Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce

Rebellion

In Stephen B. Oates's The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion, Nat Turner was the Black American slave who led the only useful, unrelenting slave rebellion (August 1831) in U.S. history. Spreading terror throughout the white South, his action set off a new wave of oppressive legislation prohibiting the education, movement, and assembly of slaves and stiffened proslavery, anti-abolitionist convictions that persisted in that region until the American Civil War.

His mother was an African native who pass on an ardent hatred of slavery to her son. He learned to read from one of his master's sons, and he enthusiastically absorbed severe religious training. In the early 1820s, he was sold to a neighboring plantation. During the following decade, his religious zeal tended to came close to fanaticism, and he saw himself called upon by God to lead his people out of...
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