Interesting New Book

An interesting new book was just published. Titled "The Nat Turner Insurrection Trials - A Mystic Chord Resonates Today", the work was written by attorney Walter L. Gordon III, and is available from Amazon.com for $13.99.

"Walter L. Gordon's A Mystic Chord Resonates Today: The Nat Turner Insurrection Trials is the first book by a legal scholar to examine the 50 trials of slaves and free blacks charged with insurrection. Of the 45 slaves tried, 15 were acquitted, an acquittal rate in excess of 30%. Of the 30 convicted slaves, nearly half were granted mercy. The Nat Turner insurrection was the crest of a wave of insurrections in Virginia between 1800 and 1831. After the Nat Turner insurrection trials there were no further slave insurrections in Virginia until John Brown's raid in 1859. In addition, it is the first book to compare the aftermath of the Nat Turner insurrection, the largest terrorist attack on American soil at that time, to 9/11, with an effort to draw lessons for today from the past. "

Although the book doesn't appear to mention Murfreesboro's role in the Nat Turner Story, it is an interesting account of the insurrection with special emphasis on the trials. For a detailed account of the events from Murfreesboro's point of view, consult Thomas Parramore's 2004 book "Murfreesboro, North Carolina and the Roots of Nat Turner’s Revolt".