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By Sean Yoes
AFRO Baltimore Editor
[email protected]

On Aug. 13, 1831, either an eclipse or an atmospheric disturbance altered the appearance of the sun, an event that was the final celestial sign Nat Turner, the rebel slave and prophet had been waiting for.

Approximately a week later, in the early hours of Aug. 22, Turner, along with six of his men launched the deadliest slave revolt in American history, in Southampton County, Va.

Initially, Turner and his small band of rebels emerged from nearby woods, marched to the household of Joseph Travis (where Turner had been moved to allegedly in 1830), and methodically slaughtered the entire Travis family as they slept, using hatchets, axes, knives and blunt instruments.

This iconic image depicts the capture of the rebel slave Nat Turner on Oct. 30, 1831, in Jerusalem, Va. However, before his capture Turner led the slave revolt that killed at least 55 White men, women and children. Turner’s Revolt sent torrents of fear throughout the South, especially in neighboring Maryland and triggered a series of draconian laws inflicted upon Black communities, including efforts to disfranchise Black men and send free Blacks and formerly enslaved Blacks back to Africa. (Courtesy Image)

By midday on Aug. 22, the group of rebel slaves had burgeoned to more than 40 men, many on horseback, and moved from house to house killing all the White people — men, women and children — they encountered. By, this time Turner and his soldiers decided to march to the nearby town of Jerusalem to continue their onslaught. But, word of the rebellion had gotten to the Whites of Southampton and they quickly organized militias to stop Turner and his men. Once confronted by a militia group, the rebels scattered and became disorganized and subsequently, several of them were captured even as they attempted to attack another house.

A final battle between the remaining rebel slaves and state and federal troops, ended with the death of one of the slaves, but many, including Turner escaped. Ultimately, the rebels had slaughtered at least 55 Whites and Turner eluded capture until Oct. 30.

The official record indicates Turner was tried on Nov. 5, and sentenced to be executed, and on Nov. 11, he was hanged and skinned. However, legend has it, the Whites of Southampton convinced of Turner’s “supranatural powers,” hacked his body into pieces after he was hanged and buried them in disparate locations to prevent his resurrection.

In the aftermath of Turner’s Uprising, the government executed 55 people, banished many, and acquitted some. However, fueled by sheer panic and bloodlust, White mobs also murdered about 200 Black people, many of which had nothing to do with the rebellion.

News of the slave revolt swept across Virginia and Whites awash with fear imposed additional, repressive, restrictions upon the Black population, slave and free.

But, the deepening oppression of Black people did not end at the Virginia border; the repercussions of the Turner Revolt were felt powerfully throughout the rest of the South, and very much in neighboring Maryland. 

White slaveholders in Maryland, fearful they could be cursed with the bloody fate handed down to their Southampton brethren, quickly began to push for legislation to severely restrict all Blacks, free and slave. 

In December of 1831, the Maryland Legislature appropriated $10,000 per year over the course of 26 years to transport free Blacks and formerly enslaved Blacks to Africa to begin the process of African colonization. A few years earlier in 1827, the Maryland State Colonization Society (similar to the national American Colonization Society, which was founded in Washington, D.C. in 1816) was founded.

The groups behind the back to Africa movement were divergent, yet most were united in their belief in the inherent inferiority of the Black race. Perhaps, many Abolitionists believed their motivations to be benevolent; they argued they wanted what was best for Black people. “The Object of colonization is to prepare a home in Africa for the free colored people of the State…The colored man must look to Africa, as his only hope of preservation and of happiness,” wrote Richard Sprigg Steuart in 1845. Steuart was part of a family of wealthy slaveholders and a member of the Maryland State Colonization Society.

Yet, many of the state’s slaveholders were driven by visceral fear. They not only feared their property may follow Turner’s violent example, but perhaps more than that, they loathed their slaves’ aspirations embodied in Baltimore’s burgeoning population of free Black men and women. 

In Maryland, by the 1830’s, many Black communities of the state thrived; groups had begun to organize and build institutions including schools and churches. Baltimore, with the largest free Black community in the country in the years leading up to the Civil War, was emerging as, “the nation’s 19th century Black Capital.”

But, by the 1850’s, the state had attempted new legislative measures to not only quell the aspirational community, but to put them back in bondage. A pro re-enslavement movement led by Curtis Jacobs, a state legislator who owned 38 slaves on the Eastern Shore imperiled the lives and freedom of Baltimore’s free Black population. However, the community mobilized its incipient infrastructure, by delivering speeches, crafting petitions, praying and engaging in political activism, among other tactics. Jacobs’ bill was ultimately defeated by a margin of three to one.

Black Baltimore would continue to wield its widening power and influence even as the country moved towards the ratification of the 15th Amendment.

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