A Rebel to Remember

Smarty Pants

On August 22 1831, Nat Turner led a group of enslaved people in a rebellion that resulted in the deaths of more than a hundred people, Black and white, in Virginia’s Southampton County, near the border with North Carolina. Though the conflict only lasted a few days, Nat himself evaded capture for two months, until he surrendered on October 30. Before his execution on November 11, he spoke at length about his thoughts and deeds, which were written down by the lawyer Thomas Gray as The Confessions of Nat Turner. In a new book, the late historian Anthony E. Kaye and his collaborator Gregory P. Downs make the case that the religious dimension of Nat’s uprising has been underplayed or overlooked in popular accounts of his work—despite the prevalence of divine vision both in the Confessions and in prior rebellions. Nat Turner, Black Prophet aims to tell the full story of this “uniquely troublesome historical figure, too dangerous for some, too strange for others.”

Go beyond the episode:

• Nat Turner, Black Prophet: A Visionary History by Anthony E. Kaye with Gregory P. Downs
• Nat’s bible is on view at the National Museum of African American History and Culture
• For more on how the place of religion has changed in modern society—and how religious men like Nat saw themselves in theirs—see Charles Taylor, A Secular Age
• Historians increasingly write about the Civil War as the largest (and most successful) slave rebellion in history—but W. E. B. DuBois said it first

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