The Resurrection of Nat Turner, Part 2: The Testimonial

by Sharon Ewell Foster

  Carriages, trains, boats, and millions of footsteps. Novelists, newspapermen, butlers, stevedores, waiters, Central Park, and the Erie Canal. Home to the Sons of Liberty, the Battle of Long Island, the place of President Washington’s inauguration, the first Congress, the first Supreme Court, Fort Hamilton, and Federal Hall. Home to the hopeful and the suffering.

  Irish Catholics swelled the populous, swept across the sea by famine, hunger, joblessness, hopelessness, lynchings, floggings—and laws that forbade their education, voting, possession of arms, and property ownership. Refugee slaves, most swept North by starvation, joblessness—and laws that forbade their education, voting, possession of arms, and property ownership—and the hope of freedom, willing to leave whatever relations they had. Both risked all that was familiar. But disguised by hue and tongue, they did not recognize their brotherhood.

  Most runaway slaves, fleeing the South, hitched a ride on the Underground. But some of the Negroes were former New York slaves. Until 1827, New York City had almost as many slaves as Charleston, South Carolina. The city was home to slave ships and investors in slaving—lending money for land, looms, seed, and in Southern cotton. Many of the Northern slaves were purchased in Newport, Rhode Island. Beautiful, beautiful Newport with its Atlantic beaches, lobsters, sailboats, and slaves in chains sold on the wharfs. And beyond Newport were the islands of Cape Verde and islands like Haiti, where captured Africans were broken and transformed into slaves. Beautiful Newport, where schoolmarms and shopkeepers invested their pennies in the trade, hoping to reap shiny dimes.

  There were no plantations in New York; the skilled slaves built roads, docks, churches, and Wall Street’s wall. After 1827, the New York slaves were freed, but there were still scars and resentful former owners.

  Into the slave city, into the darkness, drawn to the void, were the abolitionists, abolitionists more radical than their New England brothers and sisters. New York was home to the Radical Abolitionists Convention, abolitionists who argued that the United States Constitution forbade slavery… nor shall any state deprive a person of life, liberty, or property without due process.

  Gotham was home to the Tappan brothers and the Grimke sisters, to William Wells Brown, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton—abolitionists who argued that slavery was wrong legally and morally. Radical abolitionists argued that slavery was a demon that plagued America, who argued that all good men and women were legally and morally bound to help free the slaves. Slavery was as unlawful as murder, arson, or theft. Some even argued that slaves and their defenders had a duty to take up arms.

  Many were not pleased with the abolitionists’ growing presence in New York State—there had been antiblack and antiabolitionist attacks that continued to worsen.

  Inside Plymouth Church, Harriet leaned forward, and across the room she saw Frederick Douglass’s prematurely graying mane nodding as Henry spoke.

  “Without love our faith is meaningless; it has no power. Without love our greatest philanthropy is less than a mere token.”

  Henry’s voice shook the rafters in Plymouth Church—a sanctuary built more like an auditorium than a church—caused the air to vibrate, swelled, and then dropped to a whisper. Words came alive in Henry, or, better still, as Walt Whitman wrote, Henry’s words were substantial and delicious. When Henry spoke he became the words, and though he was human and given to human weaknesses, he tried to live the words he spoke. “Without love, intelligence and knowledge have no value.”

  He not only preached freedom for the captives, he also used his church as a station on the Underground Railroad. He raised money to buy freedom for captive slaves. Henry purchased rifles—rifles that bore the nickname “Beecher’s Bibles.” At Henry’s direction, Sharps rifles were shipped to Kansas along with Bibles to help antislavery men defend themselves against the strangling westward aggression of slavery, slavery discontent to remain within Kentucky’s borders.

  While some churches struggled to gain and hold any members, most that survived brimmed with women. But Plymouth overflowed with men. Henry offered messages of love to those who had been taught that their very being displeased God, just as her family had taught Henry and her. They were tainted by original sin and despised by God.

  But Henry preached love, and they flocked to him like parched men to fresh water. His voice thundered, swept through the room, and then eased to a whisper. “Without love—not only for the greatest, but also for the least among us—all that we do is pointless.”

  From the front of Plymouth, Henry whispered to the congregation, “The only bondage in God’s creation that is tolerable and desirable is the bondage of love.”

  Again, Frederick Douglass nodded his head.

  Chapter 7

  Mr. Douglass’s hair was more silver than when she last saw him. Harriet lifted a hand to her own hair. Hers was changing, too.

  He bore a heavy burden. He had escaped from slavery in Maryland and made his home in the North for many years now. If he remained silent, there was a good chance he might remain free. But he was not free, he said, until all were free—slaves and black freemen. He risked his life and freedom to bring attention to the plight of others, even fighting for women, including white women, to have the right to vote.

  But it was not just others, not just those who were apathetic or slaveholders, whom he challenged. Frederick challenged her. Each time she conversed with him, she was surprised at how brilliant he was—surprised and ashamed that she was surprised. Her cheeks burned, even now, with the private embarrassment, embarrassment at her epiphany that she had expected less of him simply because of the color of his skin.

  She knew he was a human being, a man created and loved by God. But somehow she bore diminished expectations. She did not expect him to reason so well, to speak so well, or to write so well—he had edited the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society’s collection Autographs for Freedom, which contained William Lloyd Garrison’s work, Henry’s work, and hers. She was too ashamed of her thoughts to share them with anyone, even Calvin. But they were there just the same.

  If she had not conversed with him, she would never have known how exceptional he was, nor would she have recognized her own shortcomings. He had proven to be a thoughtful, capable man full of insight. In addition to author, respected orator, and editor, Douglass also was now a newspaper publisher.

  He was a man of his own opinion and provided sound reason and argument. He was independent of thought, so much so that it appeared he might be parting ways with his friend William Lloyd Garrison. William now espoused abandoning both the Constitution and the Church; both, he felt, had been bloodied and rendered useless by slavery. Douglass believed both could be redeemed.

  In the pulpit, Henry clutched his heart. “No man knows true happiness till he has learned how to love.” The crowd cheered, and Frederick Douglass tapped his cane on the floor.

  Without Frederick Douglass, she might never have met fugitive slaves like Henry Bibb, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth. Without him and others, she might never have heard the stories—and each story made her life richer.

  Without Douglass’s association, she might never have read the works written by the hands of black authors like William Wells Brown or Douglass himself. Why should she read them? What could their broken phrases and buffoonery, their clumsiness with language, have to offer her? Harriet was surprised at what she discovered.

  It seemed impossible to her now, but there was a time when they and their thoughts were strangers to her, except for caricatures in her mind. Without Mr. Douglass, she might never have known that God had given the gift of elegant thought and word to His black children. She might never have read their beautiful prose and poetry and acknowledged that it was inspired by God. Their words were cousins to her own, sometimes offering lance and balm to places she had not known were tender.

  Without Mr. Douglass’s influence, she might never have shared a meal with a Negro—not as servant but as equally welcomed guests at the table. Cert
ainly they would not have been welcomed at her father’s house. As she observed them reading and taking part in debates, Harriet wondered who the refugees might have become but for slavery.

  Challenged by Mr. Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and others, Harriet had come to realize that even she, with her good intentions and moral upbringing, had been poisoned by slavery’s lies. Slavery denied that it was the cause of the slaves’ condition—their poverty, their illiteracy. But by associating with fugitive slaves, she was learning to view them as people no different from she or her brother.

  Perhaps the worst sin of slavery was the stunting of so many lives, seeds unable to blossom into what they might have been.

  In the not too distant past, she had viewed the enslaved Negroes paternally: She must speak for them and protect them as creatures inherently incapable of certain higher thoughts and feelings—people entitled to freedom, but childlike, in need of care and unable to determine what was best for themselves.

  As the music from the Plymouth Church organ swelled, she looked around the sanctuary, at Henry, and then back at Frederick Douglass. Before him, she had lived her life smelling only rare lilies and white roses.

  Knowing him, and the other refugees, had turned the granite under her feet to sand; she often found herself tilting from side to side and even pitching forward.

  She had not expected to find them as she. She had seen herself and her brother as champions of the lowly.

  When the Negroes refused her thoughts, her gifts, or her offerings, she was at first angered by their hubris and then embarrassed by her own. There were times, she realized, when she felt betrayed and jealous that the hand of Providence might have blessed them with some insight He did not originally bestow upon her. She had devoted her life to God, and her face warmed with the thought that He might have given them some favor He had not given her. Then she was ashamed of her emotions. She was surprised to find pride hidden in her bosom.

  She was ashamed to acknowledge that she had thought herself at least a little better. She was prepared to teach, not to be taught. She was prepared to lead, not to be led. Harriet had been prepared to give, not receive. She thought she needed nothing from them. But perhaps it was she who most needed the gifts that they in their poverty offered to her. She had never suspected that she was the needy one and they the ones chosen to give. How could she have lived so long and so near people all her life and known so little about them? How could she have known so little about herself?

  Through association with Frederick Douglass and the other refugees, Henry’s and her lives had been enriched. Through their efforts for the cause of enslaved Negroes, they had been transformed from an impoverished preacher’s children—he into the most famous man in America and she from a poor theologian’s wife into a celebrated author of means welcomed at royal tables. But the greatest changes had been wrought inside: Their challenges had taught her to love.

  Frederick and the others had become her teachers. They had challenged and improved her writing. They had helped improve her heart.

  She tried to imagine the faces of slaves she had passed on the street and to imagine what she might have missed. She imagined what treasure might have been hidden there.

  Harriet had had a great deal of schooling. She had taught; she was well read and an esteemed author. Yet Douglass reminded her that she had much to learn about others… and about herself. “Study to shew thyself approved.” Harriet was willing to learn.

  Frederick Douglass leaned forward in his seat, his eyes intent on her brother.

  Henry stepped toward the front of the pulpit. “To gain true happiness, man must learn how to love. How to love, not a little, but a great deal; how to love, not occasionally, but so that he is tied up by it; he is in bondage to it, it rules him.”

  He turned and walked toward them. Now Henry stood among the people. “For the only slave on God’s earth that needs no compassion and pity is the slave of love.”

  Nat Turner

  Chapter 8

  Cross Keys Area, outside Jerusalem, Virginia

  Christmas 1830

  Nat Turner’s feet were thawing and had begun to ache. He looked down at them, at the fissures—the bleeding cracks in his flesh, wide as a small child’s finger. He looked around the room at all the suffering feet. Shoes, even old worn ones, would have been a gift of love.

  The children had moved on to another Christmas song.

  Jesus, Jesus!

  Oh, what a wonderful child!

  Jesus, Jesus!

  So holy, meek, and mild!

  New life, new hope to all He brings.

  God had sent him back for them.

  Listen to the angels sing,

  Glory! Glory! Glory!

  To the newborn King!

  The aroma from the iron kettle, the sweetness of the corn bread, and the salty, vinegary smell of the pigs’ feet filled the room.

  Dred, one of Nathaniel Francis’s slaves, spoke now. “More could be with us, but they are drunk, drinking the whiskey given to them to keep them drunk during the holidays. Christmas whiskey nothing but wet chains.”

  Nat Turner answered, “Maybe they drink to save their lives.”

  “Funny words from someone whose lips have never touched liquor.” Nat’s friend Hark laughed.

  “These are hard times with no good choices. I don’t think drinking is best, but perhaps they do what they have to not to explode—to dull the pain, to stay alive.”

  Whiskey for Christmas was what the white people gave them. A turkey and a full stomach would have been a better Christmas gift—a book to read, or even a coat to wear.

  Three of the boys went outside for more wood to keep the fire burning. Joshing, coatless, and shoeless, they piled out the door.

  Nat Turner, looking through a crack in the boards that covered the window opening, was reminded of himself and Hark. He remembered when the two of them were as young as the boys outside, boys stealing a moment’s rest on Cabin Pond. He remembered. Hark always smiled, but he was truly the practical one, speaking back then about what he knew and what he had seen.

  It was the debate they had been engaged in for years.

  We are slaves and we are always gonna be slaves. That’s how it has always been and that’s how it is always gonna be.

  But that’s not how it always was. We were kings on this earth. There are places where we are still kings.

  There you go again, Nat Turner, talking crazy about Africa. Why can’t you leave it alone?

  We are more than this. More than this! We are smart. Brave. Why can’t we be colonel? Why always the slave?

  Let them be colonel. Let them be president if that will make them happy. I don’t want colonel. Colonel will get me killed.

  Do you think God put us here just to be nothing? To tote, lift, and hold up walls?

  God sees how things are down here. I don’t see Him coming down here to stop it. He is a white God. He puts white people first. His people, white people, win.

  He is our God, too. We are smart as John Clarke, smarter than Salathiel and Whitehead.

  Don’t let somebody hear you say that. Your mama will be holding a dead son.

  Why should I lie? You see them. Why shouldn’t we be more? Why shouldn’t we dream?

  Dream? What I’m trying to do is survive.

  I don’t believe God put us here just to do nothing, be nothing. Long ago, there were great kings of Ethiopia with names like Menelik, and a great king of Assyria named Xerxes, and they were black like us and—

  And that was long ago, if it ever was. I never saw any of it. What I can see with my eyes is that somebody owns me and if I don’t want to get beat, don’t want to hang, I better not tell him he’s wrong.

  He is wrong!

  Nat, one of these days you are going to get you and me both killed.

  Just think about it… living in a big house, a mansion, commanding armies, and leading the nation!

  Hark laughed. Giving speeches with flags waving over
your head!

  Why shouldn’t we? Why shouldn’t we dream?

  I’m telling you, boy. Nat Turner, you gone get us killed.

  The children were still singing, the women stirring in the pots. Nat Turner looked out the window again at the boys. They were at a dangerous age; physical signs of adulthood were about to betray them: It was dangerous for a black boy to show that he was a man.

  They could be cute little black boy babies, but even at five things changed and mothers were already worried for their black sons, worried that they would not live. At eleven, twelve, thirteen even more danger. There was a change in the way people treated them; threatened by their maturity.

  Cold air blew through the crack in the window board, and he looked out again at the boys tussling in the snow. They were growing into the bodies of men. They would need men’s minds if they were to survive.

  At twelve or thirteen, white boys began to grow the beginnings of what would be whiskers, then titles, deeds, stars on their shoulders, and dreams that dangled from their chests. White boys grew to be men while black boys grew to be stooped, gray-haired boys fighting to stay alive.

  Most of the boys were no longer living with their mothers. Those mothers who still had their sons loved them, but wore worry on their faces. It was the look he had seen on his own mother’s face. They worried if they could hold them, if they could guide them, if they could help the seed inside them to survive. Mothers with unlined faces and prematurely gray hair worried, mothers who were afraid for their sons to dream, feared their sons would not survive. One grabbed her son by the ear. “Little nigger, I will skin you alive.” Thirsty, with no other liquids offered to her, she had drunk in violent words. They were the only words she knew, so she poured them out on her son to protect him, to show him he was loved.

  Nat Turner noticed the boy Davy, the one Nathaniel Francis called Two Feet, standing off from the other boys, watching as he leaned on his stick.