Nat Turner: Hero, or Villain?

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Nathaniel "Nat" Turner (October 2, 1800 – November 11, 1831) was an American slave who led a slave rebellion in Virginia on August 21, 1831 that resulted in 60 white deaths and at least 100 black deaths, the largest number of fatalities to occur in one uprising prior to the American Civil War in the southern United States. He gathered supporters in Southampton County, Virginia. Turner was convicted, sentenced to death, and hanged. In the aftermath, the state executed 56 blacks accused of being part of Turner's slave rebellion. Two hundred blacks were also beaten and killed by white militias and mobs reacting with violence. Across Virginia and other southern states, state legislators passed new laws prohibiting education of slaves and free blacks, restricting rights of assembly and other civil rights for free blacks, and requiring white ministers to be present at black worship services....

Turner started with a few trusted fellow slaves. The rebels traveled from house to house, freeing slaves and killing the white people they found. The rebels ultimately included more than 70 enslaved and free blacks.

Because the rebels did not want to alert anyone to their presence as they carried out their attacks, they initially used knives, hatchets, axes, and blunt instruments instead of firearms. The rebellion did not discriminate by age or sex, until it was determined that the rebellion had achieved sufficient numbers. Nat Turner only confessed to killing one of the rebellion's victims, Margret Whitehead, whom he killed with a blow from a fence post.

Before a white militia was able to respond, the rebels killed 60 men, women, and children. They spared a few homes "because Turner believed the poor white inhabitants 'thought no better of themselves than they did of negros.'" Turner also thought that revolutionary violence would serve to awaken the attitudes of whites to the reality of the inherent brutality in slave-holding, a concept similar to 20th century philosopher Franz Fanon's idea of "violence as purgatory". Turner later said that he wanted to spread "terror and alarm" among whites...

What exactly did he do that was heroic? He murdered innocent men, women, and children and set the stage for more violence.

Hero and Villain are really limited ways of looking at people.

He was getting even for being treated like an animal. Payback is a b***h.

ruveyn

I almost never take the side of child killers, but in the instance, the wealthy southern planters reaped what they had sowed.
It should be remembered, he spared poor whites, because he recognized they were hardly any better off than black slaves.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer