0929891074 by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub

Frederick Douglass Chapter Fourteen Ottilie Assing and the American Civil War During the summer of 183o Heinrich Heine cut his vacation on the island of Helgoland short and rushed off to join what came to be known as the Revolution of 1831 in Paris. “Gone,”he wrote, “ismy longing for peace and quiet. Once again I know what I want, what I ought, what I must do. . .1 am a son of the revolution and will take up arms.” On February 12, 1831, Nat Turner, a slave who had been born in Southhampton, Virginia in i8oo, took a solar eclipse as the sign that he was to begin planning for a slave rebellion on the coming July 4. When another eclipse took place on August 13, Turner, who had been receiving visions with increasing frequency, was confirmed in his belief that the Lord wanted him to lead a rebellion. One week later, on August 21, Turner freed 50 fellow slaves and urged them to “killall whites,” regardless of age or gender. By the time the Virginia militia put down the rebellion 48 hours later, 57 men, women and children had been murdered by Turner’s band of revolutionaries. Turner eluded capture for another two months, but on October 30, he was found hiding in a cave, brought to trial, and hanged on November ii. His body was then dismembered and its various parts distributed as souvenirs of the crushed rebellion. His lawyer, Thomas RuflIn Gray, interviewed him in jail before his execution, and published The Confessions of Nat Turner after his death. In this account, Turner recounted the visions he had had throughout his life. As one has come to expect, revolutionary fervor in America had a religious cast, descending as it did from the enthusiast millennialist sects which had proliferated in England during the 17h century, many of whom ended up emigrating to America. Slave rebellions had occurred throughout history, probably as long as the existence of slavery itself. One could cite the rebellion of Spartacus in Rome or the story of Moses and the Exodus as examples. The history of Negro chattel slavery in the New World was no different. Slave revolts had taken place in New York City in 1712, at Stono, South Carolina in 1739, and in Southern Louisiana in i8ii. Numerous conspiracies had been broken up before they could emerge as full-blown revolts. The conspiracy at Point Coupee, Louisiana in 1795 was one example. To that could be added the conspiracies of Gabriel Prosser in Richmond, Virginia in i8oo and of Denmark Vesey in Charleston, South Carolina in 1822.2 But there was a new and disquieting element to Nat Turner’s rebellion. The Turner rebellion sent a new wave of fear throughout the South because it included “thenew forces that had been building since the American and French Revolutions.” These new forces “hadsecularized the cause of national-popular liberation and proclaimed the Rights of Man.” The slave revolt which best epitomized those “newforces” was the rebellion led by Toussaint L’Overture in Haiti.

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