Nat Turner was a Virginia-born enslaved man — field hand, exhorter, and messianic Christian prophet — who led the Southampton County revolt of August 1831, in which approximately fifty-five white men, women, and children were killed before militia and federal forces suppressed the uprising.
The revolt sent shockwaves through the slaveholding South, catalyzed the abolitionist movement, and is remembered as the most consequential slave revolt in United States history. In the vault, Turner belon...