In August 1831, in Southampton County, Virginia, Nat Turner led
a bloody uprising that took the lives of some fifty-five white
people--men, women, and children--shocking the South. Nearly as
many black people, all told, perished in the rebellion and its
aftermath. "Nat Turner and the Rising in Southampton County"
presents important new evidence about the violence and the
community in which it took place, shedding light on the insurgents
and victims and reinterpreting the most important account of that
event, "The Confessions of Nat Turner." Drawing upon largely
untapped sources, David F. Allmendinger Jr. reconstructs the lives
of key individuals who were drawn into the uprising and shows how
the history of certain white families and their slaves--reaching
back into the eighteenth century--shaped the course of the
rebellion.
Never before has anyone so patiently examined the extensive
private and public sources relating to Southampton as does
Allmendinger in this remarkable work. He argues that the plan of
rebellion originated in the mind of a single individual, Nat
Turner, who concluded between 1822 and 1826 that his own masters
intended to continue holding slaves into the next generation.
Turner specifically chose to attack households to which he and his
followers had connections. The book also offers a close analysis of
his "Confessions" and the influence of Thomas R. Gray, who wrote
down the original text in November 1831. The author draws new
conclusions about Turner and Gray, their different motives, the
authenticity of the confession, and the introduction of terror as a
tactic, both in the rebellion and in its most revealing
document.
Students of slavery, the Old South, and African American history
will find in "Nat Turner and the Rising in Southampton County" an
outstanding example of painstaking research and imaginative family
and community history.
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