25 Speaker_01
That was the fear the slaveholders had. And there's really nothing that they could do to stop the whites if vigilantes decided to go through and start practicing some sort of genocide.

00:35:36 Speaker_00
Earlier, you noted that after Nat Turner's revolt, many were trying to make sense out of what had happened. So what do these trials reveal about how slaveholders were making sense out of the revolt?

00:35:47 Speaker_00
Because you also mentioned that this trial produced some of the most detailed accounts of the revolt that we have.

00:35:54 Speaker_00
So I have to imagine that at least some of these sources that came out of the trials were created because people were just trying to make sense of what had happened.

00:36:02 Speaker_01
I think the whites are trying to use this not to process the revolt because, I mean, the trials are completely controlled by the slaveholders, right? You have to be a slaveholder to be involved.

00:36:12 Speaker_01
And I've gone through and one of the things I show is how wealthy these guys are. These are not just slaveholders, these are wealthy slaveholders.

00:36:19 Speaker_01
So the leaders in society are the big slaveholders, and they've decided well before the trials start, with really within that two, three-day window, they decide that the revolt is not that dangerous.

00:36:31 Speaker_01
So this is the same group that's gonna send the military back.

00:36:34 Speaker_01
This is a group that is going to convince the Virginia Militia General who is in Virginia to basically issue martial law saying that if you kill slaves anymore, we will try you, not in the civilian court where you're gonna get a jury and the jury will acquit you, but we will try you in a military court.

00:36:54 Speaker_01
they really decide that the danger after the revolt is the danger that whites are gonna kill their property. And so they're gonna use the trials, not so much to process what's going on.

00:37:06 Speaker_01
I think that, you know, when you look at the newspaper reports and the accounts that are written in the weeks after the revolt, they've already decided what's going on.

00:37:13 Speaker_01
What they're gonna do is they're gonna try to display that to the people who aren't convinced. The slave revolt was not big. It was not dangerous. This is just an anomaly. We don't have to worry about it too much. And so what are they gonna do?

00:37:26 Speaker_01
They're gonna be discharging people without trials. You know, there's witnesses who appear in the trials who clearly traveled with the slave rebels. You know, they'll testify, I was on this plantation, and I saw this guy do something.

00:37:39 Speaker_01
He'll testify in another trial, I was on this plantation, I saw this guy do something. and that guy's never gonna be tried. Now, you know, why is this? Why are they sort of taking a minimalist response to this?

00:37:50 Speaker_01
One reason I think that they're trying to do this is that they're trying to make it sound like the revolt is small.

00:37:56 Speaker_01
They end up convicting and executing 19 slaves after the revolt, which is, you know, obviously a significant number, but not even every slave who is involved with the revolt is gonna be convicted.

00:38:08 Speaker_01
There's people who are doing things that certainly strike me as sort of surprising who would then get off. Now, unfortunately, the records don't give us as good of information about the people who are let off.

00:38:19 Speaker_01
But we do know that not everyone accepted people who are allowed off. There's a report of a guy who gets let off, and then he leaves the courthouse, and this is in a neighboring county, but the whites end up shooting him.

00:38:30 Speaker_01
So there's not always the acceptance, but I think what the slaveholders are trying to do is they're trying to present the revolt as a very small thing that's not very dangerous. By September, they are clearly trying to protect their property.

00:38:43 Speaker_01
And the trials give them the opportunity to create sort of the official account that is going to make it seem like it's not that big a deal. It was only involving a few people. There are people who were forced to go along who didn't really support it.

00:38:55 Speaker_01
They're gonna accept stuff like that. They're going to let people off. They're too young. They didn't know what they were doing. They're going to be de-emphasizing the way that this revolt has broader support.

00:39:04 Speaker_01
They're going to be trying to minimize the appearance of support for this revolt in the black community.

00:39:09 Speaker_00
Let's bring this story back to Nat Turner because he escapes and evades capture for 41 days. So, Patrick, where did Nat Turner hide out and what eventually led to his capture?

00:39:21 Speaker_01
sort of unclear how he hid for 41 days. I suspect that he was aided by sympathizers in the black community, but there's not enough evidence to really make me strongly confident in that.

00:39:32 Speaker_01
In fact, when he escaped from slavery earlier that time before, he hid in the neighborhood, but the blacks thought that he had escaped from Virginia. So it's possible that he just escaped and was living nearby without anyone knowing.

00:39:45 Speaker_01
I mean, he did live nearby. It's just a question of whether the black community knew it or not. Historians of slavery distinguish between two kinds of running away. We call it petite and grand marronnage, and this is from the Caribbean.

00:39:56 Speaker_01
The idea that one way of running away is you just run away into the neighborhood and you stay away. It's a chance to escape for a couple of days, maybe let tempers cool and then return.

00:40:07 Speaker_01
The broader form of running away is they're gonna run away to some new place, escaping slavery entirely.

00:40:13 Speaker_01
And my sense is that escaping from slavery is something that's overemphasized in our collective imaginations, but petite marinage, that just slipping off into the neighborhood happened more than we imagined.

00:40:24 Speaker_01
And I think there's a story that comes out from the revolt that makes this clear. One of the guys who's convicted of being involved in the revolt is a guy named Bosen. Boson is convicted of being involved in the revolt and he's sentenced to die.

00:40:38 Speaker_01
There's a group of people who are sentenced to die with Boson, and they're in jail waiting their executions. They're like, well, this is not good. So they break out of jail and they stage a jailbreak.

00:40:48 Speaker_01
The amazing thing is, I mean, one of the guys ends up getting killed, but Boson actually escapes. And so he's running away. And it's funny, when I found the story of Boson in the archives, it's like dated 1835. I'm like, what? This is crazy.

00:41:01 Speaker_01
You got it misstated. That's obviously 1832. It can't possibly be 1835. But as it turns out, Boson lived in the neighborhood of the revolt, a convicted conspirator with a death sentence over his head for three and a half years.

00:41:14 Speaker_01
He's just living in the neighborhood. And not only that, he's trying to get this death sentence lifted. He goes up to the powerful white guys who are walking along, and he goes, you know, I'm boasted and I'm convicted.

00:41:25 Speaker_01
Can you arrange it so that I have this death sentence lifted? And if so, I'll turn myself in. I don't mind being shipped back to slavery. I don't particularly like not being able to communicate, being sort of stuck on the outside in Petit Marinage.

00:41:38 Speaker_01
And, of course, none of the whites have the power to sort of grant him that. They can't do this. So there's nothing made of it.

00:41:44 Speaker_01
So he comes up with a second plan, which is, I'm gonna find a white guy who's a sympathizer with me, and he's gonna take me to Norfolk and sell me to Louisiana as his slave. I'm gonna take a false identity and go to Norfolk, and I'll be sold.

00:41:57 Speaker_01
And then once I get to Louisiana, no one's ever gonna know who I am, and I'm not gonna be under sentence of death. They actually do that. It's an astounding plan. They go to Norfolk and the initial sale that they had planned falls through.

00:42:09 Speaker_01
As a result, he's there waiting in the slave march when someone recognizes him. You're Boesen, the guy who was the escaped slave, and he was recaptured.

00:42:17 Speaker_01
And there's these petitions that are sent on Boesen's behalf to the governor saying, you know, Boesen is not involved in this. He was wrongly convicted. He's an innocent guy, but there he is.

00:42:29 Speaker_01
He's living for three and a half years out on his own with the white community knowing they're under sentence of death as a slave rebel. So this is the kind of thing that I think it's not so implausible that Nat Turner was doing the same thing.

00:42:42 Speaker_01
Nat Turner remained in the neighborhood for several months. And then in mid-October, about two months after the revolt, a dog happens upon his hideout. He's got some food hidden away and the dog smells it and comes and finds it.

00:42:54 Speaker_01
A couple nights later, the dog and its masters come back, and it turns out its masters are black slaves who are hunting. And I think this is just astounding. One is Nat Turner, he calls them out, he says, hey, I'm Nat Turner, don't turn me in.

00:43:08 Speaker_01
And he sees them, they're like, he knows immediately these guys are gonna turn them in. So he's like, okay, I'm out of here. So he started moving. And this is actually when the whites first found out about it.

00:43:17 Speaker_01
And it reveals, I think, in some ways, the way that Nat Turner was attuned to the idea that not everyone was gonna be supporting him. But the other thing about this is, here it is, October, there's a black guy out hunting.

00:43:30 Speaker_01
Two months after the rebellion, apparently, the fear has lifted. And this is the thing, the trials have almost all happened before this point. So the story has been that the rebellion is not that big and we can get back to our lives as normal.

00:43:43 Speaker_01
And here we have blacks out hunting at night. You know, they're not living under a sort of reign of terror at this point. Somehow it's lifted. He's not afraid that some random white who's out is just gonna shoot him, saying, you must be a rebel.

00:43:55 Speaker_01
So there's a sense that life in Southampton is returning to what the whites see as normalcy, astonishingly quickly, given how we think about it. But Nat Turner did remain in the neighborhood. He was found by the dog.

00:44:07 Speaker_01
The black man who came upon him told the whites he was in the neighborhood, at which point Nat Turner is basically going from hiding place to hiding place. He gets found by a white guy and escapes.

00:44:17 Speaker_01
And then he's found by another white guy later and captured, at which point he's taken off to Jerusalem, where he would be put in jail and await his trial.

00:44:25 Speaker_00
Yeah. What was Nat Turner's trial like? And would you tell us about his confessions, which is the source you mentioned earlier?

00:44:33 Speaker_01
right. This is obviously a giant show trial. I mean, everyone knows, including Matt Turner, knows that he's gonna get convicted. So it's really just a moment where there can be some sort of closure on the revolt.

00:44:45 Speaker_01
There's still some other things that have to happen. Some free blacks will be tried in the spring. But this is a moment where, okay, there's nothing left mysterious about this revolt. Everything's understood. Everything's taken care of.

00:44:57 Speaker_01
There's no loose ends. So Nat Turner's trial is this big moment. A lot of people are paying attention to it. It becomes a very long trial.

00:45:06 Speaker_01
And one of the things that I think happens after Nat Turner is captured is that people, whites, start coming to the jail and start saying, what happened? Tell us your story.

00:45:16 Speaker_01
He's interviewed at first by a couple of magistrates, and he talks for several hours telling them what happened. They said, oh, my God, he's telling us honestly. This is a great account of everything that's happened.

00:45:26 Speaker_01
A guy named Thomas R. Gray gets the idea. that he could publish Nat Turner's confessions. He could take them down, write them up, and put them out in a book, and he could publish them.

00:45:36 Speaker_01
And so, over the course of the week while he's waiting his trial, Nat Turner interviews with Thomas R. Grad, a couple of times, and he gives him the confessions in that journal, which is an amazing, amazing document.

00:45:50 Speaker_01
And this is gonna be something that I suspect, and I can't prove this, I suspect is gonna be actually read at his trials. This is gonna be part of that giant show thing.

00:46:00 Speaker_01
Now, one of the things about Nat Turner's confessions that really suits the whites is, one, it makes Nat Turner's the leader. So once, you know, once Nat Turner's executed, we don't have to worry about that again.

00:46:10 Speaker_01
It also makes Nat Turner a really exceptional character. You know, they don't really focus on what other slaves are doing and why other slaves might think Nat Turner's revolt's a good idea.

00:46:19 Speaker_01
They're really focusing on, you know, Nat Turner, this sort of religious guy who doesn't have a very good plan. It's a one-off. We don't have to worry about this. And so Nat Turner's confessions becomes a big prominent part of what they're doing.

00:46:33 Speaker_01
It also becomes something that's gonna be published in Baltimore and spread throughout the country as this is the account of the slave revolt. And this is sort of the account that everyone's gonna have access to.

00:46:43 Speaker_01
It's the account that students read today when they read about the slave revolts in a history class. It's a really incredible document.

00:46:51 Speaker_00
How accurate do you think Turner's confessions are given that they're the confessions of an enslaved and condemned black man being written down by a white man who likely has no interest in making sure that Turner comes across well?

00:47:04 Speaker_01
He doesn't like him. No, there's no doubt about that. You know, it's interesting, for the first 100 years, this was thought to be a reliable account of Turner's testimony.

00:47:11 Speaker_01
Everyone just said, okay, this is what Greg wrote down when he interviewed Turner, and it's reliable.

00:47:16 Speaker_01
But about 50 years ago, a historian named Herbert Aptheker was responding to what would be the most famous book written on Nat Turner's revolt, William Styron's novel called, The Confessions of Nat Turner.

00:47:29 Speaker_01
And Herbert Aptheker, who had written on this, actually, he wrote his master's thesis on Nat Turner's revolt, published his master's thesis and published it with the confessions of Nat Turner, where he calls it the so-called confession.

00:47:41 Speaker_01
And Aptheker's skepticism of this is something that has really been at the core and one of the problems that historians looking at Nat Turner have really had to struggle with.

00:47:51 Speaker_01
In fact, when I began this work, I thought I was gonna throw away the confessions of Nat Turner because I thought no one systematically sort of said, this is what the confessions say.

00:48:01 Speaker_01
But since we don't know that they're from Nat Turner, all we can really say is this is what Thomas R. Gray wants us to think Nat Turner said.

00:48:08 Speaker_01
The problem is, as I was working with this and working through this argument, I actually convinced myself the other way around.

00:48:14 Speaker_01
And there's many reasons to think that the confessions are, in fact, what people had long thought they were, which is a reliable account of what happened. One thing is, there are people who are writing accounts of Nat Turner's interviews.

00:48:27 Speaker_01
And one source says, you know, I would write you more about what Nat Turner said, but there's a gentleman who's taking down Nat Turner's confession verbatim. Okay, this is another newspaper source, someone else who's writing about it.

00:48:38 Speaker_01
Thomas R. Gray says very much the same thing. He says, this is an accurate account of what he's doing. Now, there's also internal evidence, and this is what ultimately convinced me that there's really very

00:48:51 Speaker_01
strong differences between Turner's voice in the confessions and Gray's voice. It's one of the problems why no one's used it systematically because most historians who've worked this has always said, well, I can hear Turner's voice some places.

00:49:02 Speaker_01
There's some things he says that just sound like him and not a white lawyer. But there's very, very strong differences between Turner and Gray. The other thing is that this has produced really, really quickly.

00:49:14 Speaker_01
And it's amazing how coherent Turner's view is if this is an artistic interpretation of what Turner's view should be. This is something that's written really, really quickly. I think that it's written by the time of the trial.

00:49:30 Speaker_01
So within that week, it's actually written down. One of the reasons I think that is because the way it's produced, there are interjections from Gray. The white lawyer will go in and say, I think this, I think that.

00:49:42 Speaker_01
And he puts those in parentheses, which is an incredibly great thing for historians. So we know this is what he's thinking. This is his comment. This is his question. You know, he'll put his ideas in parentheses. But there's a footnote.

00:49:55 Speaker_01
And it's, why is there a footnote in this? And one of the things I realized is that he had filled up the paper while he was writing it.

00:50:01 Speaker_01
And then when he came back to cross-examine him, something he does later in the week, and asks him about all the details, he decides to add a footnote, which implies that this thing is written pretty much right away.

00:50:12 Speaker_01
So, you know, this is something that the most likely thing is it is what it says.

00:50:17 Speaker_01
If it is what it says, it's a really incredible document because we don't have, you know, except for slave narratives, which are fabulous documents, we certainly don't have this kind of rich source from the perspective of a slave.

00:50:30 Speaker_01
I mean, it's a really, really incredible source. And of course, it's not just any slave, it's America's most famous slave rebel.

00:50:36 Speaker_01
It's a really remarkable document and one that I read in an appendix to my book, really trying to argue that this is a really valuable thing that historians are really shied away from, I think, more than we need to.

00:50:47 Speaker_00
Is it because of the sources that were left behind that makes Nat Turner's rebellion an event that's worth knowing about today?

00:50:53 Speaker_01
I think the sources are a really important part of it. I think that it gives us a glimpse into the world of slavery. And there's a way in which the world of slavery is far more complex and surprising than what we'd expect.

00:51:06 Speaker_01
And I think that one of the things that this does is it allows us to appreciate the richness of our own history.

00:51:11 Speaker_01
there's a way in which I think we can make slavery into sort of a cartoon, which doesn't seem as immediately applicable to our world, I think, in many cases. And I think that when we look at slavery as this really rich and dangerous and awful and

00:51:28 Speaker_01
crazy institution, all of a sudden there's resonances between this and our world in ways that are completely surprising.

00:51:35 Speaker_01
I think that there's a way in which we can understand our issues with race relations in a different light, given the backdrop of Nat Turner's revolt.

00:51:44 Speaker_00
Let's jump into the Time Warp. This is a fun segment of the show where we ask you a hypothetical history question about what might have happened if something had occurred differently or if someone had acted differently.

00:52:16 Speaker_00
In your opinion, what might have happened if Turner had found a way to evade capture? Would Turner's fugitive status have affected how whites viewed the revolt and slavery? And if so, how?

00:52:28 Speaker_01
you know, it's interesting because, of course, Nat Turner did escape for so long. It was one of those things for two months, he's sitting there on the loose.

00:52:36 Speaker_01
And I think there's a way in which Southampton itself did grow satisfied that they knew what was going on in the revolt and didn't need Nat Turner as much as maybe the rest of the state did.

00:52:48 Speaker_01
Nat Turner becomes the symbol of the revolt to the rest of the nation. And so, you know, the idea that they don't have Nat Turner is one of the things that And after the revolt, there's a movement to end slavery in Virginia. And it's not one guy.

00:53:07 Speaker_01
Thomas Jefferson's nephew, I think, introduces a resolution to enact gradual emancipation in Virginia, and it gets about 40% of the vote in the legislature. This is not an unreasonable thing. Nat Turner's escape

00:53:19 Speaker_01
is one of those things that really unsettles people in the South and in the North. It's a remarkable thing, however, that in Southampton itself, it doesn't seem like they're as unsettled by it.

00:53:32 Speaker_00
So, Patrick, what comes next? What are you working on now that you've finished investigating Nat Turner's rebellion?

00:53:39 Speaker_01
one of the projects I'm working on right now is I'm looking at a very famous book, Democracy in America, and Alexis de Tocqueville. He's a French nobleman who comes to America and writes perhaps the most famous book on American democracy.

00:53:51 Speaker_01
At the end of his first volume, he writes a 100-page chapter about race and slavery and democracy. And so right now, I'm working on a project where I'm really examining Alexis de Tocqueville and his relation to American race and slavery.

00:54:05 Speaker_00
If we have questions about Nat Turner and his rebellion, how can we contact you?

00:54:09 Speaker_01
Well, I'm at Providence College, so the easiest place to look me up is the Providence College History Department's website. I'm easily accessible. My phone, my email, it's all there.

00:54:19 Speaker_01
So I'm always happy to hear from anyone who's read the book or wants to know more about Nat Turner.

00:54:24 Speaker_00
Patrick Breen, thank you so much for taking us through the life of Nat Turner and the slave revolt that bears his name.

00:54:31 Speaker_01
Liz, it's so great to talk to you. Thank you so much for having me.

00:54:34 Speaker_00
Nat Turner's revolt proved to be the bloodiest slave rebellion in American history, mostly because it happened. Unlike his predecessors, Nat Turner kept his plan to revolt to himself.

00:54:45 Speaker_00
And then only as the time to execute his plan neared, did he share his plan with his four closest friends, friends who vowed to join him. Turner's secrecy is what allowed his rebellion to take place.

00:54:57 Speaker_00
But how do you stage a rebellion with only a handful of people? The answer to this question is also the answer to why Nat Turner's revolt was the bloodiest slave rebellion in North American history.

00:55:09 Speaker_00
To recruit an army, Turner and his compatriots turned to violence. The rebels perpetrated the revolt by sneaking from plantation to plantation and then killing all the whites they found, including women and children.

00:55:21 Speaker_00
By killing every white person in sight, Turner and his fellow rebels hoped to dispel the myth among black people that white people held some kind of special power simply because they were white.

00:55:32 Speaker_00
By showing that no white person was immune from the violence of the revolt, the rebels hoped to create a sense of freedom within their fellow slaves that would invite them to join their cause.

00:55:42 Speaker_00
Now, as Patrick revealed, Turner's rebellion lasted for two days. And given that this was the most successful slave revolt to date, the people of Southampton County conducted trials for the rebellion's participants.

00:55:54 Speaker_00
And it's fortunate for us that they did because these trials created a rich documentary record of the revolt that includes testimony from several slaves, including Nat Turner.

00:56:06 Speaker_00
Now, all of these sources come to us through white hands and white voices, so we need to question their accuracy.

00:56:13 Speaker_00
But although we must always question the historical sources we have, the sources about Nat Turner's revolt are worth reading and interrogating.

00:56:21 Speaker_00
Because, collectively, this evidence shows us that the world of African slavery was more complex and surprising than we'd ever expected it to be.

00:56:31 Speaker_00
You can find more information about Patrick, his book, The Land Shall Be Deluged in Blood, plus notes for everything we talked about today on the show notes page, benfranklinsworld.com slash 1-3-3.

00:56:45 Speaker_00
How are you enjoying the Ben Franklin's World Revisited series? Is there something more that you'd like me to do with these older episodes that would make them even more enjoyable and useful for you? Please let me know. Liz at benfranklinsworld.com.

00:56:58 Speaker_00
This podcast is part of the Airwave Media Podcast Network. To discover and listen to their other podcasts, visit airwavemedia.com. Ben Franklin's World is a production of Colonial Williamsburg Innovation Studios.