The Confessions of Nat Turner 1831

Abstract

In late 1831 Thomas Ruffi n Gray published The Confessions of Nat Turner, the Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southampton, Va. Gray was the court-appointed attorney who represented Nat Turner, the leader of a bloody slave revolt in the summer of that year, in his subsequent legal defense. The pamphlet was based on Gray’s own investigations after the revolt and on the interview he conducted with Turner after his arrest in October 1831, and most of the pamphlet purportedly consists of Turner’s own words. Gray’s pamphlet is the principal surviving document about the revolt and is a primary source of information about Turner’s motivations for and activities in launching the revolt. Gray’s contemporary account is not to be confused with the Pulitzer Prize– winning novel of the same (shortened) title, The Confessions of Nat Turner, published by William Styron in 1967.

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