Nat Turner was a slave in the fields of Virginia. Unusually well-educated and literate for a slave, Turner’s intelligence was matched only by his religious fervour. In May 1828, he saw a vision in the heavens, confirming his intuition that he was destined for great things. In 1831, he witnessed an eclipse of the Sun, which to him appeared as the hand of an enormous black man reaching for and obscuring the solar disc.
He took this as an omen that the time of rebellion was at hand, and began planning in earnest. In August of that year, Nat Turner led a slave rebellion that would be the largest in American history, and which would contribute to the tensions that erupted into Civil War a generation later.
By William Henry Shelton (1840–1932)[1][4] – Image was found on Encyclopedia Virginia. The print is in the Bettman Archive.[1] The image has been printed on p. 321 of 1882’s A Popular History of the United States,[2] and p. 154 of 1894’s History of the United States from the Earliest Discovery of America to the Present Day.[3], Public Domain, Link
As mentioned in: