Sleep in American History

Did you ever think there was a correlation between sleep and American history?

I found it very fascinating that Dr. Ben Reiss focused on this unusual topic for a book. I never thought of the connection between sleep and historical events. For example, 1) Harriet Tubman (the most famous slave "conductor" on the Underground Railroad) had to deal with chronic sleeping spells in her life after trying to rescue a coworker from being beaten for running away during the wee hours of the night. I also found out that 2) Nat Turner's infamous slave rebellion focused on his masters' sleeping patterns, to discover when was the "best time" to cause a slave revolt. He relied that the nighttime would be the best time to "strike" (both literally and figuratively).

In a way that was very smart of Turner to strike during the night because no one suspected anything to happen, and that the slaves would be obedient and sleep throughout the night. However, as history is the reminder, this was false! Turner and his followers killed 50 whites.

The third event in American history that has dealt with sleep in a way was in 1777, during the midst of the American Revolution. This is very unknown to us because it is really covered in our American history textbooks. The British commander, Charles Grey, ordered his troops to kill the Americans during the night, since no one would ever think of an attack at night. At the end of this "battle," about 200 Americans were killed during their sleep.

Overall, sleep has caused a few massacres in our history as a nation. We take sleep for granted and we should always be alert when we are tired, because you may never know what might happen to you!

~Chad S.