Nat Turner's Rebellion

Throughout the history of the United States, Americans have always strived to maintain their unalienable rights and fight for what they believe to be righteous. They have dealt with various situations in which their freedoms were infringed upon. Strict and oppressive laws have often arisen in the country’s past, and Americans always fight to abolish these unjust restrictions. However, rebelling to acquire more independence is not always proven to be effectual. For example, before gaining sovereignty from Great Britain in the revolutionary era, the Coercive Acts of 1774 shut down Boston Harbor and implemented further restrictions on the patriots as a consequence of the Boston Tea Party. In Antebellum America, the United States’ Southern slave-based

This specific revolt took place in late August of 1831 in Virginia. A slave known as Nat Turner, spiritually convinced it was his personal duty to overthrow the entire system of slavery, began by killing his master and his whole family. Gathering more and more slaves desiring to be free, the uprising rapidly grew. The rebels gradually moved on to destroying neighboring plantations. However, the following morning a larger group put down the revolt and Turner went into hiding (Gresko 236). The leader was eventually caught. Although today Nat Turner’s Rebellion is one of the most well known slave revolts, it was highly unsuccessful. Around nineteen of the rebels were sentenced to death, and a new feeling of fear and panic was spread. Because some freed blacks were involved with the revolt, even their rights became restrained. In Maryland, free blacks no longer enjoyed the right to trial by jury (Gresko 241). Many historians even believe that Nat Turner’s Rebellion played a contributing role in eventually leading the state of Virginia to secede from the United States during the time of the civil war. Instead of becoming freed, many of the rebels lost their lives, and Virginia even imposed a stricter enforcement of the already existing slave

The civil war was mainly focused on the idea of the abolition of slavery, although states’ rights were also still a growing problem. Slaves were yet to be freed and many still craved their independence. This led to various uprisings right before and during the midst of the civil war (Walters 159). Most of these rebellions, being small and somewhat insignificant, merely led to a loss of lives rather than a gain of