Well, The Resurrection of Nat Turner has arrived in my mailbox — and I'm delighted to see that just a few pages into it the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and then Harriet Beecher Stowe have already made an appearance. Stow is trying to understand and write about Nat Turner for her second antislavery novel, Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp. (That was Stowe's second antislavery novel, but the third book in what I refer to as her triology of jurisprudence — Uncle Tom's Cabin, A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, and Dred.) Thus, Stowe's efforts to understand Turner frames the book.
I'm sure this is going to be a late night as I read this novel — and, as I can tell from skimming and seeing all sorts of references to July Fourth celebrations, to references to Turner's owners' references to their "right to life, liberty, and to maintain their property" (81), there's a lot in here that I'm interested in. And that's well before we get to the trials in the wake of the rebellion.
Nice! I'm looking forward to your future posts on this novel.
We would love to arrange to have the novel's author, Sharon Ewell Foster, come to give a presentation on her 5-year research and writing process. Part Two: The Testimony releases in February 2012.
Here is the link to the Sharon Ewell Foster interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEbk1PDqPpE
Thank you so much for commenting on The Resurrection of Nat Turner.
It was a great story to follow and research; my bibliography is about 13 pages long. (pubbed in Part 2)
Just as an eerie aside, today, on Saturday August 13th in 1831, came the first appearance of the blue sun–an atmospheric event thought to have triggered the uprising led by Nat Turner. John Floyd, Virginia governor at that time, wrote in his diary, "…the sun shone blue, fully as blue as indigo." Strange, right?
Sharon
http://www.sharonewellfoster.com