NAT TURNER’S REVOLT: REBELLION AND RESPONSE IN SOUTHAMPTON COUNTY, VIRGINIA by PATRICK H. BREEN (Under the Direction of Emory M. Thomas) ABSTRACT In 1831, Nat Turner led a revolt in Southampton County, Virginia. The revolt itself lasted little more than a day before it was suppressed by whites from the area. Many people died during the revolt, including the largest number of white casualties in any single slave revolt in the history of the United States. After the revolt was suppressed, Nat Turner himself remained at-large for more than two months. When he was captured, Nat Turner was interviewed by whites and this confession was eventually published by a local lawyer, Thomas R. Gray. Because of the number of whites killed and the remarkable nature of the Confessions, the revolt has remained the most prominent revolt in American history. Despite the prominence of the revolt, no full length critical history of the revolt has been written since 1937. This dissertation presents a new history of the revolt, paying careful attention to the dynamic of the revolt itself and what the revolt suggests about authority and power in Southampton County. The revolt was a challenge to the power of the slaveholders, but the crisis that ensued revealed many other deep divisions within Southampton’s society. Rebels who challenged white authority did not win universal support from the local slaves, suggesting that disagreements within the black community existed about how they should respond to the oppression of slavery. At the same time, the crisis following the rebellion revealed divisions within white society. Many whites in Southampton County advocated a brutal and often indiscriminate retribution against slaves; others—including most of the prominent leaders in the county—worked to limit the reprisals against slaves. In the end, the crisis ended as the county’s acknowledged leaders reasserted control, both by suppressing the rebels and by quashing the efforts of whites to retaliate against slaves in a way that threatened the property of Southampton’s slaveholders. INDEX WORDS: Nat Turner, Slave Resistance, Slavery, Southampton County, Virginia, Southampton Insurrection, The Confessions of Nat Turner, Thomas R. Gray NAT TURNER’S REVOLT: REBELLION AND RESPONSE IN SOUTHAMPTON COUNTY, VIRGINIA by PATRICK H. BREEN B.S., The College of William and Mary, 1992 M. A., The University of Georgia, 1994 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2005 © 2005 Patrick H. Breen All Rights Reserved NAT TURNER’S REVOLT: REBELLION AND RESPONSE IN SOUTHAMPTON COUNTY, VIRGINIA by PATRICK H. BREEN Major Professor: Emory M. Thomas Committee: Robert A. Pratt Michael P. Winship James C. Cobb Electronic Version Approved Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 2005 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The single name that is on the title page is misleading. Although this dissertation is my own, I owe thanks to many people and institutions for their help: people at the University of Georgia and Providence College have both been exceptionally patient with me as I have done my research and writing. I am also thankful for the financial support that I have received from the Colonial Dames of Georgia and the Mellon Foundation. This financial support helped fund my trips to wonderful research centers. I have worked at the Library of Congress; the special collections of the Alderman Library at the University of Virginia; Duke University’s Special Collections; the Earl Gregg Swem Library at the College of William and Mary; the Library of Virginia in Richmond; the North Carolina Archives and Department of History, Raleigh; the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; the Virginia Baptist Historical Society at the University of Richmond; and the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond. All of the librarians have been unfailingly helpful, although I would like to say a special kind word on behalf of Margaret Cook, the long time curator of manuscripts and rare books at William and Mary. She has been a great resource on research projects, dating back to my senior project as an undergraduate. I am also thankful for the kind assistance I have received from the interlibrary-loan librarians at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and from Francine Mancini at Providence College. My research trips to Virginia and Washington, D.C. have given me the opportunity to visit friends and family, all of whom have been unfailingly hospitable for my visits. In Charlottesville, grade-school classmate Mark Smith and Dan Nonte were wonderfully gracious. My peripatetic best friend, Paul Vandegrift, put me up in both Richmond and Williamsburg. Emory and Fran Thomas were kind enough to let me stay at the farm for a couple of weeks while I was working in Richmond. Many historians have also kindly helped me: the faculty at the University of Georgia has been tremendously supportive. The graduate coordinators, William Leary, Bill Stueck, and Michael Winship, have all supported me and my work. Ed Larson and Peter Hoffer encouraged me to think about dissertation topics in ways that led me to this subject. Michael Winship, Bob Pratt, and Jim Cobb all kindly took time out of their busy schedules to serve as readers. Once I moved from Georgia, Peter Coclanis welcomed me to the Tar Heel State; the University of North Carolina’s history department served as my home away from home during my residence in North Carolina. Other historians—including Catherine Clinton, Ted Delaney, Douglas Egerton, Robert Forbes, Scot French, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Kenneth Greenberg, Reginald Hildebrand, Winthrop Jordan, Nelson Lankford, Paul Levengood, Marie Tyler McGraw, Winfred Moore, David White—have all helped make this a better work. This dissertation builds on earlier works that I am glad to acknowledge. Kenneth Greenberg invited me to publish an early version of one of my arguments in Nat Turner: A Rebellion in History and Memory (2004). I thank him and Oxford University Press for the opportunity and for the permission to use material from that article in this work. I am also grateful to everyone involved in the Virginia Writers Project, which was a part of the Works Progress Administration. One of the things that the Virginia Writers Project did is compile maps of the Virginia’s counties, including locating historically significant sites. The Southampton v map, which the Virginia Library put on-line as part of its Virginia Historical Inventory, is the basis for the Southampton maps that I have appended to this work.1 Thankful words do little to repay debts accumulated over many years, and the meagerness of words seem particular obvious when I address the two historians whose assistance was most instrumental in the completion of this project. Gene Genovese have been unfailingly supportive of this work. Perhaps that it is as it should be. Gene Genovese is the one who made me realize that I wanted to study history. It was his class on the Old South—which I took as a sophomore in college—that made me realize that I wanted to study the South. I could write that my ultimate research interest in slavery was pre-ordained, but, aware of what Gene’s pencil would write in the margin, I will not. Emory Thomas, my advisor at the University of Georgia, has been everything that one could ask for in a dissertation director. He has been helpful, kind, and generous. He has always encouraged me to be bold, and he has always had confidence in the work that I could produce. One could not ask for a more steadfast supporter. My last thanks goes to my family. I am sure that they had no idea how long they would have to live with this dissertation. Throughout this process, my parents, sisters, and aunt have been great cheerleaders. I hope that they will be pleased with the result. On the other hand, my daughters, Mary and Dorothy, have not been as helpful and likely will not be as pleased with the result. In fact, they may even be disappointed if finishing this process reduces the amount of scrap paper they get for “corrections.” Don’t worry about them: even without drafts to correct, I’m sure that they will find more and better ways to improve my work. I can’t wait. Finally, I want to thank my wife, Katie, who has been here throughout. Thank you. 1 The original version of the Southampton map is Virginia Writers Project, Virginia Historical Inventory; on-line at http://lvaimage.lib.va.us/cgi- bin/vhip_subjects/vhip.pl?ox=0&oy=0&filename=sou.sid&title=Southampton+County&res=3&size=12&default_x =2061.5&default_y=1956&subject=Dwellings&fullwidth=4123&fullheight=3912 [1 March 2005]. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………………………iv CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………….. 1 2 SIGNS FROM GOD……………………………………………………………. 18 3 “THE FIRST BLOOD”…………………………………………………………. 43 4 DAWN…………………………………………………………………………...64 5 TO JERUSALEM………………………………………………………………..88 6 WAR……………………………………………………………………………105 7 FLIGHT…………………………………………………………………..…….124 8 RETRIBUTION………………………………………………………………...142 9 A STRUGGLE FOR ORDER………………………………………………….172 10 THE TRIALS…………………………………………………………………...193 11 CONFESSIONS………………………………………………………………..246 12 CHRISTIAN VOICES………………………………………………………….281 APPENDICES MAP 1: VIRGINIA, NORTH CAROLINA, AND MARYLAND……………………294 MAP 2: SOUTHAMPTON COUNTY……………………………………………….. 295 MAP 3: ST. LUKE’S PARISH: THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF THE REBELLION….296 TABLE 1: SLAVE POPULATION OF SOUTHAMPTON COUNTY, 1824-1839….297 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………298 viii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION On Sunday night, 21 August 1831, Nat Turner and four associates began what became the most famous slave revolt in American history. A small conspiracy, the rebels had caught whites in Southampton County completely by surprise. By the middle of the day on Monday, 22 August, the rebels had killed nearly five dozen whites, making the revolt the most deadly, at least in the terms of whites killed, in American history.