On the Guilt of Fragile Sovereigns

This chapter explores the guilt of the “fragile sovereigns” who were threatened by Turner's actions and how he had highlighted the problems of slavery. It shows how these vulnerable, fragile sovereigns against whom Turner was rebelling were also guilty sovereigns. Slaves could not be emancipated unless the emancipists were removed from Virginia. But the cost of removing them was too great, and nobody knew what to do. Turner's brusque intervention in white Virginia's affairs caused a panic that only heightened public anxiety. Thus the chapter reveals a tyrannical regime that does not change, that resists the politics of change, that ends up decrying the messages of politics altogether and embracing political economy to explain and justify its stasis.