In the early years of the 19th century, some Southern planters took pains to treat their slaves well, as healthy slaves were more likely to work efficiently and reproduce. Slaveholders contended that the master-slave relationship was a mutually beneficial one.
But periodic slave uprisings gave the lie to such a notion. The most notorious uprising took place in the summer of 1831, when a Virginia slave named Nat Turner led a rampage that left more than 50 whites dead. Whites retaliated by murdering more than 100 blacks, slave and free alike; imposing new restrictions throughout the South; and seizing and destroying Northern abolitionist literature.
In 1861, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, an abolitionist, minister, and frequent Atlantic contributor (and sometime assistant editor), drew on newspaper reports, Turner’s published confession, and accounts by witnesses to chronicle Turner’s insurrection. The following year, Higginson would become colonel of the Union’s first black regiment, the First South Carolina Volunteers (an experience he also wrote about; see “Leaves From an Officer’s Journal”).
A pair of former slaves, photographed after their escape. Across the South, in the years leading up to the war, the thought of slave uprisings struck fear in the hearts of slave-owners. (Corbis)
