As an exemplar of slave resistance, Turner posed difficulties for an antislavery movement that was in its earliest stages of organization and was, therefore, reluctant to endorse violence of any sort-least of all the seemingly indiscriminate, purposeless, and anti-family violence in which Turner and his men were alleged to have engaged. Reese in her bed, while sleeping," Turner explains "her son awoke, but it was only to sleep the sleep of death, he had only time to say who is that, and he was no more."2 The question of authorship with regard to The Confessions -an ostensible "as told to" prison confession that is peppered with often unmarked interjections by interviewer/editor Thomas Gray himself-is an admittedly complex one: to what extent does the narrative remain under Gray's control, and where does Turner emerge from his interlocutor's frame to tell his own story? But regardless of whether one reads The Confessions as belonging primarily to Gray or to Turner, it is hard to miss its emphasis on Turner's savagery, linked insistently to Turner's desire to penetrate, and destroy, the spiritual heart of antebellum white civilization: the family. viewed the mangled bodies as they lay, in silent satisfaction, and immediately started in quest of other victims") and the group's slaughter of even the most seemingly innocent whites: we "murdered Mrs. After describing the Turner band's initial "work of death"- the "murder of family, five in number," including a "little infant sleeping in a cradle"-the text follows the slave rebels as they march from house to house, felling men, women, and children with axes, swords, guns, and clubs.1 The text documents the pleasure Turner takes in the group's often prolonged acts of murder ("I. WRITING REVOLT IN THE WAKE OF NAT TURNER: FREDERICK DOUGLASS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF BLACK DOMESTICITY IN "THE HEROIC SLAVE" Ellen Weinauer University of Southern Mississippi One of the most striking aspects of the 1831 Confessions of Nat Turner is the text's sensationalized depiction of the annihilation of family. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
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