Nat Turner Book Summary

Stephen Oates, in a creative and interesting way, brings us an accurate portrayal of an extraordinary fictional character, in a very real and extraordinary time in our country’s history.
Oates begins the book with a thorough biography of his main character, Nat Turner. Nat was born in October of 1800 in Southampton County, Virginia. His mother Nancy was brought to America for a man named Benjamin Turner, a wealthy tidewater planter in 1795. Because she knew how hard the life of a black man was in these days, Nat’s mother actually tried to kill him in order to keep him from living a long, hard life. He was able to recollect memories and moments of times that occurred before he was even born. His unique and almost magical intelligence earned the respect of other slaves as well. At one point, after being given a book, it was realized that Nat was able to read without having anyone ever teach him how.
In a span of about a year, Nat had drastic changes in his life. First, in 1809, Nat’s father became free of slavery, fled the plantation where he had
From the way Oates described the characters, they all seemed to be pretty diverse with one common factor: a hatred for white people and slavery. The group came up with a plan to wake that night and kill any and every white person they could find. In August 1861, thirty years after the uprising and in the heat of the Civil War, The Atlantic published the following detailed account of Nat Turner's slave rebellion which included the following statement about that Sunday afternoon: “Two things were at last decided: to begin their work that night, and to begin it with a massacre so swift and irresistible as to create in a few days more terror than many battles, and so spare the need of future bloodshed ...”( Higginson) Nat didn’t exactly have a set plan, instead he believed that God would lead Nat to where he needed to