Book Review: Fires of Jubilee

When siblings fight, there is always the "He started it!" accusation that is supposed to vindicate the scuffle to Mom and Dad.   Oates contends that the Southern white desperate fear and hostility of Aftican-Americans may have started with Nat Turner's slave rebellion.   Until that time, slave owners convinced themselves that the slaves didn't mind being slaves.  This rebellion set the record straight.

In this 1975 page-turner, Fires of Jubilee, Stephen Oates did more than recount the story of Nat Turner and the gruesome slave rebellion that spawned terror in the hearts of Southern whites in 1831.  After much research, and interviewing African-American residents of the area, he analyzed the situation. Learn why there was nobody powerful enough to calm the revenge storm that raged against negroes after that pivotal rebellion.

Oates set the context with his words, "...Needing to blame somebody for Nat Turner besides themselves, Southern whites ...linked the revolt to a sinister Northern abolitionist plot to destroy their cherished way of life" p. 129.  Even the governor of Virginia believed that abolitionists urged "our negroes and mulattoes, slaves and free to the indiscriminate massacre of all white people" p. 130.  That simple statement helped explain to me why the South blamed the North for starting the Civil War, and why that same war is remembered in the South as the War of Northern Aggression.

History buffs may have already read this book first published in 1975, but I recommend Stephen B. Oates', The Fires of Jubilee:  Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion to all U.S. history teachers who teach the Civil War.   You will learn so much about this one crucial event that contributed to the Civil War.