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Nat Turner (October 2, 1800 – November 11, 1831) was a United States slave whose failed slave rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia, was the most remarkable instance of black resistance to enslavement in the antebellum Southern United States and has become a reference of justification for the American Civil War.

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Turner was born in Southampton County, Virginia. He grew up deeply religious and was often seen fasting and praying. He frequently received visions which he interpreted as being messages from God. These greatly influenced his life. For example, when Turner was 21 years old he ran away from his master, but returned a month later after receiving a vision. He became known among fellow slaves as "The Prophet."

On February 12, 1831, an annular solar eclipse was seen in Virginia. Turner took this to mean that he should begin preparing for a rebellion. The rebellion was initially planned for July 4, Independence Day, but had to be postponed when Turner fell ill.

On August 13, there was an atmospheric disturbance in which the sun appeared bluish-green. Turner took this as the final signal, and a week later, August 21, the rebellion began. Starting with a few trusted fellow slaves, the insurgency ultimately numbered more than 50 slaves and free blacks, mostly on horseback. The rebels traveled from house to house, freeing slaves and killing all the white people they found.

Because the slaves did not want to alert anyone to their presence as they carried out their attacks, they opted for knives, hatchets, axes, and blunt instruments as opposed to firearms. Turner called on his group to "kill all whites." The rebellion spared no one and a small child who hid in a fireplace was among the scant survivors. Until General Turner and his brigade of slaves met resistance at the hands of a white militia, 55 white men, women and children were killed. span

The rebellion was suppressed within 48 hours, but Turner eluded capture for months. On October 30 he was discovered and arrested. After his capture, his court appointed trial lawyer, Thomas Ruffin Gray, took it upon himself to publish "The Confessions of Nat Turner," derived partly from research done while Turner was in hiding and partly from conversations with Turner before his trial. This document remains the primary window into Turner's mind. Due to its author's obvious bias, it is a subject of much contention among historians.

On November 5, 1831, Nat Turner was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death.

He was skinned and hanged on November 11 in Jerusalem, Virginia. He was beheaded and quartered, and various parts were kept by whites as souvenirs.

In the aftermath of the revolt some 200 blacks, many of whom had nothing to do with the rebellion, were beaten, tortured and murdered in retaliation by hysterical white mobs.

The state legislature of Virginia considered abolishing slavery, but in a close vote decided to retain slavery and instead support a repressive policy against slaves and free blacks. The freedoms of all black people in Virginia were tightly curtailed, and an official policy was instated that forbade questioning the slave system, on the grounds that any discussion might encourage similar slave revolts.

In the end, no slave uprising before or after inflicted such a severe blow to the ranks of slave owners in the United States. Nat Turner is regarded as a hero by large numbers of African Americans and pan-Africanists worldwide.

Nat Turner finally became the focus of popular historical scholarship in the 1940s, when historian Herbert Aptheker was publishing the first serious scholarly work on instances of slave resistance in the antebellum South. Aptheker stressed how the rebellion was rooted in the exploitative conditions of the Southern slave system. He traversed libraries and archives throughout the South, managing to uncover roughly 250 similar instances, though none of them reached the scale of the Nat Turner uprising.

(September 3, 1831): The Insurrection. A contemporary abolitionist response to the news of the rebellion.