...Masur uses illustrations and vivid stories from the time to describe the nation's feelings on this issue. Masur tells of the revolt of Nat Turner, a Negro who led a revolt among slaves, grotesquely massacring plantation and farm owners and their families. In the end Turner was tried and executed, but not before a lawyer could put together a book called, " The Confessions of Nat Turner." Gray did this to " offer Southerners what they needed to hear and wanted to believe." Debates over slavery and all that it entailed continued and were sparked by this and other events involving rebellions and the abolitionist views. Some of the most perceptive of the politicians at the time could predict what would happen. In the words of Thomas Jefferson Randolph, " There is one circumstance which we are to look forward as inevitable in the fullness of time; a dissolution of the Union." Secondly, look to religious and the political views of the state and nation. Nationwide, revivalists and their camp meetings dominated the quest for religious purpose. One primary leader, Charles Grandison Finney started a surge of revivals across the country, leaving thousands of churches rebelling against orthodox Calvinism. ...
