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The Nat Turner Project is a primary source archive of historical documents about Nat Turner and the 1831 slave revolt he led in Southampton County, Virginia.
Most Americans first learned details about the Southampton revolt through newspapers. The first reports appeared in papers published in Richmond, Norfolk, and Petersburg, Virginia.
Below is a sampling of some of the original documents that illuminate the setting of the rebellion in Southampton County, the unfolding of the revolt itself, the aftermath of the uprising, and its impact on the local community and on the nation.
For nearly two hundred years, controversy has surrounded Nat Turner and the Southampton Rebellion. In some respects, the historical documents available about the revolt raise as many questions as they answer.
In August of 1831, seven enslaved men turned the South and the nation upside down when they engaged in a violent and historic bid to gain their freedom. Beginning before dawn on a Monday morning, a band of slaves led by Nat Turner made their way across Southampton County in southeastern Virginia.
Laws Passed. After the revolt in Southampton, communities and state legislatures across the South considered the implementation of new, harsher restrictions against enslaved and free African Americans. Citizens often petitioned the lawmaking bodies as they debated revisions of existing black codes. Some petitioners argued for the necessity of ...
Pamphlets. In the fall of 1831, two pamphlets were published that capitalized on the sensationalist nature of the revolt. The first was published in New York City by an unknown author named Samuel Warner. Warner drew largely on existing newspaper articles to produce his text.
Immediate Abolition: William Lloyd Garrison on David Walker’s. Appeal. , 1831. In this editorial, published in the second issue of The Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison demonstrated both his abhorrence of violence and his belief that slaveholders brought slave rebellion on themselves.
The following sources provide more information about Nat Turner and the Southampton Revolt of 1831: David F. Allmendinger, Jr., Nat Turner and the Rising in Southampton County (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014).
Dr. Roth has written about the Nat Turner revolt for the History News Network and appeared in the documentary Rise Up: The Legacy of Nat Turner on National Geographic. She created the Nat Turner Project in 2015 with significant assistance from her undergraduate research assistant at Widener University, Taylor O'Connor. Production Assistants