Nat Turner was an enslaved man who led the Southampton, Virginia, Slave Revolt in the early 1830’s. He is significant for many reasons. First, he demonstrated that the conventional wisdom about slaves – that they were happy and content with their status – was a fiction invented by slaveholders to convince themselves and others that African Americans did not deserve citizenship and were unworthy of being classed with other workers, who during this time period were expanding their rights. Turner’s rebellion is also an example of a type of resistance practiced by the enslaved. Though individual, more passive resistance was more common, the south was not without slave revolts and/or conspiracies like this one. Important also is that Turner demonstrated
