Nat Turner (1800-1831) was an enslaved American preacher and carpenter who led a rebellion of enslaved and free Black people in Southampton County, Virginia, in August 1831. Believing himself divinely chosen to lead his people out of bondage, he organized a small group that killed dozens of white residents over roughly two days before being suppressed by state and local militia; Turner himself evaded capture for over two months before being caught, tried and executed. The rebellion, one of the largest and most violent slave uprisings in United States history, provoked a wave of harsh new restrictions on both enslaved and free Black people across the South and intensified national conflict over slavery in the decades before the Civil War.
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