The Slave Rebellion Led By Nat Turner
The slave rebellion led by slave Nat Turner was a major change in relations between slaves and masters, creating a new fear on the part of the masters about what the slaves might do and so leading to more repressive measures taken against the slaves as a form of protection. Based on accounts from the period, it would seem that the white population was truly surprised at the resentment in the slave population and did not at all understand why this should be so. The slavers learned a lesson from the revolt, but not the right lesson. They did not see a need to do away with slavery or even to modify its conduct, except to make it more onerous on the slaves themselves. The seeds of revolt were clearly sown by the slave-owning population itself, and those same people did not see human trafficking as an offense and so did not change their behavior. By that time, they were themselves enslaved by an economic system that demanded cheap labor and from which they could not escape any more than could the slaves. The slaves saw no other way to make their grievances known, and they lacked the power to affect the way plantation society was formed and did business. In the course of the nineteenth century, the European powers, especially
Racist attitudes prevailed, seeing the natives as inferior and either as salvageable or something to be eliminated. From this perspective, the wilderness was, in fact, nothing less than an earthly representation of Hell. However, since a true Christian properly had to undergo a time of testing and a trial prior to revelation, the wilderness also carried with it, conversely, the sense of a place of repentance. . . (Stannard 174). The Haitian revolt helped develop black nationalism as an idea and contributed to other revolts. Many "free" and slave blacks became dedicated to the idea of liberation with the American Revolution and the Haitian Revolt, leading many to desire unity in their ranks and control over their own destinies as well as independence from an oppressive and racist society. This coincided with the development of the United States after the Revolution: "It was obvious to black leaders that their people were not meaningfully included in the new nation, particularly since the great majority of them were still slaves" (Stuckey 3). The revolt in Haiti did frighten slave owners in the United states, and some of the fears of slave owners seemed to come true in the early part of the nineteenth century with the attempt on the part of Denmark Vesey to plot a revolt. The suppression of that revolt in 1822 also led to attempts to suppress the black church as a source of dissension. Vesey was a member of the AME church, and a number of black churches in the South were forced to go underground. The Nat Turner revolt in 1830 led to further restrictions on the freedom of blacks to move about and organize (Ploski and Williams 1258). American slave-owners should have had ample warning that unrest was possible. The key historical event of the eighteenth century came near the end with the Haitian slave rebellion of 1791, a revolt against French rule and the slaveholding system. There had been attacks before that date, but the slave rebellion started with attacks by the French slaves, or maroons, that would lead to the Haitian Revolution. The system itself was unstable, and the slave rebellion destroyed the colony. The slaves wreaked great carnage in the north, showing that this was an explosion of fury from an oppressed people. The rebellion itself ultimately failed, but it set events in motion leading to the Haitian Revolution (Haggerty 207-209). Stannard sets out to provide a definition of genocide and stats that the term was coined by Raphael Lemkin in a book about Europe in 1944. The definitions that have been created and embodied in law have applied to actions taken in the modern world, but Stannard states that "it is impossible to know what transpired in the Americas during the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries and not conclude that it was genocide" (Stannard 281). The revolt when it did come was violent and of relatively short duration, but it did alert the white population to what could happen while serving as an example to the slave population of how quickly any revolt could be put down. Nat Turner was the leader, and he was captured and interviewed by a man named Thomas C. Gray, who recorded that confession and had it published. The confession was read before the trial in November 1831, and the conversation between Gray and Turner is remarkably civil. Turner was a young man who was largely self-educated, as would have been the norm for slaves at the time. It is clear that what Mr. Gray wants to know most is why this revolt took place, showing again how surprised much of the population was and how little they could place themselves in the shoes of the slaves. In the confession, Turner gives a r
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2482
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)
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