The Fires of Jubilee

In Stephen Oates’s essay, The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner’s Fierce Rebellion, the author’s theme was to artfully reconstruct both Nat Turner’s life and the world into which he was born as a way to gain insight to what slave life was like through the eyes of Turner as well as reconstruct the view of his fierce rebellion. Nat Turner was born into this more lenient and naïve South in 1800. Found to be exceptionally gifted early on, he was the talk of the slave and white communities. According to Oates, the Turners who had owned Nat were never too oppressive, but they did expect for him to do his work. He studied religion fervently, and began preaching to blacks all over Southampton County, VA. With his widely known intelligence and preaching ability came the hope that he would be set free, a man too valuable to waste laboring in the sun; unfortunately, successive owners condemned Turner to the fields.

Oates attributed Turner’s plans of rebellion with the final realization that he would not be freed by white men. At around 25 Turner believed that God had sent him a message to lead his people to freedom. He kept this plan to himself but began to build up support in the black community. In 1831 a solar eclipse convinced Turner to begin plotting his war on the whites. Turner interpreted another solar phenomenon as a sign to start his crusade. On August 21 Nat began a rebellion with six trusted men. Their goals were simply to kill every white person they came across and to take the town of Jerusalem, VA.

Nat began his rebellion with six trusted lieutenants and by the height of the rebellion he had around eighty soldiers. The plan was to go from house to house slaughtering its white population while freeing and recruiting its slave population. However, most slaves seemed terrified by the barbaric butchery, and fled to warn the other whites. After attacking a half dozen homesteads, the rebels realized that some of the whites had evacuated already. Turner divided his...