Nathaniel “Nat” Turner was an African American slave who led one of the most violent slave rebellions in history. Born in the year 1800 on Benjamin Turner’s Virginia plantation, Nat was given the advantage of being taught how to read, write, and engage in religion. While occupying himself in these “extracurricular activities”, Nat strongly connected to the idea of becoming a preacher and leader to his fellow slaves in Southampton County. Over the occurrence of many years, Nat worked on a series of plantations. Leading up the rebellion, Nat Turner was primarily under the ownership of the Travis family. The date of August 22, 1831 marks the overall beginning of what is now known as a bloody slave insurrection. On this day, Nat along with a handful of other slaves killed the Travis family and immediately gained a larger group of slave followers to carry out the second step of their rebellion. During the next two days, Nat succeeded in murdering an upwards of 51 white people with the help of 75 fellow slaves. After the rebellion, Nat Turner fled to a nearby area to hide from the punishment that he was bound to receive the moment he was …show more content…
In his confession, Nat goes on to say that as a small child, he would prophesize and tell stories of things that happened before his birth. Amongst all of this stories, Nat’s mother would confirm that the actions indeed happened. Later on in his confession, Nat states that he was called on by the heavens to become a prophet. Within his prophecy days, Nat can be quoted as saying that he was told by the signs of heaven to commence work by slaughtering his enemies with their own weapons. Since he was primarily known as a slave, Nat’s enemies resulted in being the white people/slave owners. Despite the Travis family being nice toward Nat, his calling was more important which led to him killing them along with the other fifty some