Nat Turner biography

Turner himself fled into the woods.

Death and Legacy

While Turner hid away, white mobs took their revenge on the blacks of Southampton County. Estimates range from approximately 100 to 200 African Americans were killed after the rebellion. Turner was eventually captured on October 30, 1831. He was represented by lawyer Thomas R. Gray wrote down Turner's confession. Turner pled not guilty during his trail, believing that his rebellion was the work of God. He was sentenced to death by hanging, and this sentence was carried out on November 11, 1831. Many of his co-conspirators meant the same fate as Turner.

The incident put fear in the heart of southerners, ending the organized emancipation movement in that region. Southern states enacted even harsher laws against slaves instead. Turner's actions also added fuel to the abolitionist movement in the north. Noted abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison even published an editorial in his newspaper The Liberator in support of Turner to some degree.

Turner's image has changed and evolved over the years. He has emerged as a hero, a religious fanatic and a villain. Turner became an important icon to the 1960s black power movement as an example of an African American standing up against white oppression. He was also the subject of William Styron's 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Confessions of Nat Turner. But others have objected to Turner's indiscriminate slaughtering of men, women and children to try to achieve this end.

As historian Scot French told The New York Times, "To accept Nat Turner and place him within the pantheon of American revolutionary heroes is to sanction violence as a means of social change. He has a kind of radical consciousness that to this day troubles advocates of a racially reconciled society. The story lives because it's relevant today to questions of how to organize for change."

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