Tony,

The charge is to show why students are expected to learn about Nat Turner, 
not just any ole person who objected to slavery. I have several of those 
already on my website - rather much on Harriet Tubman and a good amount on 
Frederick Douglass and J. J. Robert. It's not as if Nat Turner is the first 
attempt to show the other side of the slavery issue.

My understanding is that some of the nothern colonies accepted slavery in 
the constitution only under the threat of not having any constitution at 
all, and having the colonies fall into disarray. By enacting the 3/5 
compromise the south further solidified their hand over the throat of 
Congress for many years to come.

Tony, It makes no difference if you blame the state governments for 
compensating the slaveowners for their executed slaves. For the most part 
the slaveowners were those who voted those government into power. As shown 
with the 3/5 compromise, the southern slaveholders also had a 
larger-than-they-should-have stake in the law enacted by the federal 
government. So it is hardly surprising that the "governments" backed those 
inhuman laws. The shame was that people of conscience, often called 
abolitioners, were required to break the law in order to follow their 
conscience.

Tony, I do not think that Nat Turner's crime amounted to "genocide". We 
usually apply that term to far greater numbers of dead of a given category. 
It was his intention to reach the armory in Jeruselem to arm his then-army, 
and after that point they would kill only men, not women and children. So, 
it would seem that not even his plan was genocidic. He started out that way 
in order to strike fear into the hard hearts of those who thought they could 
own human beings. He started out that way to show that human beings could 
strike back in spite of beatings, picklings, mutilations, and other means of 
coercion.

J. South, I think it would be best for you to put OJ Simpson in the same 
category as Thomas Jefferson. We will perhaps never know for sure if he did 
it or not. The evidence was all circumstantial and the jury did not buy it. 
Some of us buy into the circumstantial evidence for Thomas Jefferson, some 
soundly and noisily oppose even the consideration of it.

Let's try to view Nat Turner in a civilized manner. He was an otherwise good 
man who cracked under the strain of being sold to a third master. That man 
did not abuse him, but he used him as a slave instead of as an intelligent 
human being. How long could any of us stand to be bought and sold and used 
"kindly" as if we had no intellect before we would snap and do something 
uncharacteristic?

Anne

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

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