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In the Balance of Power
Indeed, many ideas widely taken for granted and assumed to be timeless features of American culture originated with independent political movements, whether organized as political parties or taking other forms. The idea of freedom as a universal entitlement, for example, was developed by the abolitionists, who developed the idea of equal citizenship irrespective of race. The modern idea of privacy—the extension of individual rights into the most intimate areas of personal life—arose from the efforts of generations of feminists to secure for women control over their own persons. Without political mobilizations outside the two-party system, it is difficult to imagine the progress that has been made in the last half-century toward the goal of equal rights and opportunities for all Americans, regardless of race. Independent political movements have made this a better society.
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Turner himself evaded capture until October 30. In all, Virginia would execute fifty-five African Americans and banish others. In addition, some two hundred black men and women, including dozens who had had nothing to do with the rebellion, were killed by white mobs. Turner was tried in Southampton County Court and sentenced to execution. On November 11, he was not only hanged but subsequently skinned. So fearful were white Virginians of another slave rebellion on par with, or greater than, Turner’s that the state legislature’s house came close to passing an act of gradual abolition. In a razor-thin vote, representatives decided against abolishing slavery, opting instead to implement even more repressive policies against the black population, both free and enslaved.36
While most slave rebellions were contained, they could not be prevented from continuing to erupt in the United States or elsewhere in the hemisphere. Soon, slaves in Jamaica would rebel, on a scale dozens of times larger than the revolt in Virginia. The “Christmas Uprising” of 1831–32, led by Samuel Sharpe, which involved as many as sixty thousand slaves, would drive members of Parliament to emancipate slaves in the British Empire. The Slavery Abolition Act, which became effective in 1834, while it included a debilitating “apprentice” period for newly emancipated slaves, was, in turn, used to galvanize the abolitionist movement in the United States. Abolitionists across the Atlantic invited their American counterparts into their homes, schools, and churches in sympathy with their cause, and over the next generation a dozen black abolitionist leaders took the month-long sea journey to England, helping to generate international support for the movement at home.37
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