Less than ten years later, in February 1831, the moon eclipsed the sun, and an enslaved man named Nat Turner looked at the sky. Turner believed the eclipse to be a spiritual message. Turner was a deeply committed Christian, and in 1828, three years earlier, he wrote that God had revealed to him “by signs in the heavens that he would make known to me when I should commence the great work, and . . . I should arise and prepare myself and slay my enemies with their own weapons.”11 Turner planned what became one of the most infamous rebellions of enslaved people in American history.
