Nat Turner Quotes
It was agreed that we should commence at home, on that night, and, until we had armed and equipped ourselves and gained sufficient force, neither age nor sex was to be spared: which was invariably adhered to.
In 1831 a slave preacher, Nat Turner, led a rebellion in North Carolina killing over 50 white men, women and children. Even though Turner and the rebels were captured and executed, whites throughout the South, took vengeance on any slaves they could find.
The reason for the initial total killing policy was that the slaves had no arms. Their plan was for a small band to attack a plantation, seize the owner’s arms, free his slaves enlarging the “army”, and going on to the next plantation. The reason for the total killing of the whites was to prevent a survivor running to the authorities and mounting a counter attack on the slaves while they still had few guns. The plan was to form an armed slave army and then fight a conventional battle. Ironically, one white who was wounded and spared actually did reach the authorities and Turner’s band was attacked before they had sufficient weapons to put up a serious fight.
Nat Turner, 1800–1831, Slave and Slave Revolt Leader, Description of his insurrection, The Confessions of Nat Turner, The Leader of the Late Insurrections, in Southampton, Va. As fully and voluntarily made to Thomas R. Gray, 1831
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See {630997} for the description of the terror policy.
Lev Davidovich Bronstein
The Southerners were terrified at the thought of runaway and freed slaves as soldiers for the Union Army—even moreso than the Union leadership assumed. The Southerners knew far better than the Northerners how badly the slaves had been brutalized and assumed that the Blacks would want the same kind of revenge that they would seek if the roles were reversed.
This fear was great among many who were abolitionists as potentially there might be mass slaughter of all Southern whites.
The Sally was owned by Nicholas Brown and Company and this voyage was financially unsuccessful with 109 out of 196 slaves dying in board. Brown, of the family that founded Brown University, was discouraged by this voyage and withdrew from the slave trading business. See {641475}. American naval hero, John Paul Jones, served under Hopkins in the American Revolution.
The point about the negroes who were born into American slavery being less aggressive than those captured and transported to America is often overlooked. Slavery not only was cruel, moral, and inhuman in its own right, but also took its toll over generations as a result of the psychological effects of the terror of slavery. Despite these, it is amazing how resiliant the American Blacks were under those circumstances. in some cases one or two saves escaped after committing a violent act as they had little to lose for trying as they wold be killed if caught. A few of these escaped to the North and others reached Southern Cities like Charleston where there was a small free black community in which they could be absorbed.
Knight led a band of whites and blacks who fought off the Confederate Troops sent to Jones County of Missisippi, to eleminate the Free State of Jones which tehy had set up, and seceded from the Confederacy. They had infuriated teh Confederate Government becasue it was an interracial community with a great deal of intermarriage and no discrimination agaisnt Blacks and they welcomed runaway slaves and white deserters from the Confederate Army.
It is not known what actually happened thereafter. However, from the intensity of this letter, it is likely that unless Rice was killed or wounded in battle, he went to get his daughter and deal with her “owner”. An interesting side note is that the slave owner actually sent the letter to the Commanding Union General Rosecrans complaining. The mental set of Southern Slave Owners was incredible to us today, but that is one of the reasons that Reconstruction was so difficult. Southerners could not see anything that they did that was wrong. Unfortunately, there are a few racist people with those views still in America plus many throughout the world.
This statement was made long after slavery had been abolished and Jim Crow was on the rise in the South.
This speech is often referred to as the “Ballot or the Bullet” speech. It was the first time that Malcolm X used the “Ballot or the Bullet”. He was not the first African American to use the “Ballot or the Bullet” phrase. See {624102} for a use over 100 years ago. However, he was really arguing to allow Blacks to vote in the South where it was almost impossible at the time. There was no Voting Rights Act at that time and it was his actions that helped pass one shortly thereafter.
The racial inequality did cause a Black revolution in the 1960s. The arrival and influence of Martin Luther King, at the time Black revolution might have turned violent, and the willingness of a substantial number of whites to implement the Civil Rights revolution functioned as a safety valve so that there was substantial reform towards much more racial equality.
This was one of the several early unofficial Emancipations that was issued in the Civil War.
- Born: October 2, 1800
- Died: November 11, 1831
- Nationality: American
- Profession: Activist
Nat Turner was an African-American enslaved preacher who led the four-day rebellion of enslaved and free black people in Southampton County, Virginia, in 1831. Born into slavery on October 2, 1800, in Southampton County, Virginia, a plantation area with more blacks than whites, Turner was recorded as "Nat" by Benjamin Turner, the man who enslaved him and his family. When Benjamin Turner died in 1810, under then current laws which made human enslavement legal, Nat was inherited as property by Benjamin's son Samuel Turner. For most of his life, he was known as "Nat", but after the 1831 rebellion, he was widely referred to as "Nat Turner". Turner knew little about the background of his father, who was believed to have escaped from slavery when Turner was a young boy. Turner spent his entire life in Southampton County.
