Book Review: The Fires of Jubilee by Stephen B. Oates

Overview of the Author and Work

The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion by Stephen B. Oates (New York: HarperPerennial, 1990, 208 pages) is a narrative history of one of the most significant slave rebellions in American history. Oates spent most of his academic career as a professor of African-American and U.S. history, and his most notable works chronicle the antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction eras. He is particularly well known for his biographies of the period, including his works on Lincoln.

The Fires of Jubilee chronicles the life and rebellion of Nat Turner, the famous American slave rebel. Oates offers the work both as a companion to and a partial rebuttal of existing literature on Turner, including the well-known novel by William Styron. Although an academic, Oates writes in an engaging and accessible manner that has made many of his historical works bestsellers as well as highly respected within the scholarly community.

Nat Turner as a Historical Figure

Nat Turner, in contrast to figures such as Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, remains a polarizing presence in the history of the American Civil War era. 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" (Oates, p. 145). For antebellum Black Americans, 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 Negroes" (Oates, p. 145).

Turner was born during a tumultuous period of American Southern history. The South had experienced a series of rebellions, and even some white Southerners were questioning the institution of slavery. Turner was born into slavery within a devoutly Christian family, and from an early age his intelligence and religious devotion marked him as a potentially great preacher. He lived in an area of the country with an unusually high proportion of free Black residents. Attitudes, by the standards of the time, were relatively relaxed toward enslaved people — most significantly for Turner, the enslaved population of Southampton, Virginia was permitted to attend religious services and hold their own revivals (Oates, p. 3).

Oates's Use of Sources and Speculative Method

Oates uses a combination of factual and speculative research to reconstruct the era in which Turner lived. Because Turner was enslaved, there are no extensive records of his early childhood comparable to those available for white subjects of the period. While a document titled The Confessions of Nat Turner exists in published form, it is not a straightforward autobiography; it is based on interviews conducted with Turner by a white man after Turner's capture and conviction. Oates therefore has considerable latitude as a historian to imagine Turner's beginnings. He suggests that early in life, Nat likely heard a combination of radical Christian and African teachings from the pulpit, which shaped his worldview.

At times, Oates speaks as if he could read Turner's mind across historical eras, 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, p. 26). To defend this speculative approach, Oates draws on Turner's confessions, noting that Turner felt betrayed — despite having learned to read and being respected in the community for his prophetic wisdom and knowledge of the Bible — because he remained a subjugated slave.

Oates is often forced to speculate about Turner's motivations given the degree to which Turner cut a mysterious figure, even in the eyes of his fellow enslaved people. For example, at one point Turner successfully ran away for thirty days and then returned of his own accord, saying that God had told him to return to his master. Whether this was intended to enhance his reputation as a mystic, was connected to his feelings for the woman he eventually married, or stemmed from reasons unknown even to Turner himself remains unclear.

Oates does present certain well-documented facts, such as the death of Turner's master and the widespread fear within the enslaved community of being "sold down the river" and facing far harsher conditions than those they experienced in the relatively sheltered community of Southampton. The book interweaves factual details of the period — such as the depreciation in farm values during the time of Turner's rebellion — with Oates's imaginative rendering of Turner meditating on Bible passages and reinterpreting them for his followers.