SLAVE UPRISING The Nat Turner Rebellion

In 1831, a group of enslaved people in Virginia launched a 36-hour rampage that left almost 60 White people dead. Although the White establishment was desperate to paint the incident as an anomalous plot organised by a bloodthirsty barbarian, the reality spoke for itself. It was the natural consequence of the brutal system of slavery so deeply threaded into the veins of Southern antebellum society.

At the turn of the 19th century, the invention of the cotton gin had completely transformed the South. The American cotton industry, centred in the Deep South, exploded, becoming the country’s leading export as it fought its way towards international trading supremacy. With profits soaring, so too did demand for slaves, and when the international slave trade was abolished in 1808, Upper South states like Virginia gained a stranglehold over the country’s