Description
"God's Own Vengeance" retells the story of Nat Turner and the revolt he led not so much as a tale of villiany as William Styron did or as a fable of freedom as did Stephen Oates, but rather as a narrative of a gifted but otherwise ordinary slave backed into the same corner as millions of other black people in America before the Civil War. The emphasis here is on the Southampton revolt as a particularly violent and large scale manifestation of the broader struggle between masters and slaves that was fought out everywhere in the South during the 1830s. Particular attention is paid to the religious context of Turner's thoughts and actions, placing each in the context of a widespread millennialist movement in America among both both blacks and whites, and subsequent prophetic traditions specific to eastern Virginia and North Carolina. It also compares the Southampton insurrection to slave revolts and other attacks on slavery and slaveowners in the 1830s in both the South and the Caribbean.
