1831
19th century
A01=Alan Taylor
abolition
african american
Author_Alan Taylor
Category=NHK
Category=NHTB
Category=NHTV
Category=WQH
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
forthcoming
nat turner
north carolina
race
resistance
revolt
richard blow
slave uprising
slaveholders
slavery
us history
virginia
Product details
- ISBN 9781324117346
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 08 Sep 2026
- Publisher: WW Norton & Co
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Tower Hill draws on an untapped family archive to reveal the history of a struggling slave plantation, mired by debt, volatile climate, disease and social isolation, whose local merchant family, the Blows, were driven to family turmoil and madness. The enslaved Blacks at Tower Hill endured by embracing evangelical Christianity and its promise of community and support. Nearby, the Great Dismal Swamp provided a haven for runaways.
In 1831, Nat Turner’s rebellion killed more than fifty from Tower Hill’s slaveholding families in a single day. George Blow’s suppression took twice as many Black lives, and shaped the uprising’s memory as an event mounted by a lone fanatic. Alan Taylor shows how the revolt emerged from a broader network of localised spiritual agitation and how a larger uprising might have erupted but for a mistake in timing. The shockwaves of the Turner rebellion, running through secession and civil war, still reach us today.
Alan Taylor’s American Civil Wars (9781324110491) was praised as:
"Those doubting that there is anything fresh to say about the [American Civil War] should read Pulitzer Prize winner Alan Taylor’s brilliant, panoramic account of the conflict." – Richard Carwardine, Literary Review
"[O]ffers compelling new insights...” – Amanda Brickell, The Wall Street Journal
"Taylor is a formidable historian and masterly writer..." – Thomas Ricks, The New York Times
Alan Taylor, one of our leading historians, is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize in history. His many books include American Revolutions, the standard account, and, most recently, American Civil Wars. He is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Virginia.
