Harriet touched her face. She was a preacher’s daughter, the famous Puritan Lyman Beecher’s daughter. She wrote Sunday school lessons and Bible tracts. She sewed flags and sang “Yankee Doodle” at Fourth of July outings. Her brother was a pastor who preached love, a husband and a father who would give all he had to help a soul in need. And Frederick Douglass was as charitable, as intelligent, and as deserving of freedom as Floyd or any other man. How did standing up for another’s freedom make one a turncoat or a criminal?
Henry shrugged. “We call what they do sin and it offends them. We propose taking away their stolen treasure and they do not want to relinquish it.”
Harriet looked at her brother. “I read it over and over; I try to understand the logic of it, but to no avail.”
Henry laid his pages on the couch beside him. “The devil’s work most often makes no sense. Still we are deluded and go gaily skipping behind him.”
Frederick Douglass went straight to the point. “Has this letter convinced you to retell the story of Nat Turner?”
She was prepared, even excited, to share the anonymous letter. But, foolishly, she had not prepared to answer the issue they had been pressing her about for months. “What is here, in these excerpts, does match the stories told me by Phipps and William.”
Henry nodded. “You must begin writing at once, then.”
Harriet reached out for the papers she had shared with her brother. She had made only trouble for herself by sharing them. “I think I need more.”
Henry’s gaze was unrelenting. “More? Why?”
Because she wasn’t sure. Because for so long, like everyone else, she had thought of him as a baby-killer and a ruthless, indiscriminate murderer. Because… she was not comfortable. “I want to be certain.”
“What would make you more certain?”
She turned at the sound of Frederick’s deep, authoritative voice. “Everything I thought I knew has turned out to be a hoax. I have no idea who Nat Turner was. What kind of slave, what kind of man must he have been to have these men, men who had all power in their hands, bother to concoct such an elaborate lie?”
Henry picked up his pages from the couch. “Governor Floyd says of President Andrew Jackson, ‘Jackson with all his unworthy officers, men not gentlemen, who lie, mutilate records, alter dates.’ Maybe the men in Southampton were infected by the behaviors of the reigning administration.”
Truthfully, Harriet felt pressure from all sides now. At first, the pressure had come from without—from her brother and Frederick Douglass, who wanted her to write the story. Now she felt pressure from within—as though her heart was wrestling with her mind. “Perhaps if I could speak with someone who knew him I might be more reassured.”
Frederick Douglass’s gaze was sympathetic. He seemed to understand her struggle, but still he pressed her—as though he were saying that what needed to be done was bigger than her insecurities. “You have spoken with Will. Would you speak with him again?”
“No!” The word popped from her mouth, too soon for her comfort. She breathed then went on speaking. “No. His anger, his passion distress me.”
Henry was her brother, and he was not so gentle with her. “Be reasonable, Hattie. How would you expect someone who has suffered as he has to behave?”
Harriet looked back at the pages she held, wanting to change the subject. She did not want to see William again. She did not want to speak with him. He frightened her. She worked to regain her composure and slow her breathing.
She began to read again, taking a lighter tone. “Governor Floyd calls us a ‘club of villains.’ A club of villains ‘maturing plans of treason and rebellion and insurrection in Virginia and the Southern States.’ He speaks of withdrawing from the Union.” She looked up from her reading. “South Carolina and the others have threatened secession each time something did not suit them. Do you believe the South really might secede?”
Henry nodded. “They might try.”
“And if they do?”
“Then there will be war.”
There had already been bloody skirmishes, like the gory massacre and firing of Lawrence, Kansas, by slavery men. And John Brown had used rifles, like Henry’s Beecher’s Bibles, against proslavery men. She did not want to think of the nation at war. Each of them had sons. She did not want to think of their sons marching off to war. “I do not want disunion. I do not want war.”
“Perhaps, if you will consent to write the story,” Henry said pointedly. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin has already done so much good. If the nation knew the truth about Nat Turner, more might be persuaded to stand against slavery. It might die without bloodshed, like in England.”
Harriet tried to laugh away her anxiety and pressure about the Nat Turner story. What did it all have to do with her? “I’m a Yankee, you know. We’re mind-your-own-business kind of people. I’m not sure this is my business.”
Henry would not let up. “You believed Uncle Tom’s Cabin was your business. How is this different?”
“This mishmash with Nat Turner is the South’s business, isn’t it? Let men like Governor Floyd work it out. Who am I to interfere?”
Frederick Douglass looked down at the pages in his hand. “But men like Floyd, fence straddlers, haven’t been able to work it out. His attempt at gradual abolition failed, these notes say, because the slave-holding portion of his state threatened to secede from Virginia if pressed about slavery.”
Still perched on the couch, irritation lacing his voice, Henry frowned. “Are we not our brother’s keeper, Hattie? You sound like our older sister, Catherine. Do you really believe this is the South’s private affair?”
“Maybe she is right.”
“You know better, Hattie! It is fear I hear speaking, not my courageous sister.”
“Maybe Governor Floyd was right. We are staunch abolitionists. But, perhaps, how the South resolves the issue of slavery is their affair—like what happens behind a family’s closed door. Maybe we should mind our own business.” Harriet was surprised by her own words and thoughts.
“Nat Turner was the thud against the wall.” Frederick Douglass’s voice cut through her efforts to reassure herself, to make room to step away from it all.
“I don’t understand.”
“Even with neighbors, who respect one another’s privacy, there is a time to step in.” Frederick Douglass rubbed his beard again. “Nat Turner was the black eye, the scream from the apartment next door.” He lifted The Confessions of Nat Turner. “This lie and his death say we cannot sit back and do nothing. Because of Nat Turner, we can no longer pretend not to know what is happening right next door to us. Can we turn our backs and pretend we don’t hear or see? We cannot leave them to suffer. We must do what we can, even if we must invade their privacy, to end the suffering. Even if it means risking our reputations, or even our own lives.”
The three of them were silent. Harriet heard the clock on the study mantel ticking. “Do you think there will be war?”
Frederick’s voice was no more than a whisper. “Though my heart is heavy, I think it is inevitable.” The clock sounded even louder in the silence. “We must do what we can to prevent it.”
Henry stood then and came and knelt before Harriet. He took her hand. “We must summon the courage to speak up, to say clearly who we are and what we believe. We must have the fortitude to confront lies with truth. We must do all we can, with all that has been given us, to set the captives free. Courage today or there will surely be carnage tomorrow.”
A tear stung her cheek. She looked deeply into the eyes she had trusted all her life. Harriet squeezed Henry’s hand.
“When would you like to meet with William again?”
She turned toward Frederick. “I do want to find the real Nat Turner.” If she was going to commit to truth, she might as well begin now. “But William makes me uncomfortable. He alarms me.”
Frederick nodded. “If we would seek after truth and love, the path will lead us through dangerous places, past
strangers who frighten us. But if we find the courage to persevere, we will find what we seek.”
Harriet nodded and agreed that Mr. Douglass should arrange a second meeting as soon as possible.
Nat Turner
Chapter 15
Cross Keys Area, outside Jerusalem, Virginia
Christmas 1830
Nat Turner bowed his head to pray with the others over their Christmas dinner—beans, corn bread, greens, and cabbage flavored with pigs’ feet and tails. He dipped his spoon into the food and tasted. He nodded his compliments to Mrs. Hathcock.
Some had criticized him years ago, after his return from the Great Dismal Swamp, telling him they would not return to slavery for anything or for anyone. He looked at the men, women, and children around him—at his wife and at his mother.
Some understood now why he had returned. Others might never understand. He had come back in obedience to God. He had come back for his people.
Nat Turner looked at Cherry, who sat beside him. No matter what, he would never leave her again.
She was Giles Reese’s captive now. When she bore children they belonged to Reese to do with as he pleased. Nat Turner turned his head away. He would not think of it. Still, when he was with her now, there was ache in his delight. There was a wound in his side, and life leaked from it.
But he loved her. Only death could force him to leave her. Even the humiliation could not drive him away, even if he could see her only now and then, he would not leave.
He looked around the room at all the people gathered in the small cabin for Christmas dinner. He would remember every face, every movement, every smile, and every tear.
He looked at the cracked feet and imagined the broken hearts he could not see. His son, Riddick, came to him then. Nat Turner wrapped an arm around the boy, rubbed a hand through his hair, and then they shared food from his plate. God had sent him back for his son.
Nat Turner tilted Riddick’s head back and kissed his forehead. He smiled at Cherry and then, together, he and his son ate the last of the cabbage on his tin plate. It would be his last Christmas.
When the early night of winter came and they were all full from the holiday dinner, or what passed for full, Nat Turner led the people out. He had been planning for months. Cherry walked beside him. He felt in his pocket for the gunpowder, then took Riddick’s hand. He held a piece of burning wood aloft as a torch to lead the way. The people followed behind him, silent with anticipation.
Light from the torch made a golden circular pool against the darkness that bobbled, sometimes lighting the trunks of the dark trees. His feet had thawed in the warm cabin, but they were rapidly numbing again. He looked back at the old people and children who followed, and nodded to encourage them. Nat Turner smiled at Cherry and squeezed Riddick’s hand.
Young and old, men and women, they followed Nat Turner along a hidden trail that led to a quiet clearing he knew of deep in the woods. He heard bare feet, hard frozen like clubs, crunching in the snow. Occasionally a child giggled, a woman laughed. He motioned for them to be quiet.
If they were lucky, there would be a patch free of snow beneath the tree branches that arched high above the clearing.
When they reached the spot, there was a bare place as he’d hoped. Nat Turner directed them to form a circle around him, older ones—to honor them—and little ones—so they could see—in the front. He didn’t have much of the powder, none to spare.
He dumped it out on the ground and formed it into a mound. He stood then and looked around at them. God had sent him back for them. “For God who loved us enough to send His son! For freedom!” He touched the torch to the powder and leapt back. There was an explosion and a white flash!
The people stood in awe, their mouths open, their eyes wide. Christmas. Their Fourth of July! One woman raised her hands. Then they shouted and stomped. The children jumped in the air. All the people clapped their hands.
God had spoken. Now Nat Turner waited for the sign.
Harriet
Chapter 16
1856
Harriet looked around William’s Boston shop. She was struck again by the peacefulness of the place. But outside the shop, in Kansas, in the halls of Congress, and even in the streets of Boston, bloody skirmishes continued about slavery and particularly about the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act.
Her brother Henry and Frederick Douglass insisted she meet with William again. But there is no one else to do it. People are suffering and you can help them; you have the attention of the world.
During their last meeting at Plymouth Church, they had discussed Governor Floyd being double-minded. But her mind also was divided. Harriet did not want war, and she was committed to working to end slavery. She was willing to write—she had proven that with Uncle Tom—and she was willing to accept the ridicule of those who disagreed with her stance. But she was not certain about Nat Turner. She no longer knew what to believe.
For years she, like the rest of America, had believed what she read in The Confessions. The document was signed by six judges and the Southampton County clerk. How could it not be true? And if it was a lie, what kind of man was the real Nat Turner?
Harriet was unsure. She only committed to listening.
There had been riots in Boston, Philadelphia, and even in small towns like York, Pennsylvania, when slave catchers had come North trying to reclaim slaves. People like William, a slave refugee from Virginia, and even Frederick Douglass, were at risk—they could be sent back South in chains. But the people in cities and towns, risking their own freedom, were rebelling against the Fugitive Slave Act and hiding, or even rescuing, the refugees by force. They were so brave, but all she felt was a nagging fear.
“I have not agreed to write his story.” She paused, sizing up William, the man who sat across from her—a coconspirator in Nat Turner’s uprising. “They tell me you know more about him than any man alive.” Harriet looked down at her notes. “But you said, before, you did not like him.”
William nodded. “But in the end, he was my friend. He gave me the gift few people would choose to give another. He gave me my life. He gave me hope.”
“Hope?” How could anyone who had been a slave, who had been through what the slaves had been through, speak of hope? She would not have known where to go or where to begin looking. “I cannot imagine.”
“I found my sister still in bonds, the light stolen from her heart and beaten out of her eyes.” William lowered his voice, his shoulders tensed. “I must decline, for the safety of others, to tell you where I found her or the exact circumstances of my spiriting her away.” He seemed to relax again. “She was the first missing part of me that I found.” The light flickered out in his eyes. “I still have not found my wife. Though I still sometimes muster the strength to hope, there is no sign of her.” His hands clenched and then unclenched.
Silent, Harriet looked around the shop and then back at William.
He cleared his throat. “God gave me back part of my life. He gave me back my sister and, with her, a niece. He gave me a voice.” William lifted his teacup, smiled briefly at Harriet, and then set it back on the saucer. “There is hope for bloodthirsty men.” He briefly flashed another smile.
Moved, she knew she mustn’t be so sympathetic that she failed to ask him the difficult questions. Harriet looked toward the other room where her brother and Frederick Douglass were waiting. The Confessions described Will as an executioner. How would he react to her questions? “What about all the lives you took?”
Surprisingly, William seemed nonplussed. “How many slave cheeks do you suppose were turned and lives taken? How many knees were bowed and pleas made? But it seems that violent people only understand violence. What remedy would you recommend to God for those who murder His children, or even your own?” The muscles at his temple throbbed. “They justify what they did to us by twisting the Old Testament. How long did they expect to continue before God unleashed Old Testament vengeance?
“Do you think God actu
ally stood back without care and watched as His children were slaughtered?” William straightened his collar.
Though he was silent for a moment, his nostrils flared. “I believe that He wept. I believe from the beginning He planned to deliver us.”
Then William’s face was suddenly surprisingly emotionless. “They pretend to be God-lovers, but they are man-haters, and God will not be mocked. How can you torture your brother and say you love him? You cannot imprison others and say you love freedom. You cannot breathe war and say you are a peacemaker.
“It was God’s command. War. Judgment. But it was their choice—they could have chosen to repent; they could have chosen mercy for themselves.” His demeanor was placid as he delivered the words. “They held money, property, and power more valuable than men’s souls. It was their choice.”
“You seem to doubt that they were or are Christians.”
His eyes bore into hers. “I am no judge, but in the wake of a Christian’s footsteps, there ought to be love.”
It was strange to hear William talk about love, to speak words that seemed kin to Henry’s. Before her sat a murderer speaking of love; she looked for some sign of insincerity.
“Slavery men are angry and discontent; they do not see themselves. They leave a trail of bitterness and sorrow behind them. They try to make their lives full with more houses, more servants, more lace, more money. They cannot even say they are wrong and repent to God. They cannot humble themselves and apologize.” A slight smile, an ironic one, played at the corner of William’s lips. “I know what it is to be angry, to choose judgment rather than mercy.”
His expression sobered. “I was bound, I was a slave, but the worst bondage was what I suffered inside. The worst was what I had to admit and confess before I could speak again, before I could love again.”
“Love? But you killed so many people.” Harriet looked for something in his eyes, some sign of deceit.
The Resurrection of Nat Turner, Part 2: The Testimonial Page 8