...and the fear marches on...the man who knows he's on the wrong side of the whip must instill his fear of having his whip taken from into others.
the others who became afraid were not the slaves who had followed Nat or those who had not. No one will be afraid to be beaten down if they are already being beaten down.
Those who were beaten on Pettis Bridge marched again on the morrow.
It was those who beat them that needed to enlist others into their own fear.
Thank you so much for your comment, Ken. I really appreciate you taking the time out to express your thoughts. You’ve touched on something that is foundational—the psychology of fear that sustained the slave power. What strikes me most about your comment is your insight was that it wasn’t the enslaved who feared Turner and his revolt. They were already living under a system of terror and degradation. The true fear, what was paralyzing, belonged to the enslavers and their enablers. The ones who were economically, politically, and psychologically invested in the slave power were the ones who were most afraid.
This is the essential lesson of the Turner rebellion. The system had presented itself as immutable, as eternal. But, that was a lie. What Turner revealed was the fragility of the slave power. A single, active refusal, a violent revolt, shattered the illusion that fear only traveled in one direction.
After 1831, the southern legislatures didn’t just tighten surveillance through constant patrol. They criminalized literacy, they banned unsupervised religious, gatherings, and they restricted the very movement of the enslaved. This wasn’t just about repression.. It was a frantic effort to reassert control over a belief system that had been exposed as unstable.
You mentioned BF Skinner, and his scholarship is certainly relevant, especially when we’re thinking about how behavior is shaped by punishment and reinforcement. But I would also bring in Antonio Gramsci and his theory of hegemony. This helps us think beyond behavior to belief. Gramsci wrote that domination must be internalized to endure. It’s not enough to wield the whip. You must convince the society, including the oppressed, that the whip is natural, necessary, and inevitable.
What happens when that internalization breaks down? When the oppressed no longer believe in the system that subjugates them? In the case of the antebellum south, that was when the slaveholders and the system itself scrambled—-when consensus gave way to force, and every institution in the slaveholder ecosystem was conscripted into restoring order. We saw that happen. That’s what I think you’re pointing to: the shared manufacturer of fear required to preserve an unequal system.
Nat Turner ruptured that system, not just with the violence, but with the whole idea. He refused to believe in the immutability of slavery. And that disbelief was more dangerous than any weapon. It made clear that the slave system endured only because both slaveholders and the enslaved were conditioned to believe it would. Once that spell was broken, the system’s illegitimacy was clear for all to see. That’s the fear that still animates white supremacy today in the United States of America—-the fear that an oppressed people, when pushed to their limit, will only endure so much before there is a rupture. And that violence does, in fact, run both ways.
...and the fear marches on...the man who knows he's on the wrong side of the whip must instill his fear of having his whip taken from into others.
the others who became afraid were not the slaves who had followed Nat or those who had not. No one will be afraid to be beaten down if they are already being beaten down.
Those who were beaten on Pettis Bridge marched again on the morrow.
It was those who beat them that needed to enlist others into their own fear.
see B.F.Skinner work on operant conditioning.
Thank you so much for your comment, Ken. I really appreciate you taking the time out to express your thoughts. You’ve touched on something that is foundational—the psychology of fear that sustained the slave power. What strikes me most about your comment is your insight was that it wasn’t the enslaved who feared Turner and his revolt. They were already living under a system of terror and degradation. The true fear, what was paralyzing, belonged to the enslavers and their enablers. The ones who were economically, politically, and psychologically invested in the slave power were the ones who were most afraid.
This is the essential lesson of the Turner rebellion. The system had presented itself as immutable, as eternal. But, that was a lie. What Turner revealed was the fragility of the slave power. A single, active refusal, a violent revolt, shattered the illusion that fear only traveled in one direction.
After 1831, the southern legislatures didn’t just tighten surveillance through constant patrol. They criminalized literacy, they banned unsupervised religious, gatherings, and they restricted the very movement of the enslaved. This wasn’t just about repression.. It was a frantic effort to reassert control over a belief system that had been exposed as unstable.
You mentioned BF Skinner, and his scholarship is certainly relevant, especially when we’re thinking about how behavior is shaped by punishment and reinforcement. But I would also bring in Antonio Gramsci and his theory of hegemony. This helps us think beyond behavior to belief. Gramsci wrote that domination must be internalized to endure. It’s not enough to wield the whip. You must convince the society, including the oppressed, that the whip is natural, necessary, and inevitable.
What happens when that internalization breaks down? When the oppressed no longer believe in the system that subjugates them? In the case of the antebellum south, that was when the slaveholders and the system itself scrambled—-when consensus gave way to force, and every institution in the slaveholder ecosystem was conscripted into restoring order. We saw that happen. That’s what I think you’re pointing to: the shared manufacturer of fear required to preserve an unequal system.
Nat Turner ruptured that system, not just with the violence, but with the whole idea. He refused to believe in the immutability of slavery. And that disbelief was more dangerous than any weapon. It made clear that the slave system endured only because both slaveholders and the enslaved were conditioned to believe it would. Once that spell was broken, the system’s illegitimacy was clear for all to see. That’s the fear that still animates white supremacy today in the United States of America—-the fear that an oppressed people, when pushed to their limit, will only endure so much before there is a rupture. And that violence does, in fact, run both ways.