Students will learn through intriguing hands-on documents — governor’s handwritten proclamation, court and sheriff’s papers, replica of receipt for capture of Turner, and early illustrations — about Nat Turner and band of fellow blacks’ rebellion and their slaughter of slaveholders, capture, trial and hanging. Importantly, this Jackdaw sets the stage for the uprising by depicting the conditions of life for slave and slaveholder, and follows it through the capture and trials of the conspirators. It places in perspective the effects of the insurrection on the relationships of black and white for the years that followed. Historian: Henry Irving Tragle. The contents of this Jackdaw feature:

• Locale: Southampton County, Va., 1831
• Death and Destruction: August 21-23, 183
• The Reaction
• The Trials: August to November 1831
• Aftermath: Effects of the Insurrection

• Contemporary print — “Nat Turner and his confederates.”
• Entry in journal of the Virginia Governor’s Council for August 1831.
• Contemporary print — “Horrid Massacre in Virginia”.
• List of the white persons who lost their lives in the insurrection.
• Copy of Governor John Floyd’s proclamation of a reward for the capture of Nat Turner, 17 September 1831.
• Copy of the receipt given to the captor of Nat Turner.
• Cover of “The Confessions of Nat Turner” to T. R. Gray, Nov. 1831.
• Copy of the record of the trial of Nat Turner, 5 Nov. 1831.
• List of persons brought before the Southampton County Court charged with participation in the insurrection.
• Certificate made by the Deputy Sheriff of Southampton County Court stating that he had executed Nat Turner.
• Governor Floyd to the Virginia General Assembly, Dec. 1831.
• Draft of a bill by the Governor to the General Assembly designed to effect stricter controls over “slaves, free negroes and mulattoes”.