What is the cost of Freedom?

In the minds of slave masters, enslaved individuals were content with their position as slaves. The concept of paternalism further asserted the ludicrous notion that racial slavery kept people of color in their destined position--a position of servitude and exploitation. White slave owners felt it was their obligation, as members of the 'superior' race, to restrict the liberties of enslaved African American's. Therefore, any enslaved individual who objected to the institution of slavery was seen as someone who suffered from a mental defect. Slavery was an institution that shaped other facets of society, medical doctors began to create terms for slaves that wanted to run away to explain the strange phenomenon of an individual wanting to break free from slavery.
Slavery was an irrational institution that was deeply entwined within the fabric of the American-South. Individuals such as Nat Turner chose to push back against slavery through rebellion and through rhetorical persuasion. Nat Turner  recognized that the peculiar institution was immoral and a contradiction of American values of liberty, he believed that one should resist against slavery by any means necessary. When reviewing Nat Turners rebellion, his mental stability is often called into question because of the religious visions he claimed to have which led him to forming a rebellion. However, it can be argued that Nat Turner's mental stability is irrelevant. By simply being an African American man who wanted more than a life of being enslaved Turner contradicted the fragile rouse white's had constructed as justification for slavery and paternalism.
Any individual who pushed back against the institution or was not content as a slave was seen as 'defective' or psychologically unsound in the eyes of slave masters. Nat Turner's quest for freedom through rebellion is a reflection of enslaved individuals hunger for freedom and the lengths to which they were willing to go to in order to achieve it. What does it mean to engage slavery the way Nat Turner does ? How does Turner's rebellion foreshadow how freedom will be achieved?

Nat Turner engaged with slavery like a true patriot, regardless or whether he was swayed by visions or his personal experience with slavery, Turner demonstrated that African American's were willing to sacrifice their lives for a life beyond slavery and his battle for freedom foreshadows the fragmentation of the Union. It can be argued that Nat Turner was mentally unsound however, he was completely justified in his actions and demonstrated to the African American community that rebellion was possible.