Nat Turner's Rebellion During The American Civil War

Edward Bulwer-Lytton started the famous saying, “The pen is mightier than the sword” in one of his playwrights. This saying has held a lot of truth through out history and is applicable in many situations. There are scholars who believe that it is especially applicable to the American Civil War. Thomas Fleming, an American military historian, argues that both the North and South had a diseased state of opinion and that, “there was a peaceful way out: that slaveowners could be compensated and the slaves released.” (Ramsey) Essentially he believes the government can use their mighty pen to free the slaves and avoid the war all together. That argument has a flaw though: the South would never accept that. Both the Union and Confederation had way too strong of opinions about the matter; there would be …show more content…
Quite a few rebellions had occurred previous to this particular one, but this was the first to have the effect it did. Foner wrote, “Only an outside force could alter the balance of power within the South,” further commenting on Turner’s uprising which, “demonstrated the connection between outright rebellion and less dramatic forms of resistance.” (428) Turner took drastic actions to rebel against the proslavery folks. He only lasted a few days, though, because the white community out manned and armed the rebels. Because of this incidents there was a growth of proslavery support both in and outside of the south. (429) Some say that the South ultimately benefitted from this event like this article from Inside America’s History, “the rebellion only strengthened southern resolve to maintain slavery and to restrict even further the activities of slaves and free blacks.” (“Nat Turner 's Rebellion”) It seems as though the event had the opposite effect Turner intended. With the North struggling to maintain unity among the Union and the South’s growing desire to maintain slavery the melting pot was about to boil