The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion

The result of this dual treat of religiosity, which was aggravated by occasional incursions of anti thralldom preaching from northern fresh churchmen, came down to a war of devotion that was manifest as a hard worker revolt.

The religious-war theme that Oates develops can be seen in the way that he organizes the text. The book is divided into chapters that are highborn with religious themes. The first chapter, which sets the scene of action, is named "This Infernal looking at of Slavery." That phrase is taken from an account of an itinerant Methodist anti bondage preacher named Francis Asbury who, as early as the 1780s, in the formative historic period of the republic, wanted to "banish the infernal spirit of slavery from thy darling Zion" (9), with Zion in context referring to the new nation. The second chapter's title, "Go expire the Jubilee," is from a poem titled "African Hymn," which calls on the master copy to break slavery's power and which exhorts slaves who "weep and groan" to "sound the Jubilee" (Oates 57). The title of the third chapter, "Day of Judgment," is religiously self-explanatory, in that it describes the progress of the attain spree undertaken

Even in the early period of the American republic the lines of contentious slavery discourse had been drawn, with slavery-friendly grand juries accusing foes of slavery such as the Quakers of "agitating" unrest in the slaves and the Quakers responding "that it was not their pronouncements but the slave system itself that caused Negro unrest" (9). The basis for opposition to slavery came from certain religious quarters, and it was articulated in religious terms. Meanwhile, in this context, there was the maturing figure of Nat turner, referred to as the "smart nigger" of Southampton, Virginia. His disposition appears to have been distinctive in various ways. As Oates explains, Turner was "generally regarded him with mixture of disdain, curiosity, indulgence, humor, and even a little respect. They allow him have a last name" (Oates 52).

That is important because slaves any had no last name or were given the appellation of their masters.

The religious foundation of Turner's revolt cannot be overstated, let alone(predicate) overlooked, and Oates's abundant citation of documents to support the idea that religion covey partisans as well as opponents of slavery is persuasive. It is therefore unmated that the book does not expand on the universal implication of that fact, by observing as a conclusion what seems sanely obvious from the evidence of the text: that religiously based conflicts are particularly violent and ugly and that Nat Turner's rebellion can be considered as part of a pattern of cruelty and ending that has dominated the interplay of culture, politics, and religion. Yes, it is true that the racial hatred implicit in slavery, which survives to some extent today in race preconceived notion and discrimination, is very important to the history of American slavery. But it would be a mistake to dismiss the important role of religion in shaping American political and social history. to a greater extent generally, history is even more full of examples of religious ardor that gets transformed into
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