As I make my way throught the heavy tome of "Slavery Counterpoint", I am 
realizing that self-emancipation began early in the history of slavery and 
continued through the decades and even in the post-war era of Jim Crow. In 
the lowcountry, where there were considerable fewer whites overseeing the 
labor of the slaves, a measure of when work was deemed excessive by the 
slave laborers was the counted in the number who ran away during those 
seasons of excessive work. This was less apparent in Virginia/Maryland where 
the percentage of whites in relation to blacks was greater.

In learning about Nat Turner, I took note (but did not include) of the 
reasons why Nat would have been more inclined to look for freedom. First, 
his mother was imported from Africa and therefore had experienced a life of 
freedom before enslavement, and his father, had escaped from slavery perhaps 
to the swamps where runaways formed a community referred to a "Maroons".

I would like to draw some parallels between the actions of Nat Turner 
towards the ending of slavery to the acts of the "patriots" in ending 
British rule. It seems that most of the "patriots" acting withing the usual 
rules, and soldiers battled soldiers rather than indescriminately killing 
"sympathizers", yet there is something in the back of my mind that remembers 
that there were instances of personal attacks that made the "tories" fear 
for their lives and high-tail it back to England.

Can anyone shed light on this?

Anne

Anne Pemberton
[log in to unmask]
http://www.erols.com/apembert
http://www.educationalsynthesis.org 

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