To break up assemblies for this
purpose any judge or justice of the peace could issue a warrant to
apprehend such persons and inflict corporal punishment not exceeding
twenty lashes. White persons convicted of teaching Negroes to read
or write were to be fined fifty dollars and might be imprisoned two
months. For imparting such information to a slave the offender was
subject to a fine of not less than ten nor more than one hundred
dollars.[1]
[Footnote 1]_Laws of Virginia_, 1830-1831, p. 108, Sections 5 and 6.
The whole country was again disturbed by the insurrection in
Southampton County, Virginia, in 1831. The slave States then had a
striking example of what the intelligent Negroes of the South might
eventually do. The leader of this uprising was Nat Turner. Precocious
as a youth he had learned to read so easily that he did not remember
when he first had that attainment.[1] Given unusual social and
intellectual advantages, he developed into a man of considerable
"mental ability and wide information." His education was chiefly
acquired in the Sunday-schools in which "the text-books for the small
children were the ordinary speller and reader, and that for the older
Negroes the Bible.
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