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The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion. By Stephen B. Oates. (New York:

HarperPerennial, 1990). 208 pages.

Stephen B. Oates was a professor African-American and U.S. history at the University of Massachusetts for most of his academic career. His most notable works chronicle the antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction eras of American history. He is particularly well-known for his biographies of the period including his works on Lincoln. The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion chronicles the life and rebellion of Nat Turner, the famous American slave rebel. Oates offers his historical work as a companion to as well as a rebuttal of some of the existing literature on Turner, including the famous novel by William Styron. Although an academic, Oates writes in an engaging and popular manner that has made many of his historical works of literature best sellers as well as highly respected within the academic community.

Nat Turner, in contrast to Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, remains a polarizing figure in the history of the American Civil War. Turner led a slave rebellion that terrified Southern whites and even caused some more pacific Northern abolitionists to recoil. Oates selects Turner as a seminal figure because his rebellion created a rallying point for both opponents and proponents of slavery for many years afterward. For fearful Southern whites, "his name for them became a symbol of black terror and violent retribution" (Oates145). For antebellum blacks, on the other hand, "he became a legendary black hero…They regard Turner's rebellion as the 'First Negro War,'" before the actual Civil War, "he became a martyred soldier of slave liberation who broke his chains and murdered whites because slaves had murdered Negros" (Oates 145).

Turner was born during a tumultuous period of American Southern history -- the South had experienced a series of rebellions at the time and even some white Southerners were questioning the institution. Turner was born a slave to a devoutly Christian family and from an early age his intelligence and devotion marked him as a potentially great preacher. He lived in an area of the country with an unusually high proportion of free blacks. Attitudes, by standards of the time, were relatively lax towards slaves -- most significantly for Turner, the slaves of Southampton, Virginia were allowed to go to services and hold their own religious revivals (Oates 3).

Oates uses a combination of factual and speculative research to suggest the era in which Turner lived. As Turner was a slave, there are not extensive records of his early childhood as there are with whites of the period. While it is true that there is a published document with the title The Confessions of Nat Turner, it is important to remember that this is not a straightforward autobiography but based upon the interviews conducted with Turner by a white man after Turner's capture and conviction. Oates thus has a great deal of leeway as a historian to imagine Turner's beginnings, stating that early on in life, Nat likely heard a combination of radical Christian and African teachings from the pulpit which shaped his worldview. At times, over the course of the book, Oates speaks as if he could read Turner's mind across historical eras such as when he writes: "if in his daydreams the Spirit called to him from the spindrift heavens, his condition as a slave remained unchanged" (Oates 26). To defend his use of such relatively speculative materials Oates cites from Turner's autobiographical confessions, stating that Turner felt betrayed that he, despite having learned to read and being respected in the community for his prophetic wisdom and knowledge of the Bible, remained a subjugated slave.

Oates is often forced to speculate about the motivations of his main 'character' given the degree to which Turner cut a mysterious figure, even in the eyes of his fellow slaves. For example, at one point Turner successfully ran away for thirty days and then returned of his own accord, saying that he was told by God to return to his master. This may be because the escape was intended to add to Turner's reputation as a mystic in the eyes of his fellow slaves, because of Turner's feelings for the woman whom he eventually married, or for reasons unknown to Turner.

There are certain factual elements which Oates does present, however, such as the known fact that Turner's master died and there was widespread fear amongst the slave community of being 'sold down the river' and of facing much more serious privations as slaves than they currently did in the relatively more bucolic and protected community of Southampton. The book transposes factual aspects of the period (such as the depreciation of the value of farms during the period of Turner's rebellion) with Oates imagining Turner musing over various Bible passages and re-interpreting them for his followers.

The actual rebellion unfolds almost like an action movie, eventually cumulating with Nat's dramatic capture. "There stood a white man, aiming the shotgun straight at him. As in a dream, the man ordered Nat to give up or get his brains blown out. Since the shotgun was 'well charged,' Nat had no choice but to throw down his sword" (Oates 116). Oates draws upon The Confessions and historical data for the name and the precise circumstances of the capture, but in terms of the thinking process of Nat when he sees the shotgun, clearly the historian is drawing upon his knowledge of the novelist's craft, making the rebellion seem exciting and interpreting the character and motivations as well as recounting the actions of Nat.

In his epilogue to the work, as well as drawing upon history of the period, Oates supports his thesis of the seminal nature of Turner's rebellion with his own personal experiences researching the rebellion in the area of the South where it occurred. Even today, there is profound resistance to talking about the Turner rebellion. Oates encountered a great deal of 'pushback' as a white Northerner when he entered the community of Southampton. This he uses as implicit and supporting evidence of how Turner's rebellion changed everything: it stimulated the call for laws to further hem in the movements and prohibit the education of slaves, as well as prevent slaves from engaging in independent religious activity but also showed slaves that their state was not necessarily inevitable and could be challenged.