In Southampton County, Virginia, Nat Turner and six other men launched the deadliest slave revolt in the history of the United States. The revolt began in the middle of the night, August 21–22, 1831, and by the middle of the day on August 22 the rebels had killed nearly five dozen whites, including many women and children. Whites responded in many ways. Many panicked, and some rallied to oppose the rebels. Some of these irregular white forces stumbled upon Turner and his men at James Parker’s farm, not far from Jerusalem, Southampton’s county seat. The encounter ended quickly and indecisively, but the whites had stopped the rebel advance. Following this first battle, Turner tried to rally his men, something that became increasingly hard to do as more and more whites from nearby counties in Virginia and North Carolina came to Southampton. By the morning of August 23, the rebels were defeated at a series of engagements and the organized phase of the revolt ended. Whites quickly and brutally reasserted their control over Southampton, torturing many of the accused and killing roughly three dozen black suspects without trials. Worried about the possibility of a more extensive bloodbath, white leaders in Southampton, who knew that owners were compensated for the value of their slaves who had been condemned by the state, soon clamped down on the extralegal massacre of suspected rebels. On August 31, 1831, trials of suspect rebels began. By the time that the trials were finished the following spring, thirty slaves and one free black had been condemned to death. Of these people, nineteen were executed in Southampton, and twelve had their sentences commuted to transportation from the state of Virginia. Turner himself, one of the condemned, was hanged on November 11, 1831, although not before Thomas R. Gray, a lawyer who was defense council for other slave rebels, interviewed the jailed rebel leader. Gray published this transcript as The Confessions of Nat Turner, which presented Turner’s religious motivations. Immediately after the revolt, several southern state legislatures took up laws regulating slavery; the Virginia legislature also considered and rejected a gradual emancipation scheme. Since the revolt, Nat Turner and his legacy have been contested by many, including scholars, novelists, artists, and filmmakers.
History of North Carolina Libraries and Librarianship: A Bibliography, Part IV