Patrick Breen, “The Land Shall be Deluged in Blood: A New History of the Nat Turner Revolt” (Oxford UP, 2015)

New Books in African American Studies · Dec 14, 2017 · 1h 2m

How did African-American slaves react to slavery? What factors, particularly religion, might shape those reactions, even making them violent? Patrick Breen, in his carefully researched and cogently written The Land Shall be Deluged in Blood: A New History of the Nat Turner Revolt (Oxford University Press, 2015) sheds light on these questions through a meticulous study of the slave rebellion led by Nat Turner. With its careful attention to the historiography of the rebellion, its consideration of the veracity of “The Confessions of Nat Turner” (the primary source that serves as the center of…