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A bold reinterpretation of the causes and legacy of Nat Turner's rebellion―and the new definitive account.
In August 1831, a group of enslaved people in Southampton County, Virginia, rose up to fight for their freedom. They attacked the plantations on which their enslavers lived and attempted to march on the county seat of Jerusalem, from which they planned to launch an uprising across the South. After the rebellion was suppressed, well over a hundred people, Black and white, lay dead or were hanged. As news of the revolt spread, it became apparent that it was the idea of a single man: Nat Turner. An enslaved preacher, he was as enigmatic as he was brilliant. He was also something more―a prophet, one who claimed to have received visions from the Spirit urging him to act.
Nat Turner, Black Prophet is the fullest recounting to date of Turner's uprising, and the first that refuses to tame or overlook his divine visions. Instead, it takes those visions seriously, tracing their emergence from the world of nineteenth-century Methodism, with its revivals, camp meetings, interracial churches, and Black preachers. The rebellion and its aftermath would hasten the end of this world, as Southern states further restricted the personal freedoms of the enslaved, even as the ongoing threat of revolt shaped the country's politics. With this work of narrative history, the late historian Anthony E. Kaye and his collaborator Gregory P. Downs have given us a new understanding of one of the nineteenth century's most decisive events.
"[A] remarkable book ... The authors provide exceptionally informed and persuasive commentary ... Though rigorously detailed and thorough in its explication of social and religious history, the narrative grippingly leads us through Turner's spiritual evolution and the chaotic results of his rebellion ... Startlingly vivid ... Profoundly insightful." ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[Nat Turner, Black Prophet] blends scholarship and vivid narrative ... Methodically researched and richly informative ... The book's second phase presents a striking panorama of the revolt perhaps because Downs, an accomplished literary artist and a historian at the University of California-Davis, enlivens the testimonials about the attack." ―The Boston Globe
"A masterwork of historical research, thinking, and writing, Nat Turner, Black Prophet is a remarkable and compelling effort to deepen our understanding of one of America's most important and enigmatic figures―one that places Nat Turner's prophetic vision at the center of this story. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the complex currents of American slavery and the nineteenth century more broadly―a stunning achievement for Anthony Kaye and Gregory Downs alike." ―Steven Hahn, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Nation Under Our Feet and Illiberal America
"With crisp and energetic prose, Anthony E. Kaye and Gregory P. Downs reveal how the greatest slave revolt in American history was wrought of divine inspiration and pursued with Biblical violence. Far from modern sensibilities of either time or justice, Nat Turner's famous rebellion rose from ancient ideas of prophecy. A marvelous excavation, this book will long stand as an outstanding exercise in the capturing of a historical consciousness." ―Jefferson Cowie, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power
"In this brilliant work, Anthony E. Kaye and Gregory P. Downs offer a dazzling religious and intellectual history that takes seriously the mind of Nat Turner, one that is unlike anything written before. More than a reassessment of America's most famous slave revolt, it is a groundbreaking examination of the inner lives of enslaved people via the religious journey of a gifted but captive man who was no less rational than any of the world's great freedom fighters." ―William Sturkey, associate professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania and author of The Ballad of Roy Benavidez
Anthony E. Kaye (1962–2017) taught history at Pennsylvania State University and was the vice president of scholarly programs at the National Humanities Center. An influential scholar of Atlantic slavery and American history, he served as an associate editor of The Journal of the Civil War Era. His final book, Nat Turner, Black Prophet, was completed with the assistance of Gregory P. Downs, a professor of history at the University of California, Davis.
Gregory P. Downs is a professor of history at the University of California, Davis. Downs is the author of After Appomattox as well as other scholarly books, and his writing has appeared in The Atlantic and The Washington Post. He received an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and is also the author of Spit Baths, which won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction.
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