year later a
law providing that any Negro who should teach another to read or write
should be punished by fine and whipping. If a white person should so
offend, he should be punished with a fine not exceeding $500 and with
imprisonment in the common jail at the discretion of the committing
magistrate.[1]

[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 literatur