Fires Of Jubilee Summary

In the book Fires of Jubilee, the author Stephen Oates, does an amazing job of describing the life of Nat Turner. Oates begins the book by telling about the childhood of Turner. Nat Turner was born on October 17th of 1800. Turner was born into slavery. When Nat was born his mother tried to kill him rather than having him to see him grow up a slave. The book does not tell much about Turners father only that he later escaped to a northern state. The book does give quite a bit of background information on Turners mother, Nancy. Nancy was not born a slave she was brought to America in 1795. Nancy was purchased by a man named Benjamin Turner. Benjamin Turner was a very wealthy tidewater planter.
From a very young age people started to relies that …show more content…
Samuel was a very Religious man, and was in his twenties. Samuel believed in working the slaves to right before there braking point and would use religion to scare the slaves into obeying every command. Most slaves and slave holders where very religious people and that is why Samuels methods worked so well. It was common belief in the south that it was a sin for slaves to disobey their masters and if they did disobey they would burn in hell. As Turner got older he became more and more discontent with being a slave and taking orders from other his master. Turner could always fine a safe haven in this religion. Turner spent many hours preaching to the other slaves and meditating. I 1821 Turner ran away, but thirty days later he returned saying God had told him to go back to being a slave and serving his master. In 1822 Samuel passed away and Turner was …show more content…
Over all it was a really good book and I personally really enjoyed it. It really gives the readers an inside look on what Turner was thinking, and why he did the things he did. Although the book its self was very good it does not change the fact that what Nat Turner did was wrong and evil. Under no circumstance is it okay to kill innocent people. Not all slave owners where innocent by any means but Turner didn’t just kill the slave owners he killed women and children also. By killing all the people Turner made things worse on the slaves. Many blacks were killed by slave owners after the rebellion because slave owners thought it was going to make things even. This is one of the first times in history the thought of freeing the slaves even was brought up in the legislature. The state of Virginia thought that if they realized all the salves and let them be free an outbreak like Nat Turners rebellion would not happen again but the law never passed. The rebellion also made life worse for the slaves because the slave owners where more on edge and more strict after the rebellion to try to keep all the slaves in check to prevent a rebellion from ever happening