[Footnote 1] Dawson, _A Compilation of the Laws of the State of Georgia_, etc., p. 413.
In Virginia where the prohibition did not then extend to freedmen, there was enacted in 1831 a law providing that any meeting of free Negroes or mulattoes for teaching them reading or writing should be considered an unlawful assembly. 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."[2] He had received instruction also from his parents and his indulgent young master, J.C. Turner.
[Footnote 1] Drewery, _Insurrections in Virginia_, p. 27.
[Footnote 2: Drewery, _Insurrections in Virginia_, p. 28.]
When Nat Turner appeared, the education of the Negro had made the way somewhat easier for him than it was for his predecessors. Negroes who could read and write had before them the revolutionary ideas of the French, the daring deeds of Toussaint L'Ouverture, the bold attempt of General Gabriel, and the far-reaching plans of Denmark Vesey. These were sometimes written up in the abolition literature, the circulation of which was so extensive among the slaves that it became a national question.[1]