Kenneth S. Greenberg - The Confessions of Nat Turner: With Related Documents (Bedford Series in History and Culture)

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THE BEDFORD SERIES IN HISTORY AND CULTURE

WITH RELATED DOCUMENTS

SECOND EDITION

Edited with an Introduction by

Kenneth S. Greenberg

Suffolk University

For Bedford / St. Martins

Vice President, Editorial, Macmillan Learning Humanities: Edwin Hill

Publisher for History: Michael Rosenberg

Senior Executive Editor for History: William J. Lombardo

Director of Development for History: Jane Knetzger

Developmental Editor: Alexandra DeConti

Marketing Manager: Melissa Famiglietti

Production Editor: Lidia MacDonald-Carr

Production Coordinator: Carolyn Quimby

Director of Rights and Permissions: Hilary Newman

Permissions Assistant: Michael McCarty

Permissions Manager: Kalina Ingham

Cover Design: William Boardman

Cover Art: Capture of Nat Turner after the Southampton Insurrection, Etching, 1831 / GLASSHOUSE IMAGES / Private Collection / Bridgeman Images

Project Management: Books By Design, Inc.

Composition: Achorn International, Inc.

Printing and Binding: RR Donnelly and Sons

Copyright 2017, 1999 by Bedford/St. Martins.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except as may be expressly permitted by the applicable copyright statutes or in writing by the Publisher.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

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For information, write: Bedford/St. Martins, 75 Arlington Street, Boston, MA 02116 (617-399-4000)

ISBN 978-1-319-06486-0

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments and copyrights appear on the same page as the text and art selections they cover; these acknowledgments and copyrights constitute an extension of the copyright page.

The Bedford Series in History and Culture is designed so that readers can study the past as historians do.

The historians first task is finding the evidence. Documents, letters, memoirs, interviews, pictures, movies, novels, or poems can provide facts and clues. Then the historian questions and compares the sources. There is more to do than in a courtroom, for hearsay evidence is welcome, and the historian is usually looking for answers beyond act and motive. Different views of an event may be as important as a single verdict. How a story is told may yield as much information as what it says.

Along the way the historian seeks help from other historians and perhaps from specialists in other disciplines. Finally, it is time to write, to decide on an interpretation and how to arrange the evidence for readers.

Each book in this series contains an important historical document or group of documents, each document a witness from the past and open to interpretation in different ways. The documents are combined with some element of historical narrativean introduction or a biographical essay, for examplethat provides students with an analysis of the primary source material and important background information about the world in which it was produced.

Each book in the series focuses on a specific topic within a specific historical period. Each provides a basis for lively thought and discussion about several aspects of the topic and the historians role. Each is short enough (and inexpensive enough) to be a reasonable one-week assignment in a college course. Whether as classroom or personal reading, each book in the series provides firsthand experience of the challengeand funof discovering, recreating, and interpreting the past.

Lynn Hunt

David W. Blight

Bonnie G. Smith

The Nat Turner slave rebellion erupted in Southampton County, Virginia, during the early morning hours of August 22, 1831. It was brutally repressed in little more than a single day. At its height, the revolt involved approximately forty active rebels and ultimately led to the death of approximately fifty-five white victims. While we can be reasonably certain of the number and identities of the black rebels who were executed after trials, and we can clearly identify the white victims, there were scores of additional anonymous deaths: unrecorded summary executions of suspected insurrectionists by infuriated local residents and militiamen.

By some measures, the Nat Turner slave rebellion was a minor event. It never posed a direct threat to the security of the slave regime. The bulk of the killing ended quickly. Nearly all the deaths occurred within the limits of a single county. The rebellion was repressed by a small number of men from local militia units. Although the insurrection was one of the largest slave revolts in the United States, it was quite small compared with many revolts in Latin America and the Caribbean.

And yet the Nat Turner rebellion is a vitally important event for any student of American history. It is less important for what it accomplished immediately in terms of death and destruction than for its longer-lasting consequences, for what it reveals about slavery and the nature of antebellum society, and for what it can tell us about African American traditions of resistance. Careful study of the revolt and its aftermath can tell us much about masters, enslaved people, and relations between them in the antebellum South. Who was Nat Turner? What were his thoughts and motives? Was he part of an African American tradition of slave resistance, or was he unique? What led to the insurrection in Southampton? How did masters and political leaders react to the rebellion? What do these reactions reveal about the attitudes of the ruling group toward slavery and enslaved people? How did blacks react to the rebellion? What were the ultimate results of the revolt? This book includes the documentary evidence that allows students to begin to probe these and many additional related questions.

The central document of this volume, presented in , is the confession of the enslaved rebel Nat Turner. Shortly after Turners capture, local lawyer Thomas R. Gray visited him several times in his jail cell, recorded a series of confessions, and quickly published them in pamphlet form. The document is a rich source of information for historians. We have nothing else like it from any other leader of a slave rebellion.