Letters from an American

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August 21, 2022

heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

August 21, 2022

Heather Cox Richardson
Aug 22, 2022
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August 21, 2022

heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

On August 21, 1831, enslaved American Nat Turner led about 70 of his enslaved and free Black neighbors in a rebellion to awaken his white neighbors to the inherent brutality of slaveholding and the dangers it presented to their own safety. Turner and his friends traveled from house to house in their neighborhood in Southampton County, Virginia, freeing enslaved people and murdering about 60 of the white men, women, and children they encountered. Their goal, Turner later told an interviewer, was “to carry terror and devastation wherever we went.”

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