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knitting in the coolness of a country parlor or the innocent lad seated contemplating the cobwebbed walls of an outhouse in a summery field—the whole world of white flesh would someday founder and split apart upon my retribution, would perish by my design and at my hands. My stomach heaved and I restrained the urge to vomit on the boards where I sat.

But now the commotion across the road dwindled, the shouts fell away, and the circle of white men broke up as they turned their attention to other pleasures. Aslant to one side in the saddle, Francis rode off at a lurching pace down the street, exhausted by his sport, smiling a smile of gratification and conquest. And at this moment I saw Will and Sam—battered-looking, bruised, and dusty—cross the road together, weaving toward the market. Will was muttering to himself as he stroked a swollen jaw and Sam shivered while he walked, trembling in pain, misery, and in the throes of grievous shame and abasement—a short, wiry little mulatto neither too old yet nor too calloused by suffering to be prevented from sobbing bitterly like a child as he wiped the blood away from a jagged cut across his lips. Still unperceiving of anything at all, still witlessly amused by Hark’s account of the fray, the Negroes on the gallery watched Sam and Will approach and kept laughing. It was then that I rose to face them.

“My brothers!” I cried. “Stop yo’ laughin’ and listen to me! Leave off from that laughin’, brothers, and listen to a minister of the Holy Word!” A hush fell over the Negroes and they stirred restlessly, turned toward me, puzzlement and wonder in their eyes. “Come closer!” I commanded them. “This here is no time for laughin’! This is a time for weepin’, for
lamentation!
For rage!

You is
men,
brothers,
men
not beasts of the field! You ain’t no four-legged dogs! You is
men,
I say! Where oh where, my brothers, is yo’ pride?”

Slowly, one by one, the Negroes drew near, among them Will and Sam, who climbed up from the road and stood gazing at me as they mopped their faces with gray slimy wads of waste cotton.

Still others shuffled closer—young men mostly, along with a few older slaves; they scratched themselves out of nervousness, some eyes darted furtively across the road. But all were silent now, and with a delicious chill I could feel the way in which they had responded to the fury in my words, like blades of sawgrass bending to a sudden wind. And I began to realize, far back in the remotest corner of my mind, that I had commenced the first sermon I had ever preached. They became still. Brooding, The Confessions of Nat Turner

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motionless, the Negroes gazed at me with watchful and reflective concern, some of them hardly drawing a breath. My language was theirs, I spoke it as if it were a second tongue. My rage had captured them utterly, and I felt a thrill of power course out from myself to wrap them round, binding us for this moment as one.

“My brothers,” I said in a gentler tone, “many of you has been to church with yo’ mastahs and mist’esses at the Whitehead church or up Shiloh way or down at Nebo or Mount Moriah. Most of you hasn’t got no religion. That’s awright. White man’s religion don’t teach nothin’ to black folk except to obey ole mastah and live humble—walk light and talk small. That’s awright. But them of you that recollects they Bible teachin’ knows about Israel in Egypt an’ the peoples that was kept in bondage. Them peoples was Jewish peoples an’ they had names just like us black folk—like you right there, Nathan, an’ you, Joe—Joe is a Jewish name—an’ you there, Daniel. Them Jews was just like the black folk. They had to sweat they fool asses off fo’ ole Pharaoh. That white man had them Jews haulin’ wood an’ pullin’ rock and thrashin’ corn an’ makin’ bricks until they was near ’bout dead an’ didn’t git ary penny for none of it neither, like ev’y livin’

mothah’s son of us, them Jews was in
bondage
. They didn’t have enough to eat neither, just some miser’ble cornmeal with weevils in it an’ sour milk an’ a little fatback that done got so high it would turn a buzzard’s stomach. Drought an’ hunger run throughout the land, just like now. Oh, my brothers, that was a sad time in Egypt fo’ them Jews! It was a time fo’ weepin’ an’

lamentation, a time of toil an’ hunger, a time of
pain!
Pharaoh he whupped them Jews until they had red whelps on ’em from head to toe an’ ev’y night they went to bed cryin’, ‘Lord, Lord, when is you goin’ to make that white man set us free?’ ”

There was a stirring among the Negroes and I heard a voice in the midst of them say, “Yes, yes,” faint and plaintive, and still another voice: “Mm-huh, dat’s
right!”
I stretched out an arm slowly, as if to embrace them, and some of the crowd moved nearer still.

“Look aroun’ you, brothers,” I said, “what does you see? What does you see in the air? What does you see blowin’ in the air?”

The Negroes turned their faces toward the town, raised their eyes skyward: there in amber translucent haze the smoke from the distant fires swam through the streets, touching the gallery, even as I spoke, with its acrid and apple-sweet taste of scorched timber, its faint smell of corruption.

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“That there is the smoke of
pestilence,
brothers,” I went on, “the smoke of pestilence an’ death. The same smoke that hanged over the Jews in bondage down there in Egypt land. The same smoke of pestilence an’ death that hanged over them Jews in Egypt hangs over all black folk, all men whose skin is black, yo’

skin and mine. An’ we got a tougher row to hoe even than them Jews. Joseph he was at least a man, not no four-legged dog. My brothers, laughter is good, laughter is bread and salt and buttermilk and a balm for pain. But they is a time for ev’ything.

They is a time for weepin’ too. A time for rage! And in bondage black folk like you an’ me must weep in they rage.
Leave off
from such dumb laughter like just now!” I cried, my voice rising. “When a white man he lift a hand against one of us’ns we must not laugh but rage and weep! ‘By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept when we remembered Zion!’ That’s right!”

(“Mm-huh, dat’s right!” came the voice again, joined by another.)

“ ‘We hanged our harps upon the willows, for they that carried us away captive required of us a song. How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?’
That’s right!”
I said, the words bitter on my tongue. “White man make you sing an’ dance, make you shuffle, do the buck-an’-wing, play ‘Ole Zip Coon’ on the banjo and the fiddle. ‘They that carried us away captive required of us a song.’ Yes! Leave off from that singin’, leave off from that banjo, leave off from that buck-an’-wing! They is a time for ev’ything. This is no time fo’ singin’, fo’ laughter. Look aroun’

you, my brothers, look into each other’s eyes! You jest seen a white man pit brother ‘gainst brother! Ain’t none of you no four-legged beasts what can be whupped an’ hurt like some flea-bit cur dog. You is men! You is
men
, my dear brothers, look at yo’selves, look to yo’
pride!
”

As I spoke, I saw two older black men at the rear of the crowd mutter to each other and shake their heads. Glances of puzzlement and worry crossed their faces and they sidled off, disappeared. The others still listened, intent, brooding, nearly motionless. I heard a soft sigh and a gentle “Amen.” I raised my arms to either side of me and extended my hands, palms outward, as if in benediction. I felt the sweat pouring from my face.

“In the visions of the night, brothers,” I continued, “God spoke to Jacob an’ He said, ‘I am God, the God of thy father: fear not to go down into Egypt, for I will there make of thee a great nation.’

An’ Jacob went down into Egypt an’ the peoples of Israel multiplied an’ Moses was born. Moses he was born in the The Confessions of Nat Turner

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bulrushers an’ he delivered the Jews out of Egypt an’ into the Promised Land. Well, there they had a powerful lot of troubles too. But in the Promised Land them Jewish peoples they could stand up an’ live like
men
. They become a great nation. No more fatback, no more pint of salt, no more peck of corn fo’ them Jews; no more overseers, no more auction blocks; no more horn blow at sunrise fo’ them mothahs’ sons. They had chicken with pot likker an’ spoonbread an’ sweet cider to drink in the shade.

They done got paid an honest dollar. Them Jews become
men
.

But oh, my brothers, black folk ain’t never goin’ to be led from bondage without they has
pride!
Black folk ain’t goin’ to be free, they ain’t goin’ to have no spoonbread an’ sweet cider less’n they studies to love they own
selves
. Only then will the first be last, and the last first. Black folk ain’t never goin’ to be no great nation until they studies to love they own black skin an’ the beauty of that skin an’ the beauty of them black hands that toils so hard and black feet that trods so weary on God’s earth. And when white men in they hate an’ wrath an’ meanness fetches blood from that beautiful black skin then, oh
then
, my brothers, it is time not fo’ laughing but fo’ weeping an’ rage an’ lamentation!

Pride!”
I cried after a pause, and let my arms descend. “Pride, pride,
everlasting
pride, pride will make you free!”

I ceased speaking and gazed at the rapt black faces. Then I finished slowly and in a soft voice: “Arise, shine; for thy light is come, an’ the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. Amen.”

The Negroes were silent. Far off in Jerusalem, through the hot afternoon, a church bell let fall a single chime, striking the half-hour. Then the Negroes one by one straggled away across the gallery, some with troubled looks, some stupid and uncomprehending, some fearful. Others drew toward me, radiant; and Henry, who was deaf, who had read my lips, came up close to me and silently clasped my arm. I heard Nelson say,

“You done spoke de truth,” and he too drew near, and I felt their warmth and their brotherhood and hope and knew then what Jesus must have known when upon the shores of Galilee he said:
“Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

On another Saturday in Jerusalem, a month or so later, a curious thing happened which—although it bears only indirectly upon the great events I must soon describe—produced an important enough effect on me to compel its recounting. During the intervening weeks I had, on these Saturdays, formed a Bible class composed of seven or eight Negroes, including Daniel, Sam, Henry, and Nelson. Hark had returned to Travis, so he no The Confessions of Nat Turner

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longer accompanied me to town. I held this class in the shelter of a large maple tree behind the market. There, seated on the cool earth with the Negroes crouching or squatting in a ragged arc around me, I had the opportunity to bring some of these people into the presence of the Holy Word for the very first time in their lives. Few of them had the ability to become what one might call devout; none of them was disposed to really cease from foul language or to abstain from drinking whatever brandy could be filched from a white man’s wagon. (Only Henry, owned by a pious master and walled up in his deafness, possessed what might be called a spiritual nature.) But as slaves who had had nothing to fill their heads save for old grannies’ scare-stories about conjurs and ha’nts and omens, they responded eagerly to my description of the events in Genesis and Exodus—the tales of Joseph and his brothers and the passage of the Red Sea and Moses smiting the rock in Horeb—and each Saturday morning I noted with pride and pleasure that they had begun to greet me with the looks of those for whom my arrival marked their most treasured hour. After the lesson, which might last until well past noon, I bade them all a friendly good-bye and then retired by myself to the shade beneath Moore’s wagon where I would have my midday dinner of pone and bacon. Already I had resolved to adopt an air of aloofness and mystery, believing that such a distant pose would work to my advantage when the time came at last to reveal to my followers the great plans in the offing.

On this particular Saturday, I had just left the group when a strange white man sidled up to me and tapped me lightly on the elbow of my shirt.

“Oh, preacher,” said a tremulous voice, “a word with you, if’n you please.”

The tone was gentle; save for Moore’s sarcastic thrusts I had never heard myself called “preacher” before and I looked down, startled, to behold a slope-shouldered little man who became known to me as Ethelred T. Brantley.

“I heerd you preach to the niggers t’other Sattidy,” he murmured to me with a furtive, urgent sound. The voice was touched with desperation. “Oh, you preaches so good,” he said. “What kin I do to be saved?”

Ethelred T. Brantley was a round womanish man of about fifty, with soft plump white cheeks upon which tiny sores and pustules congregated like berries amid a downy fringe of red hair.

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Dressed in a ragged gray denim jacket and pants, he stirred sluggishly on wide hips and his pale dirty little fingers fluttered as he talked. Now he pressed me to go with him behind the market; his eyes darted nervously, as if he were fearful that we might be seen together. There amid the weeds he told me about himself in a burst of words, his squeaky, piteous voice seeming at any moment about to crack and to dissolve into sobs. At present without regular employ or money, he had until the year before been third assistant overseer on a failing plantation down in Beaufort County, in Carolina. After having lost his position he had come back to Jerusalem to live in a shack with his elderly sister, who supported him on a pittance and who was dying of consumption. He did odd jobs but was in no way to do much. He had a bad cough himself; asthma, consumption too? Brantley didn’t know. He hoped it was asthma. He might not die of asthma. The eruptions on his cheeks wouldn’t go away, he’d had them since he was a boy. He was tormented by some kind of ailment in his guts that caused him to go to the privy a dozen times a day, frequently in his pants. He had been sent to jail once in Carolina. Now he was afraid again. Because— He had taken a woman—
No!
He hesitated, his eyes anxious behind flickering eyelids, a pink flush rising beneath the pustuled skin.