In 1831 Virginia, Nat Turner led a band of Southampton County slaves in a rebellion that killed fifty-five whites, mostly women and children. After more than two months in hiding, Turner was captured, and quickly convicted and executed. In the Matter of Nat Turner penetrates the historical caricature of Turner as befuddled mystic and self-styled Baptist preacher to recover the haunting persona of this legendary American slave rebel, telling of his self-discovery and the dawning of his Christian faith, of an impossible task given to him by God, and of redemptive violence and profane retribution.
Much about Turner remains unknown. His extraordinary account of his life and rebellion, given in chains as he awaited trial in jail, was written down by an opportunistic white attorney and sold as a pamphlet to cash in on Turner’s notoriety. But the enigmatic rebel leader had an immediate and broad impact on the American South, and his rebellion remains one of the most momentous episodes in American history. Christopher Tomlins provides a luminous account of Turner’s intellectual development, religious cosmology, and motivations, and offers an original and incisive analysis of the Turner Rebellion itself and its impact on Virginia politics. Tomlins also undertakes a deeply critical examination of William Styron’s 1967 novel, The Confessions of Nat Turner, which restored Turner to the American consciousness in the era of civil rights, black power, and urban riots.
A speculative history that recovers Turner from the few shards of evidence we have about his life, In the Matter of Nat Turner is also a unique speculation about the meaning and uses of history itself.
Awards and Recognition
- Winner of the Francis Parkman Prize, Society of American Historians
- Winner of the Richard Slatten Award for Excellence in Virginia Biography, Virginia Museum of History & Culture (Virginia Historical Society)
"[An] expertly constructed work, one of the handful of books on Turner destined to become essential reading for understanding the events of August 1831."—Douglas R. Egerton Le Moyne, American Historical Review
"[In the Matter of Nat Turner] succeeds in challenging established assumptions about Turner’s intellectual world, and it is likely that, with its publication, historians will be much more inclined to pay more attention to the importance of religion in Turner’s rebellion."—Enrico Dal Iago, Journal of American History
"A major achievement. Tomlins is a brilliant historian, and his study is full of many new insights that make significant contributions to our understanding. Most importantly, Tomlins is one of the only historians to pay careful attention to the mind of the rebel leader. . . . Tomlins has given us a well-researched, always interesting and intellectually stimulating new book on Nat Turner. We should be deeply grateful for this extraordinary, sparkling work of history."—Kenneth S. Greenberg, Journal of the Early Republic
"You can peel off layers, break off pieces and grab chunks out of In the Matter of Nat Turner, A Speculative History by Christopher Tomlins and have what I call a good book chew. Indigestion only comes because it makes you think about what you’re chewing."—Arelya J. Mitchell, The Mid-South Tribune
"In the Matter of Nat Turner offers a new reading of the well-known and much written-about document purporting to record the confession of the leader of an 1831 slave rebellion in Virginia, set in the context of a thick reconstruction of the local legal and political debates about slavery and representation. Christopher Tomlins makes the argument that previous interpreters have failed to take Turner seriously as a religious thinker, reducing his visionary religious narrative to nothing more than a cover for his political objectives. . . . In the Matter of Nat Turner is a very ambitious and complex book."—Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, Journal of the American Academy of Religion
"An ambitious and deeply researched intellectual achievement…In the Matter of Nat Turner stands as an exemplar and benchmark of both the depth and imagination with which we ought to engage Nat Turner and the perils imposing our own facticity upon him in the process."—M. Cooper Harriss, Religious Studies Review
"[In the Matter of Nat Turner] is a book about the Nat Turner revolt as much as it is about the craft of writing history. By framing his arguments in Benjaminian terms, Tomlins succeeds in addressing questions of subaltern voices, archival silences and the limits of historical narrative . . . Tomlins makes a compelling case."—Sebastian Jobs, Annual Bulletin of Historical Literature
"[A] remarkably interesting book…[In the Matter of Nat Turner is] endlessly fascinating . . . [Chris Tomlins] takes us on an illuminated mystery tour of this most mysterious of events and much else besides. . . . Enriching."—Paul Harvey, Church History
"In the Matter of Nat Turner is a tour de force. . . . Tomlins’s book shows how historical speculation and conjecture can be done in a way that is nonetheless solidly grounded in biblical, philosophical, anthropological, and historical context."—Angela Fernandez, Legal History
"For those looking for a provocative set of speculations about Turner’s religiosity, [In the Matter of Nat Turner] provides much about which to think and argue."—Vanessa M. Holden, Journal of Social History
"[A] profound new book…In the Matter of Nat Turner is a book teeming with insight. Tomlins’ provocative analysis of Turner’s own ideas will no doubt generate fruitful debate and have to be reckoned with by scholars in a variety of fields. But beyond that, Tomlins provides us with a powerful model for how to write history that both links individual biography with broader structural analysis and that centers the perspective of those long excluded."—Aziz Rana, Legal Form
"Christopher Tomlins’ In the Matter of Nat Turner offers new insights into the thinking of Nat Turner and then employs those insights to meditate upon the discipline of history itself. Through his searching study of the actors and events of 1831, Tomlins interrogates contemporary historians’ own thinking and practice, their blind spots and erasures, their commitment to a disciplinary machine that yields often crushingly familiar answers. For these reasons, In the Matter of Nat Turner deserves a readership not only among historians of the antebellum South, but also among all interested in history as a modern knowledge form."—Kunal Parker, Radical Philosophy
"An important, 'speculative' work of intellectual history for all academic collections."—Choice Reviews
"This book is not only tremendously enjoyable, but also a very useful addition to the field of slavery and the history of resistance and rebellion in the Americas."—Laura Sandy, Slavery and Abolition
"In the Matter of Nat Turner provides a master class in what it means to explore the unwritten, to engage with the fragmentary, and to expand the potentialities of historical research."—Honor Sachs, Law and History Review
"[A] brilliant and challenging book. . . . Tomlins crafts a new major interpretation in this ‘intellectual history of Nat Turner,’ centered on a compelling account of Turner’s faith and its collision with the emerging political and economic order of antebellum Virginia. . . . A richly rewarding book."—Randolph Scully, Journal of Southern History
"A skillful reading and imagining of the sources . . . [and] a compelling retelling of Nat Turnerʼs life, beliefs, and intellect as well as the political significance of his rebellion."—Tamika Nunley, William & Mary Quarterly
"Tomlins has succeeded in writing a distinctive sort of intellectual history. . . . In the Matter of Nat Turner offers much more than a new analysis of Turner’s Confessions."—Bradford J. Wood, North Carolina Historical Review
"An incredibly complex, erudite, and thought provoking book."—Bruce E. Baker, Journal of Religious History
"Intelligent, important, and timely."—Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
"Tomlins has applied the research rigor, creative methods, and astute analysis required to discern the broad import of Nat Turner's rebellion and the particular linkage of religion and politics. The result is a lucid and compelling account that unleashes for readers the historical and theoretical significance of Turner for the contemporary study of American religion, race, and social power."—Sylvester A. Johnson, author of African American Religions, 1500–2000: Colonialism, Democracy, and Freedom
"A fascinating and original work of historical interrogation, In the Matter of Nat Turner is a mélange of philosophy, literary analysis, theology, forensics, and speculative imagination that opens up new vistas of space and time existing beyond the pale of Western law and logic. By penetrating and dismantling the narratives that have made the most consequential antebellum slave rebellion 'legible,' Christopher Tomlins brings fresh insights into Turner's rebellion, reveals what our standard heroic stories obscure, and challenges historians everywhere to plumb depths to which few scholars have dared to go."—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original
"The sharpest and most insightful interpretation of Nat Turner's rebellion in the scholarly literature. Tomlins's wonderful and important book makes a fundamental contribution to our understanding of one of the canonical events in American and African American history."—James Sidbury, author of Becoming African in America: Race and Nation in the Early Black Atlantic
"With skill and erudition, Christopher Tomlins takes apart Nat Turner's image as a bugbear of popular white imagination and renders an elegiac historical meditation on the enslaved prophet and his crusade. This brilliant book unpacks the legal, political, philosophical, religious, and historical significance of Turner's rebellion like no other."—Manisha Sinha, author of The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition
