In the first decades of the nineteenth century,
southeast Virginia, like much of the region, experienced an economic depression
that drove down the prices for cotton and other commodities, as well as the
price for slaves. This region of Virginia trafficked enslaved people to much of
the South, so when the depression slowed down this trafficking, the black
population in the area rose.
As census data shows, from 1800 to 1830, the white
population in Southeast Virginia rose marginally, but the black population rose
to a far more significant degree. The area’s population, therefore, was
influenced by the movement and circulation of people, and also of ideas. Cedric
Robinson writes that “in the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth century, Franco-Haitian slave owners fled to
Louisiana, Virginia, and the Carolinas with as many slaves as they could
transport, thereby also transporting the Haitian Revolution.” It was a
dangerous mix: anxiety
over the economy, a growing black population, and reports of slave rebellion
throughout the South, the Caribbean, and Latin America combined to make the
life of a slave, which was brutal to begin with, even worse.
Nat Turner’s body
bore the marks of what this life must have been: descriptions of him state that
he had scars on one of his temples and the back of his neck, as well as a large
knot on the bone above his right wrist, the result, most likely, of that bone
breaking and then healing without having been set properly.
Such repression breeds resistance, and a growing
black population in proximity to a population of whites growing increasingly
frustrated yet comparatively smaller provides a good explanation of why such a
rebellion occurred where and when it did. Turner and his peers must have
noticed this shifting terrain, and sensed an opening. There may have also been
a more immediate effect of the economic situation: indebted enslavers tended to
talk about selling slaves, an act that always split families and laid bare the
cruel characteristics of the slavocracy’s racial capitalism; predicting the
impending sale may have prompted the plotters to carry out plans that had been
long in the making.
One is tempted to speculate about what success may
have meant in practical terms to Turner and his peers. The most likely goal
seems to have been a life of marronage in the Dismal Swamp, about forty miles
from Jerusalem, now Cortland, where the rebellion started. One could also take
the so-called Confessions of Nat Turner literally on this point, and
believe that the rebellion’s goal was to spread fear throughout the region. At
minimum, it needs to be recognized that given the right set of circumstances,
rebelling against an unjust system is itself an endeavor worth undertaking.
This is not a blind lashing out, but rather merely to suggest that there are
times when passive resistance becomes insufficient or intolerable and active
resistance seems to be the only logical option, regardless of the consequences
which may follow. In any case, the Southampton Rebellion is another piece of
evidence to support C. L. R. James’ comment that enslaved people rebel because
they want to be free, and that this is a fact that no ruling class wants to
admit.
It is reasonable to expect that the men and women
who participated in the Southampton Rebellion had diverse ideas about what
liberty meant to them, varying opinions of what the outcome of their rebellion
might be, and various suggestions about the most effective tactics. Some may have fought out of
rage, some to repay particular grievances, some because they thought the
rebellion was a path to freedom for themselves or for their families.
Some participants may have acted out of an altruism that hoped
that their rebellion would be a step towards universal emancipation. Yet the
people who chose to participate found ways to cooperate even in the face of
great difficulties, and they struck a blow that left a lasting mark on the
slavocracy. They did not need to define liberty in exactly the same way; what
they needed was to find ways to cooperate in order to make an effective
challenge to the systematized injustices they faced. The participants in the
Southampton Rebellion were successful in forging that cooperation, and that
fact deserves recognition.
....
Scott Henkel is assistant professor of English and African American and Diaspora Studies at the University of Wyoming, specializing in the literature of labor and slavery, democratic political movements, critical theory, free speech and censorship, and complex systems. His research has appeared in the journals Walt Whitman Quarterly Review and Workplace: a Journal of American Labor as well as the edited volumes Problems of Democracy: Language and Speaking and The Grapes of Wrath: A Reconsideration.
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