Literature on the Book the Fires of Jubilee Nat Turner\'s Fierce Rebellion

¶ … 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 close to fanaticism, and he saw himself called upon by God to lead his people out of bondage. 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 east, where capture would be hard. On the night of August 21, in concert with seven fellow slaves in whom he had put his trust, he unleashed a campaign of total destruction. In two days, approximately 60 white people were brutally killed. Doomed from the start, the rebellion was weakened by chaos among his followers and by the fact that only 75 blacks supported his cause.

The result was that although the revolt was doomed from the onset, but it had far reaching consequences. In addition, the bravery and courage of Nat Turner was the root cause, which made this rebellion possible in the first place. This action, which may seem ordinary at present, was unimaginable especially by the slave community at that point in time.

Nat Turner's revolt put a stop to the white Southern belief that slaves were either satisfied with their fate or too servile to build up an armed revolt. In Southampton, county black people came to measure time from "Nat's Fray," or "Old Nat's War."