The Confessions of Nat Turner (13 page)

and sister to Mr. Richard Whitehead, a respected Methodist minister known to many of those in this courtroom, who likewise met a cruel fate at the hands of this inhuman pack. One murder alone, it seems plain, was all that Nat Turner committed. A particularly foul and dastardly murder it was, to be sure—taking the fragile life of a young girl in all her pure innocence. Yet I am convinced that this was the defendant’s sole and solitary victim.

Convinced, your Honors, only after much preliminary skepticism.

For indeed—perhaps like your honorable selves—skepticism nagged at, nay, overwhelmed me when I pondered close the evidence I transcribed from the prisoner’s own lips. Would not the admission of a single slaying—a single slaying alone—be tantamount to a sly plea for clemency? Thoroughly in key with the malingering nature of the Negro character, would not such an admission be typical of the evasiveness which the Negro perennially employs to cloak and disguise the base quality of his nature? I thereupon resolved upon a sturdy confrontal of the defendant with my strictures and doubts, only to discover that he was adamant in his refusal to admit a greater involvement in the actual slayings. And at this moment—if the court will permit me the levity—I had begun durn well to doubt my doubts. For why should a person, knowing full well that he must die for his deeds anyway, having already owned to one ghastly murder, and having displayed otherwise a remarkable candor in terms of the extent of his crimes—why should he not own
all
? ‘The man hath The Confessions of Nat Turner

71

penance done,’ quoth the poet Coleridge in his immortal rhyme,

‘and penance more will do.’ What availed the defendant any further reticence?” Gray halted, then resumed: “Thus, not without some reluctance, I concluded that in terms of this
beaucoup
important item—the killing of one individual, and one individual alone—the prisoner was speaking the truth . . .

“But why?” Gray continued. “
Why
only one? This was the next question to which I addressed myself, and which caused me a severe and worrisome perplexity. Cowardice alone may well have served to explain this oddity. Certainly, pure Negro cowardice would find its quintessential expression in this base crime—the slaying not of a virile and stalwart man but of a fragile, weak, and helpless young maiden but a few years out of childhood. Yet once again, your Honors, logic and naked fact compel us to admit that this insurrection has caused us to rearrange, at least provisonally, some of our traditional notions about Negro cowardice. For certainly, whatever the deficiencies of the Negro character—and they are many, varied, and grave—

this uprising has proved beyond any captious argument that the ordinary Negro slave, faced with the choice of joining up with a fanatical insurgent leader such as Nat Turner or defending his fond and devoted master, will leap to his master’s defense and fight as bravely as any man, and by so doing give proud evidence of the benevolence of a system so ignorantly decried by the Quakers and other such moralistically dishonest detractors. ‘Whatever is unknown is magnified,’ quoth Tacitus in
Agricola!
So
much
for Northern ignorance. To be sure, Nat Turner had his misguided adherents. But the bravery of those black men who at their good masters’ sides fought faithfully and well cannot be gainsaid, and let it be so recorded to the everlasting honor of this genial institution . . .”

Now as Gray spoke, the same sense of misery and despair I had felt that first day when, in the cell, Gray had tolled off the list of slaves acquitted, transported, but not hung—
them other niggers,
dragooned, balked, it was them other niggers that cooked your
goose, Reverend
—this same despair suddenly rolled over me in a cold and sickening wave, mingled with the dream I had had, only a few minutes before, of the Negro boys screaming their terror in the swamp, sinking out of sight beneath the mire . . .

Sweating, the sweat rolling in streams down my cheeks, I felt an inward, uncontrollable wrench of guilt and loss, and I must have made a sound in my throat, or moved in my rattling chains, uncontrollably again, for Gray suddenly halted and turned and The Confessions of Nat Turner

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stared at me, as did the six old men at the bench, and I could feel the eyes of the spectators on me, blinking and blinking, watching. Then I slowly relaxed, with a kind of icy interior shudder, and gazed out through the steaming windows at the ragged grove of pine trees far off beneath the wintry sky—of a sudden then, for no particular reason other than that once more I had heard her name, thinking of Margaret Whitehead in some fragrant, summery context of dappled light and shade, dust blooming up from a baked and rutted summer road, and her voice clear, whispery, and girlish beside me on the carriage seat as I gaze at the mare’s clipclopping hooves beneath the coarse and flourishing tail:
And he came himself—the Governor, Nat!

Governor Floyd! All the way down to Lawrenceville he came!

Isn’t that just the most glorious thing you ever heard?
And my own voice, polite, respectful:
Yes, missy, that must indeed be
something grand
. And again the breathless and whispery girl’s voice:
And we had a big ceremony at the Seminary, Nat. And it
was the most splendiferous thing! And I’m the class poet and I
wrote an ode and a song that the little students sang. And the
little girls presented the Governor with a wreath. Want to hear
the words of the song, Nat? Want to hear them?
And again my own voice, solemn and polite:
Why yes, missy. I’d sure love to
hear that song
. And then the joyous and girlish voice in my ear above the jogging, squeaking springs, mountainous white drifting clouds of June sending across the parched fields immensities of light and dark, dissolving patterns of shade and sun: We’ll pull a bunch of buds and flowers, And tie a ribbon round them;

If you’ll but think, in your lonely hours, Of the sweet little girls that bound them.

We’ll cull the earliest that put forth, And those that last the longest,

And the bud that boasts the fairest birth, Shall cling to the stem the strongest . . .

Gray’s voice swam back through the courtroom above the restless shuffle, the hiss and hum and torment of the stove, panting like an old hound: “. . . was not Negro cowardice in this case, honorable Justices, which was at the root of the The Confessions of Nat Turner

73

defendant’s egregious and total failure. Had it been pure cowardice, Nat would have conducted his operation from a vantage point allowing him but little if any propinquity with the carnage, the bloody proceedings themselves. But we know from the prisoner’s own testimony, and from the testimony of the nigger . . . Negro Hark and the others—and we have no clear reason to doubt any of it—that he himself was intimately involved in the proceedings, striking the first blow toward their execution, and repeatedly attempting to wreak murderous acts of violence upon the terrified and innocent victims.” Gray paused for an instant, then said with emphasis: “But note well, your Honors, that I say
attempting
. I stress and underline that world. I put that word in
majuscules!
For save in the inexplicably successful murder of Margaret Whitehead—inexplicably motivated, likewise obscurely executed—the defendant, this purported bold, intrepid, and resourceful leader, was unable to carry out a
single feat of
arms!
Not only this, but at the end his quality of leadership, such as it was, utterly deserted him!” Gray paused again, then went on in a soft, somber, deliberate voice: “I humbly submit to this court and your Honors the inescapable fact that the qualities of irresolution, instability, spiritual backwardness, and plain habits of docility are so deeply embedded in the Negro nature that any insurgent action on the part of this race is doomed to failure; and for this reason it is my sincere plea that the good people of our Southland yield not, succumb not to the twin demons of terror and panic . . .”

But listen, Nat, listen to the rest
. . .

Yes, missy, I’m listening. That’s a very fine poem, Miss Margaret.

. .

We’ve run about the garden walks

And searched among the dew, Sir,

These fragrant flowers, these tender stalks, We’ve plucked them all for you, Sir.

Pray, take this bunch of buds and flowers, Pray, take the ribbon round them;

And sometimes think, in your lonely hours, Of the sweet little girls that bound them.

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There! That’s the end of it! What do you think of it, Nat? What do
you think?

That’s a very beautiful poem, missy.
The mare’s rump tawny and glistening, and slower now clipclopping past green hayfields busy with the cricketing stitch of insects; slowly I too turn, eying her face with a nigger’s tentative, cautious, evasive glance (some old black mammy’s warning ever a watchword, even now:
Look a white folks in de eye you prayin’ for trouble
), catching a glimpse of the cheekbone’s lovely swerve and the fine white skin, milky, transparent, the nose uptilted and the shadow of a saucy dimple in a round young chin. She is wearing a white bonnet, and beneath it glossy strands of hair the color of chestnut have become unloosened, which all unconsciously lends to her demure and virginal beauty the faintest touch of wantonness. Sheathed in white Sunday linen, she is sweating, and I am close enough to smell her sweat, pungent and womanly and disturbing; now she laughs her high, giggly girlish laugh, wipes a tiny bubble of perspiration from her nose, and suddenly turning to gaze straight in my eyes, takes me off guard with a look joyous, gay, and unwittingly coquettish. Confused, embarrassed, I swiftly turn away.
You should have seen the
Governor, Nat. Such a fine-looking man! And oh yes, I almost
forgot. There was an account of it in the Southside Reporter, and
it mentions my poem, and me! I have it right here, listen
. For a moment she is silent as she gropes in her handbag, then reads rapidly, the voice breathless and excited above the drumming hooves.
The Governor was then conducted into the Academical
Apartment where upwards of a hundred pupils were handsomely
arranged to receive him, and where a brilliant circle of ladies had
previously assembled to witness the scene. After being
introduced, an address was delivered by the Principal, to which
Governor Floyd made a feeling and appropriate reply. An original
ode for the occasion was then sung by the young ladies,
accompanied by Miss Timberlake on the piano, to the air of
Strike the Cymbal. Miss Covington then delivered the
committee’s address in behalf of the school, in a style of pathos
and eloquence which could not easily be surpassed . . . (Now
listen, Nat, this is about me . . .) Miss Margaret Whitehead’s ode
then followed, at the close of which the youngest pupils sang, in
the most charming manner, Buds and Flowers, as a sequel to
the ode, and at the same time presented a wreath. The effect
was electrical, and almost every eye was in tears. We doubt
whether the Governor has anywhere witnessed a more
interesting scene, than this one in our own Seminary, dedicated
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to the highest principles of Christian female education . . .

What do you think of that, Nat?

That’s mighty fine, missy. That’s mighty fine and grand. Yes, yes,
that’s just grand.

There is a moment’s silence, then:
I thought you would like the
poem. Oh, I knew you would like it, Nat! Because you—oh,
you’re not like Mama or Richard. Every weekend I’ve come over
from school you’ve been the only one I could talk to. All Mama
cares about is the crops—I mean the timber and the corn and
those oxen and all—and making money. And Richard is just as
bad almost. I mean he’s a preacher and all but there’s nothing,
oh, spiritual about him at all. I mean they don’t understand
anything about poetry or spiritual things or even religious things.

I mean the other day I said something to Richard about the
beauty of the Psalms and he said, with that sort of scrunched-up
sour look: What beauty? I mean can youimagine that, Nat? From
your own brother and a preacher, too! What is your favorite
Psalm, Nat?

For a moment I am silent. We are going to be late to church, and I urge the mare along at a canter, tapping her rump with the whip as the dust swarms and billows around her prancing feet. Then I say:
That’s right hard to tell, Miss Margaret. There’s a whole slew
of Psalms I dearly love. I reckon though I love the best the one
that begins: Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me:
for my soul trusteth in thee: yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I
make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast. I pause,
then say: I will cry unto God most high; unto God that performeth
all things for me.
And then I say:
That’s the way it begins. That is
number Fifty-seven.

Yes, yes,
she says in her whispery voice.
Oh yes, that’s the one
that has the verse in it that goes: Awake up, my glory; awake,
psaltery and harp: I myself will awake early
. As she speaks, I feel her closeness, oppressive, disturbing, almost frightening, the flutter and tremble of her linen dress against my sleeve.
Oh yes,
it is so beautiful I could just weep. You’re so good at
remembering the Bible, Nat. And you have such a knowledge of,
oh, spiritual things. I mean it’s funny, you know, when I tell the
girls at school they just don’t believe me when I say I go home
on weekends and the only person I can talk to is a—is a darky!