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The First Should Be the Last and the Last Should Be the First No matter how paradoxical it may seem on the surface, the bloodiest slave mutiny in the southern history, upraised by Nat Turner, broke out in the enlightened Virginia that boasted its tolerating treatment of the black population in the state. The Southern County, soon gripped by a dreadful massacre, had 60 per cent of black people, as many whites had been deterred by meager economic vistas in the area. With a prevailing number still enslaved, 700 blacks were bestowed with freedom. It was accepted among white men to consider social conditions in Virginia as rather favorable for blacks. At the times when other states enacted laws against teaching slaves literacy, a few slave schools functioned in Virginia and slave illegal religious congregations were neither encouraged nor prosecuted.
Compared to the brutal cotton planters in the Deep South Virginia enjoyed the status of the enlightened state and, as regarded by whites, took no chances of rebellion. They were convinced that their blacks were too content, too submissive to strike back. Nevertheless, from the blacks point of view, slavery seemed more entrenched in the state than ever. Otherwise, the insurrection would not have broken out.
The opinion of the dire necessity for a revolt was preached by a popular self-made prophet Nat Turner. A child of strong-minded parents, he possessed an enormous sense of self-importance, extensive education and prodigious knowledge of the Bible. Being a perceptive man, he discerned evident hypocrisies and contradictions in the Christian area exploited by the white to justify slavery. He appeared to be indignant that whites glorified in their teaching of Jesus and yet discriminated against blacks and dared boast their benevolence. His personal painful experience of a separated marriage (he and his wife belonged to different owners) contributed to the general picture of blatant injustice and horrible privations all the black were forced to suffer. His success, however, was more determined by his brilliant dormant of public speech.
The intelligent slaver succeeded to have cultivated the image of a mystical, austere exhorter and he exercised a powerful influence upon the black as preacher. He enjoyed the high level of trust on behalf of his people. As depicted by Thomas Grey, he was the most articulate man he had ever met. Nat Turner managed to exhort the black that he had been called upon the God to avenge slavery, I was ordained for some great purpose in the hands of the Almighty.
Haunted by different religious visions, he became completely assured in his mission when once working in the field he discovered drops of blood in the corn and decoded these signs as the divine order to plunge into action, as the great day of judgment was at hand. Supported by his reliable friends, Hark, Sam, Nelson, Will, and Jack, the organizer conducted the meeting in the forest and on August 22, 1831, a band of insurgent slaves rose up with axes to carry out their bloody revenge. For the next few days the whole state was gripped by mass hysteria. The first four victims were the Travis, the legal owners of Nat Turner. Then there came a farm after a farm. In their thirty-six-hour gruesome slaughter spree the insurrectionists stabled and decapitated fifty nine whites including children and women.
I personally find it difficult to approve such vigorous violence of the rebels, but even the highest level of cruelty, as I would call it, failed to entail significant positive alterations in the states and to prompt the white to take the path to social justice. Though the leader was hanged two months after the whitehead massacre, the revolt produced a profound and irrevocable impact on the destinies of southern whites and blacks. The Great Reaction of the 1830 s and 1840 s led to the futile efforts of southerners to preserve their slave-based society at whatever cost. Slave churches were abolished; more than 200 innocent black people were murdered by white mobs, the affluent planters supported cheap labor.
In my judgment, if the abolitionists succeeded to persuade the lawmakers in Richmond to reject slaver, the Civil Was could have been avoided. It disconcerts me to realize that more cruelty proved to suffice to overcome this humiliating institution. Bibliography: Nat Turner's words are from Thomas R. Gray, "The Original Confessions of Nat Turner" in William Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner: A Critical Handbook, edited by Melvin J. Friedman and Irving Malin. Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1970.
Information on Virginia politics is from "The Slave Revolt That Shook Virginia" by Frank Ahrens, The Washington Post, 14 December, 1994, H- 1, H- 5. In the wake of the Turner revolt, the rise of the abolitionists, and the Virginia debates over slavery, the other southern states also expanded their patrol and militia systems and increased the severity of their slave codes. In total, the state executed 55 people, banished many more, and acquitted a few. The state reimbursed the slaveholders for their slaves. In addition, slaves as far away as North Carolina were accused of having a connection with the insurrection, and were subsequently tried and executed.
The state legislature of Virginia considered abolishing slavery, but in a close vote decided to retain slavery and to support a repressive policy against black people, slave and free. Nat Turner was hanged two months after the killing, but the effects of his mutiny lasted for decades. No other rebellions occurred, yet whites continued to suspect black ministers of holding secret meetings to plan more revolts. Slave churches were torn down, and white churches enforced segregated seating. For the next twenty years, the laws that governed slaves and free blacks became more brutal and oppressive.
Wealthy planters in eastern Virginia owned almost 20 % of all slaves in the United States. But few whites in the piedmont and western parts of the state depended on slave labor. After Nat Turner's revolt, they petitioned lawmakers in Richmond to abolish slavery. "If we are to remain united, " wrote one man, "we must have some guarantee that the evils under which you labor shall not be extended to us. " The wealthy planters had their way. The planters wanted to protect their investment in human flesh, so they pressured the legislators in Richmond to reject abolition. Some historians believe that if Virginia had ended slavery in the 1830 's, the Civil War might have been avoided. But the cruel institution lasted another thirty years and led to America's bloodiest war.
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