The Impact of Nat Turner's Rebellion: Abolitionist Response

Though many white southerners were horrified by the rebellion and condemned Turner, many abolitionists viewed it differently. Two important abolitionist proponents of Nat Turner’s rebellion were Thomas Wentworth Higginson, an American Unitarian Minister, and William Lloyd Garrison, the editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator. Higginson’s 1961 essay on Turner presented a humanized view of Turner. Higginson portrayed Turner as an oppressed man who had justifiably risen up against his oppressors, a martyr “who knew no book but his Bible, and that by heart; who devoted himself soul and body to the cause of his race”. Higginson also used the rebellion to call attention to the broader issue of slavery reminding people that “in shuddering at the horrors of the insurrection, we have forgotten the far greater horrors of its suppression”. In September 1831 Garrison published an article entitled “The Insurrection” proclaiming Nat Turner’s revolution as “the first step of the earthquake, which is ultimately to shake down the fabric of oppression”. Garrison also used the rebellion to highlight the issue of slavery and pushed for immediate emancipation, claiming that the blood of the rebellion was on all American hands as long as slavery persisted. 

William Lloyd Garrison, American abolitionist and Unitarian Minister.
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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, American abolitionist, author and newspaper editor. 
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