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PDFSharon Ewell Foster of The Root writes about her discovery after a five-year research effort to locate the 1831 Virginia trial transcripts of Turner’s trial (precipitated by the Turner Slave Revolt): Nat Turner did not plead guilty and, moreover, Thomas Gray, who wrote “The Confessions of Nat Turner,” was not Turner’s attorney. “The Confessions of Nat Turner” has been the primary historical source document on the slave uprising on Aug. 22, 1831 that left more than 50 whites dead.
Southerners reacted with fear and anger [to the Turner Revolt]. It is estimated that hundreds of slaves and freemen were murdered by whites in the wake of the uprising. The severed heads of some were placed on poles as a warning. (The place of the impalement still bears the name Blackhead Signpost Road.)
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What I found puts everything we believe about Nat Turner and what happened in the uprising in question. It appears that sometimes history is fiction, and there is more truth in novels. We have been misled by a 180-year-old lie. This is an American story. It is time the truth was told.
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