¶ … Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion

In Stephen B. Oates's The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion, Nat Turner was the Black American slave who led the only useful, unrelenting slave rebellion (August 1831) in U.S. history. Spreading terror throughout the white South, his action set off a new wave of oppressive legislation prohibiting the education, movement, and assembly of slaves and stiffened proslavery, anti-abolitionist convictions that persisted in that region until the American Civil War.

His mother was an African native who pass on an ardent hatred of slavery to her son. He learned to read from one of his master's sons, and he enthusiastically absorbed severe religious training. In the early 1820s, he was sold to a neighboring plantation. During the following decade, his religious zeal tended to came...

He began to exercise a powerful authority on many of the nearby slaves, who called him "the Prophet."
The main ideas that surrounded the book and the personality of Nat Turner were fierce passion and zeal demonstrated by him in form of religious convictions and the ever-present and growing hatred that formed the basis of his rebellion. However, it was not just his fanaticism but also his conviction and belief in justice that led him to his actions.

In 1831, soon after he had been sold again, a sign in the form of an eclipse of the Sun instigated Turner to believe that the hour to strike was near. He intended to capture the weapon store at the county seat, Jerusalem, and, after assembling many recruits, to press on to the Dismal Swamp, 30 miles to the…