Abolition

by Tim Black

  Minerva, who had ignored the banter to concentrate on watching Ona Judge, saw the alarm on the young black woman’s face as she had recognized Elizabeth Langdon. By the look on the white woman’s face, Minerva realized that Elizabeth had noticed Ona Judge. Ona turned around as Elizabeth called out, “Ona? Ona Judge, is that you? Is Mrs. Washington in town?”

  Ona Judge picked up her pace, walking faster as Elizabeth Langdon called after her.

  “Who is that?” Elizabeth’s companion asked Elizabeth.

  “Why,” Elizabeth replied to her friend, “that is Martha Washington’s most trusted slave. I think she is a runaway,” she added.

  The smile on the other woman’s face seemed to surprise Elizabeth Langdon. “Good for her,” she declared. “Slavery is evil.”

  Minerva was delighted to hear the friend’s response. Mr. Greene heard the woman’s words as well and commented, “The woman’s opinion was the majority opinion in New Hampshire. If I can remember the 1790 Census figures, I believe New Hampshire had a total of 157 slaves and 630 free people of color, which could be Native Americans as well as Negroes. The woman’s attitude was held by most of the Granite State folks. Unfortunately, Elizabeth Langdon would pen a letter to Martha Washington and Martha would pester her husband to intervene and poor Mr. Whipple, the Customs Collector, would be put in an untenable position. At any rate, Ona Judge never returned to the Washingtons or to Mount Vernon and she married a black man named Jack Staines the following January in 1797. Urged on by his wife, no doubt, in 1798 George Washington asked his nephew Burwell Bassett, Jr., who was planning a business trip to New Hampshire, to attempt to seize Ona, along with any children that she had, because they would also be Martha Washington’s property. He was instructed to send Ona and her children to Virginia. When Bassett arrived in New Hampshire he had dinner with John Langdon and told him of his intended kidnapping of Ona. The senator passed a note to a servant who then passed it on to Ona. Ona fled Portsmouth, hiding in the neighboring town of Greenland until a second note arrived telling her that Bassett had sailed away from New Hampshire. Three months later, George Washington died. After Washington’s death, Ona finally felt she was a free woman. I recommend that you students read Never Caught, to get the whole story. But even though she considered herself a free woman, in the eyes of the law she was a fugitive slave, and her 1845 interview took courage because Martha Washington’s descendants might have pressed the case to have her returned to Virginia. Ona and her children.”

  “That was the most onerous condition of slavery, Mr. Greene,” Minerva said. “That the children of a slave, even if they were born in a free state, were considered the property of the fugitive slave’s owners.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Greene replied. “It was one of the worst features of slavery, but there were many. We are about to witness the aftereffects of the largest slave rebellion in the nation’s history.”

  “Nat Turner’s rebellion?” Victor asked.

  “Yes, Victor,” the teacher replied. “Virginia, 1831, Mr. Tesla.”

  “Specifics, Mr. Greene,” Tesla replied.

  “Courtland, Virginia, November 11, 1831. The morning.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” Tesla said, adding, “Buckle up, buckaroos!”

  Chapter 5

  At 8:30 A.M. on the morning of November 11, 1831, the classroom arrived on the outskirts of Jerusalem (which changed its name to Courtland in 1888), Virginia, a tiny hamlet in Southampton County. A fresh coat of snow lay on the ground outside, promising a nippy morning to the kids from Florida. Applying the cloaking device, Mr. Greene addressed the students as Professor Bridenbaugh floated between rows of bolted-down desks, distributing copies of an abstract on Nat Turner’s Rebellion.

  “Before you begin reading the paper that Professor Bridenbaugh is passing out, I would like to mention two earlier slave rebellions, each of which came to inglorious ends. In both cases, as with Nat Turner’s Rebellion, the leaders of the rebellion were literate men. The first occurred in 1800 in Richmond, Virginia, by an intelligent slave named Gabriel, who is sometimes referred to as Gabriel Prosser, as a man named Prosser was his owner. Gabriel was a skilled artisan, a blacksmith, who was often hired out by his master. He led a revolt of other artisans who were slaves, and the rebellion was scheduled to begin in Richmond on August 30, 1800, but heavy rain caused confusion and a traitor, who was part of the group, notified white authorities and Gabriel and his companions were arrested, put on trial and executed. After Gabriel’s rebellion, slave literacy became illegal. The Virginia slave system reacted to the failed rebellion by adopting stricter rules concerning slaves. It became much more repressive. Professor Bridenbaugh would you like to tell the students the story of Denmark Vesey?”

  “Of course, Mr. Greene,” the dead historian replied. “Denmark Vesey was a freed slave who lived in Charleston, South Carolina. He purchased his freedom from proceeds from a lottery around 1800 and became a carpenter and was successful at his trade. Being literate, he read the Bible and began preaching to slaves on various plantations, claiming like the Israelites in Egypt, the slaves, too, would gain their freedom. He held meetings in his home to collect arms for a rebellion to overthrow the white planters in South Carolina. He, too, was betrayed by slaves. He and 35 of his followers were put on trial, found guilty, and hanged. Thirty-five others were sold to West Indies plantation owners. Had Vesey been able to get his rebellion off the ground it would have been the largest slave rebellion in United States history, exceeding even the number of slaves who joined Nat Turner in his insurrection. Mr. Greene?”

  “Thank you, professor. Students, we are going to meet Nat Turner today. Some people think Nat Turner was a saint, others say he was a lunatic. Since the day that he was executed he has been the subject of controversy. To the Black Panthers of the 1960s, he was a heroic symbol of resistance, to others he was a crazy man. He believed he was a messiah or an avenging angel who would lead a revolt that would end slavery forever. In that regard he was akin to the white abolitionist John Brown, who captured Harper’s Ferry in 1859. Like John Brown, however, Nat Turner would end up on the gallows as we will shortly see.

  “Before you, you have the abstract of The Confessions of Nat Turner. This was put together by the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and you can go to their website and download the entire interview that a lawyer named Thomas Gray had with Nat Turner a few days before his execution. I must caution you, however, that the entire interview is rather gruesome and graphic. Also, while Gray purports that his interview is a verbatim account in Nat Turner’s words, we cannot attest to its veracity in historiography. Gray was a white man and if you read the entire interview you can detect a good bit of racism in his comments. Still, it is all we have. One thing seems to be quite clear. Nat Turner was an intelligent man. Unusual for a slave, he was literate. Frankly, he was probably more literate than most of the white people who had come to the little village of Jerusalem to witness Nat Turner’s execution. But for now, let us read the abstract of the piece.”

  Intrigued by Mr. Greene’s introduction, Victor Bridges read the short abstract.

  Abstract:

  Nat Turner (1800–1831) was known to his local “fellow servants” in Southampton County as “The Prophet.” On the evening of Sunday, August 21, 1831, he met six associates in the woods at Cabin Pond, and about 2:00 a.m. they began to enter local houses and kill the white inhabitants. Over the next 36 hours, they were joined by as many as 60 other slaves and free blacks, and they killed at least 10 men, 14 women, and 31 infants and children. By noon of Tuesday, August 23, the insurgents had been killed, captured, or dispersed by local militia. Nat Turner alone escaped—until October 30, when he was caught in the immediate vicinity, having used several hiding places over the previous 9½ weeks. The next day he was delivered to the county sheriff and lodged in the county jail in Jerusalem (now Courtland), Virginia. There, from November 1 through November 3, he was interviewed by Thomas Ruffin Gray, a 31-year-old lawyer who had pre
viously represented several other defendants charged in the uprising. Gray had witnessed the aftermath of the killings, interviewed other participants, and survivors, and had supplied written accounts to various newspapers. He was familiar with the outlines of Nat Turner’s life and the plot, and he was aware of the intense interest and the commercial possibilities of its originator’s narrative. In the Confessions, Nat Turner appears more a fanatic than a practical liberator. He tells of being spoken to by the Holy Spirit, of seeing visions and signs in the heavens—“that I was ordained for some great purpose in the hands of the Almighty.” In Gray’s view, “He is a complete fanatic, or plays his part most admirably.” On November 5th, Nat Turner was tried and condemned to be executed; on November 11th he was hanged. On November 12th, Gray registered his copyright for the Confessions, in Washington, D.C. Within a week his pamphlet appeared, and it is estimated over 50,000 copies were sold in the next few months.

  As Victor finished reading the abstract he looked around and was annoyed that both Bette and Minerva had finished reading before he had. Still, his vanity took solace in the fact that the younger students were slower than he. Victor looked at his teacher who was waiting for the last of his students to stop reading.

  When the last head lifted its chin and its eyes looked toward the teacher, Mr. Greene queried, “Any questions?”

  “Yes, Heather said. “It appears that most of the victims were women and children. Is that correct?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Greene replied.

  “They killed babies in their cribs?” Heather said.

  “Yes,” said the teacher tersely.

  “And this is all accounted for blow by blow in Turner’s confession?” Samuel asked.

  “Yes, that is why I only provided the abstract. If you want to read the full confession, it is available from the University of Nebraska by digital download.”

  “Oh,” Samuel said. “I intend to read the entire confession, Mr. Greene. My grandfather believes that Nat Turner was a real hero. But it sounds like he was a bloodthirsty murderer. Women and children? That is awful. That’s like the Nazis killing the Jews.”

  “How did the white people react, Mr. Greene?” Minerva asked.

  “The white people reacted with a similar rage to the rage that Nat Turner and his followers had used for the two days the rebellion lasted. Hundreds of African Americans, most of whom were innocent and some of whom were free blacks, were killed in the revenge acts by the white people. Heads were decapitated and placed on poles to warn other black people not to think about rebellion. Laws were passed to prevent slaves from learning to read and write. Abolitionist literature was banned in Virginia and other Southern states. Nat Turner scared the bejesus out of white people, especially slave owners. If it could happen in Virginia, they thought, it could happen anywhere.

  “Now, before we go out into Jerusalem, please go into the closet and pick out a coat to cover your clothes. First it is a chilly day outside. And boys, change your hats. Girls too. The second reason for the costume change is simple: We don’t want to be Quakers on this day. By 1831, Quakers were viewed as abolitionists. Slave owners might find some extra rope lying around if we showed up in Quaker clothing. We are going to be travelers from Richmond in town for the hanging,” Mr. Greene advised. Then he added, “Mr. Tesla, I would like you to accompany us today in case there are any unanticipated little wrinkles in the time stream so to speak.”

  “It is a rather chilly day for ‘butterflies,’” replied the scientist wryly.

  “That sounds perverse,” Minerva said.

  Mr. Greene shrugged. “The population of Jerusalem in the 1830 Census was 175 people. Far more than that will show up for the execution. People will flock to see the execution of the slave who so unsettled the order of things. I wish to caution you, however. If you do not wish to witness the execution of Nat Turner, you may stay behind in the classroom, or you may avert your eyes at the appropriate moment. It will be gruesome to watch.”

  There were no takers.

  Certainly, Samuel had no second thoughts. After everything his grandfather had told him about Nat Turner, he thought the rebellious slave deserved his respect and he should watch his execution.

  “Samuel,” Mr. Greene said. “What do you wish to do?”

  “What do you mean, Mr. Greene?”

  “The white people in this town will have their ‘blood up,’ as they say, and it may be dangerous for you to appear at the execution,” the teacher explained. “They have already killed nearly two hundred innocent African Americans, including free blacks.”

  “I’ll take my chances, Mr. Greene,” a determined Samuel said.

  Sitting at the teacher’s desk, his ghostly digits on the computer keyboard, Nikola Tesla weighed in, “I have an idea, Mr. Greene…”

  “Yes, Mr. Tesla?”

  “If need be, I will reanimate wearing appropriate attire for the period and claim that Samuel is my slave…if that does not offend you, Mr. Chandler,” the scientist smiled.

  Samuel thought about Tesla’s offer for a moment and then laughed. “No, Mr. Tesla, I would not be offended in the least. It would be a great trick to play on those racists.”

  “Good, I will call you my valet. George Washington had a valet, why shouldn’t a Serbian?” Tesla joked.

  The students changed in shifts in the closet, the boys and Mr. Greene going first and three of the four girls following.

  *

  They entered the tiny town of Jerusalem at twenty minutes to ten. Professor Bridenbaugh and Nikola Tesla, invisible to the people of Jerusalem, floated ahead of the group. On the way to the town, Mr. Greene had informed the students that Nat Turner’s execution was scheduled for 10 A.M.

  There was a festive air in the town. Samuel had read about hangings in the Old West being a popular entertainment for the townspeople, and how often the hangings were scheduled for Saturdays when people came into town for provisions. The bigger the crowd the better. The main street of Jerusalem was littered with peddlers selling their wares as if it was a market day. The hanging of Nat Turner was a big event and already a large crowd had gathered around a large oak tree, which Samuel surmised would be the site of Nat Turner’s execution. The people of Jerusalem were either too cheap or too lazy to provide some proper wooden gallows for Nat Turner, Samuel thought.

  “Stay together,” Mr. Greene cautioned as the group from Cassadaga drew closer to the tree. “The execution shall commence shortly, I believe.”

  To Minerva, the faces in the crowd reminded her of the photographs she had seen of the protests at Charlottesville, Virginia, when the white supremacists marched through the college town in August 2017. All that was missing was the torches. But the shouts she heard in Jerusalem that day were even more hateful than the cries of the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville.

  “We should hang all the nigras,” a man with a scraggly beard proclaimed.

  “Yes!” another shouted.

  “Hang ’em all!” said another.

  “Look, there’s one!” said the scraggly bearded man. He pointed at Samuel. “Let’s hang him before we hang Turner!” he shouted and started in Samuel’s direction. Several men followed him.

  Mr. Greene thrust himself between Samuel and the advancing men. A large man, smelling of alcohol, tossed the teacher to the ground. Victor intervened, and the same fate befell him as befell his teacher. The large man attempted to grab Samuel and Samuel reacted with a fist to the white man’s face, stunning the man momentarily, but not knocking him down.

  “The boy has spirit,” the large man declared, before subduing Samuel and hauling him off toward the tree, where another man awaited with a noose.

  Minerva shouted. “Mr. Tesla, do something.”

  But Nikola Tesla and Carl Bridenbaugh had floated into the courthouse where Nat Turner sat in his cell, awaiting his date with death. Hearing his name shouted from the outside, Tesla reacted quickly, floating out of the courthouse and saw that Samuel was in imminent peril. He glan
ced to the right and noticed Mr. Greene on the ground and Victor Bridges rising from the dirt, his nose bloodied. One of the white men tied Samuel’s hands behind his back.

  “Oh, Sweet Jesus,” Samuel cried. “This can’t be happening!”

  Into Samuel’s mind came the voice of Billie Holiday singing,

  Southern trees bear strange fruit

  Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

  Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze

  Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

  But suddenly Billie’s voice was replaced by Nikola Tesla. The scientist had reanimated as a clone of none other than the KFC’s iconic white-bearded Colonel Sanders, decked out in white suit and white trousers. Unlike the jovial colonel of the grease trap, Mr. Tesla had added a white hat atop his head as well. He was every inch the stereotype of a southern planter and slave owner, Minerva thought, trying not to laugh at the absurdity of it all, considering the seriousness of the situation. Tesla’s dark eyes sparkled and one of them gave Minerva a conspiratorial wink as if to say, “watch this!”

  “What are you doing with my boy, cracker?” Tesla said to the men about to lynch Samuel Chandler. “That nigger cost me a thousand dollars. Are you going to pay me if you hang him? You put that noose around his neck and it will be the last thing you ever do,” Tesla said. “Now, you untie my slave and do not bother him again, or I will give you a taste of lead!” Out of the ether, Tesla’s Colonel Sanders appeared to be holding a cocked pistol. The eyes of the mob glimpsed the pistol and a few of the men retreated.

  Heather started to rush toward Samuel, but Bette Kromer grabbed her and held her back. “Don’t touch him,” she cautioned. “You are a white woman. These yahoos will lynch Samuel for sure if you give him a hug. Save it for the portable.”

  “Yes, I taught him to hit white trash,” Tesla was saying to the large white man. From somewhere the “colonel” produced a silver dollar and tossed it to the man. “That’s for your trouble. I believe that is more than you make in a day. Come Samuel,” Tesla said, and a relieved Samuel followed after him.