Nat Turner’s rebellion killed fifty-seven enslavers across twenty miles before suppression

Evidence

After two days, seventy Black soldiers had killed at least fifty-seven enslavers across a twenty-mile path of destruction before the rebellion was put down. Panic spread as newspapers everywhere blared the gory details of the “Southampton Tragedy.” Before his hanging, Turner shared his liberation theology with a local lawyer named Thomas Gray. “I heard a loud noise in the heavens, and the Spirit instantly appeared to me and said the Serpent was loosened, and Christ had laid down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and that I should take it on and fight against the Serpent, for the time was fast approaching, when the first should be the last and the last should be the first.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 458

Categorization

• FICTION: Turner’s liberation theology — the serpent loosened, Christ laying down the yoke, calling the last to be first — is a ready-made narrative core for a scene or story about revolutionary religious conviction.