Nat Turner: From Slave To Freedom?

Nat Turner was filled with bitterness and resentment due to the fact that he was considered the property of another man. Due to his growing bitterness and resentment, Nat Turner defied his masters and white supremacy by first telling Thomas Moore that slaves ought to be free and would be "one day or other." This rebellious talk from a black slave to his white master was extremely inappropriate, unacceptable, and prohibited at that particular time in history and the rebellious talk caused Nat Turner to get a thrashing by his master - it was a warning/foreshadowing, however, of what was soon to come. In the time following Nat Turners statement, Nat believed that God had chosen him to lead the slaves to freedom. After witnessing strange weather and seeing an eclipse around the sun on August 12,1831, Turner believed this to be a sign from God to begin the revolt that had previously come to him in a vision. Nat, a religious man, received a vision which mirrored the unremitting carnage which was that of Jehovah who through Ezekiel that his mighty wrath was on Jerusalem, whose people had disobeyed the Lord’s statutes and transformed His judgments into the most terrible wickedness. God told the prophet Ezekiel, “Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof.” “Let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity: Slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women: but come …show more content…
The rebels killed Nat Turner’s master and fifty-eight more men, women and children. News of Turners revolt had been reported in the form of a letter from the Postmaster of Jerusalem to the Governor of Virginia. This letter was sent by way of Petersburg and was first published in the Richmond Constitutional Whig of August 23,