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Nat Turner: A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory. Edited by Kenneth S. Greenberg. (New York and other cities: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. [XX], 289. $35.00, ISBN 0-19-513404-4.)
We know less about Nat Turner, who led one of the most ferocious slave revolts in the nation's history, than perhaps any other pivotal American historical figure. After a century and a half of sustained interest, most of the scattered details known about Turner's failed 1831 uprising in Southampton County, Virginia, are drawn from brief accounts written and published by whites soon thereafter. Yet the magnitude of Turner's rebellion and the incompleteness of its historical record have given rise to multiple, often profoundly different perspectives about the events of 1831. These essays, woven together by Kenneth S. Greenberg, succeed marvelously at revealing the enduring cultural significance of the debates over the meaning of Nat Turner's violent dissent.
Nat Turner pulls together a variety of materials: previously published excerpts, freshly minted essays, and interviews with William Styron and Alvin F. Poussaint. Despite the inevitable repetition of accounts of Turner's rebellion, the collection works well; indeed, the differing emphases placed on the same small set of historical "facts" are fascinating. Greenberg deftly organizes the essays so that the reader is first introduced to Turner, then to the foundational text for all accounts of Turner's rebellion, Thomas R. Gray's Confessions of Nat Turner, and only then to the events of the revolt. Subsequent essays place Turner's revolt in the...