Person · 1800–1831
Nat Turner
The enslaved preacher who led the deadliest slave revolt in U.S. history, in Southampton County, Virginia, in 1831.
A central figure of the [[slave-rebellions]] thread.
A literate, deeply religious man, Nat Turner believed he was called by visions to strike against slavery. On August 21, 1831, he and a small band began a revolt that killed about 60 white people over two days before being crushed.
The backlash was severe: scores of Black people, many uninvolved, were killed in reprisal, and Southern states passed harsher laws restricting enslaved people's movement, assembly, and literacy. Turner's rebellion terrified the slaveholding South and hardened the divide that would lead to civil war.