The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner’s Fierce Rebellion (2016) by Stephen B. Oates

Description

The bloody slave rebellion led by Nat Turner in Virginia in 1831 and the savage reprisals that followed shattered beyond repair the myth of the contented slave and the benign master, and intensified the forces of change that would plunge America into the bloodbath of the Civil War.

Stephen B. Oates, the celebrated biographer of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr., presents a gripping and insightful narrative of the rebellion – the complex, gifted, and driven man who led it, the social conditions that produced it, and the legacy it left. A classic now newly reissued to include the text of the original 1831 court document “The Confessions of Nat Turner,” here is the dramatic re-creation of the turbulent period that marked a crucial turning point in America’s history.

About the Author

Stephen B. Oates (1936-2021) was a professor emeritus of history at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst. His books include Let the Trumpet Sound: A Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. and With Malice Toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln. Oates has been awarded numerous honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, and Nevins-Freeman Award of the Civil War Round Table of Chicago for lifetime achievement in the field of Civil War studies.