The Hanging, Dissecting, and Beheading of Nat Turner

How Many Times and Ways Can You Kill a Man?

Photo by Julia Kadel at Unsplash

"His body was given over to the surgeons for dissection. He was skinned to supply such souvenirs as purses, his flesh made into grease, and his bones divided as trophies to be handed down as heirlooms. It is said that there still lives a Virginian who has a piece of his skin which was tanned, that another Virginian possesses one of his ears and that the skull graces the collection of a physician in the city of Norfolk."-- John W. Cromwell, "The Aftermath of Nat Turner's Insurrection," 1920

“On the evening of August 21–22, 1831, an enslaved preacher and self-styled prophet named Nat Turner launched the most deadly slave revolt in the history of the United States.”

That's how the Encyclopedia Virginia described the Nat Turner Rebellion, measuring the "most deadly slave revolt" solely in terms of white deaths, 55. It's true that in response to the revolt Virginia eventually killed most of the seventy or so participants in the uprising, which would make it am…