August 1831, Virginia: a Black preacher named Nat Turner leads the bloodiest slave insurrection in American history. Two months later, he is publicly hanged, his head displayed as a warning. But his act, nourished by mystical visions and biblical fury, marked the end of the illusion of racial peace in the American South. The story of the hanged prophet reveals the moral fracture of a nation born in servitude.
Nat Turner, the black prophet hanged in 1831 who made slaveholding America tremble
On 11 November 1831, in the small town of Jerusalem, Virginia, a white crowd gathers on the courthouse square. Before them, a thin Black enslaved man, his eyes turned toward the sky, prays before the trapdoor of the gallows opens. His name is Nat Turner. Two months earlier, this mystical preacher had led the most famous slave insurrection in American history. For some, he was a religious fanatic; for others, a biblical prophet, the embodiment of God’s judgment against the slaveholding nation. His hanging, on that 11 November, was not merely a punishment: it revealed to America the fracture between its faith and its chains.
At the beginning of the 19th century, Virginia is at the heart of the plantation system. Cotton and tobacco enrich a white aristocracy descended from old English families. But beneath this prosperity lies an order built on racial hierarchy and fear. Enslaved people sometimes make up nearly 40% of the population. Masters live in constant fear of a revolt. Since the Haitian Revolution, the rumor of a general uprising haunts the South. The sermons of literate enslaved people and secret nighttime meetings in prayer cabins are monitored. In this atmosphere of religious anxiety and racial tension, Nat Turner is born.
Born in 1800 on the plantation of Benjamin Turner, in Southampton County, he learns to read and write, a rare thing for an enslaved person. Very early, he claims to receive visions: signs in the sky, biblical symbols of fire and blood. Other enslaved people see him as a chosen one. He preaches the Bible, interprets dreams, speaks of deliverance. But for him, religion is not submission: it is a weapon.
Turner sees himself as a new Moses charged with liberating his people. In 1831, a solar eclipse appears to him as divine confirmation of his mission: God commands him to strike Babylon—that is, slaveholding white America. With six companions (Henry, Hark, Sam, Nelson, Jack, and Will), he prepares the revolt.
During the night of 21 August 1831, the group takes action. The first house attacked is that of Joseph Travis, Turner’s current master. He, his wife, and their children are killed. From farm to farm, the insurgents advance, freeing enslaved people and massacring white families. Fifty-five people are killed in two days. Turner believes he is carrying out divine judgment. Blood, he thinks, will wash away the sin. But repression is immediate: local militias, supported by the Virginia army, surround the region. More than one hundred twenty Black people are killed without trial, many having no connection to the revolt. Bodies are hung from trees, heads displayed. Fear settles in for the long term.
Turner manages to escape and hides for six weeks in a hollow tree trunk before being captured on 30 October. His interrogation is conducted by lawyer Thomas Ruffin Gray, who publishes The Confessions of Nat Turner a few days later. In this text, whose authenticity would long be debated, the rebel claims responsibility for his act:
“I have no regrets. God chose me to punish this people.”
On 5 November, he is tried. The trial lasts only a few hours. He remains silent and refuses any request for mercy. Sentenced to death, he climbs the scaffold on 11 November, before a crowd gathered to witness the execution. He prays at length, refuses the blindfold, and dies without a cry. His body is then decapitated, his skin mutilated, his head displayed.
After the hanging, Virginia votes a series of laws designed to lock down the system. The education of enslaved people becomes illegal. Black preaching without white supervision is forbidden. The South transforms into a racial police state. Yet in the North, abolitionists seize the symbol. The Liberator, the newspaper of William Lloyd Garrison, presents Turner as a martyr. For the first time, a part of white America understands that slavery begets violence.
In Black memory, Turner becomes a biblical hero. From Frederick Douglass to Malcolm X, his revolt inspires those who refuse resignation. But in the South, he remains for a long time the ultimate demon, the “Black fanatic.” This ambivalence summarizes American history: on one side, the fear of racial chaos; on the other, the quest for justice. Turner did not seek freedom for himself. He sought to judge a system. His military failure was a moral victory. Thirty years later, the Civil War would take up the torch of his uprising.
In hanging him, Virginia believed it was erasing a man. It crucified its own conscience. Nat Turner, the Black prophet of slaveholding America, did not merely announce the end of an order: he revealed the spiritual bankruptcy of a nation founded on liberty and the whip.
Notes and References
The Confessions of Nat Turner, Thomas R. Gray, Baltimore, Lucas & Deaver, 1831.
Kenneth S. Greenberg (ed.), Nat Turner: A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory, Oxford University Press, 2003.
Stephen B. Oates, The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner’s Fierce Rebellion, Harper & Row, 1975.
Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, International Publishers, 1943.
Henry I. Tragle, The Southampton Slave Revolt of 1831: A Compilation of Source Material, University of Massachusetts Press, 1971.
Paul Finkelman, Defending Slavery: Pro-Slavery Thought in the Old South, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003.
John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South, Oxford University Press, 1972.
Mechal Sobel, Trabelin’ On: The Slave Journey to an Afro-Baptist Faith, Princeton University Press, 1979.
Douglas R. Egerton, Gabriel’s Rebellion: The Virginia Slave Conspiracies of 1800 and 1802, University of North Carolina Press, 1993.
Richard Gray, A History of American Literature, Blackwell Publishing, 2004.
William Styron, The Confessions of Nat Turner, Random House, 1967.
John Hope Franklin & Alfred A. Moss Jr., From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans, Knopf, 1947.
Herbert Aptheker, “The Slave Revolt in Southampton County, Virginia, 1831”, The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 19, No. 3, 1934.
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Boston, 1845.
PBS, Africans in America: Nat Turner Rebellion (1831), Public Broadcasting Service, 1998.
