The Resurrection of Nat Turner, Part 2: The Testimonial (14 page)

He prayed the prayers himself. “Oh Lord, turn our captivity and make us free indeed! Do great things among us so that even the heathen will see. Send us, Lord, a deliverer!”

When his father had told him about the church, about Turner's Meeting Place, he had believed that all things were possible. His father had dreamed that it would be like Nimmo United Methodist Church in Virginia Beach, where Negroes would be allowed to worship inside, along with the white people.

His father promised him that one day he might be a leader in Turner's Meeting Place and reminded Nat again that he might even be a black man leading white men, a great man like Richard Allen.

Bishop Richard Allen had been a slave and he had studied the Bible. His master had allowed him to attend the local Methodist church. Allen was so bright, it was said, that he soon became a leader—a slave sometimes teaching among black and white people.

Allen bought his own freedom. When some whites later objected to Negroes sitting with them in church and wanted to segregate, Allen led the black people out of the church. Ordained by Bishop Francis Asbury, Allen started the African Methodist Episcopal Church and became the first black bishop.

A circuit rider told Nat that Bishop Allen lived in Philadelphia, and Nat Turner hoped to be like him. He dreamed of traveling to meet him.

A black leader? A black church? It had seemed impossible and Nat Turner had wondered if the circuit rider was joshing him.

But, as proof, his father had driven him one Sunday past Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Portsmouth. “Don't ever tell the others I brought you here, Nathan. My children, my family, they would object. It would only cause needless confusion. You know.”

Nat Turner had been stunned. Negroes, black people like him, milled around the church. It was true. There was really a Richard Allen. And he could be like him. He could be a trustee in his father's church.

His father showed him the deed and pointed out his name. “This is yours, Nathan. And, should you have children, it will pass from generation to generation. No one can take it from you. And if I don't survive, your eldest brother, Samuel, has promised to free you when it is safest, when you are twenty-one.”

Nat Turner's father lived to see the small church full of people, black and white, though the blacks—slave and free—had to sit on the back pews or stand in the back of the tiny sanctuary. Nat Turner rode in the back of the wagon following the family carriage when Old Benjamin and the rest of his family went to visit the Nimmo United Methodist Church in Virginia Beach. He still remembered the whitewashed walls and the high-backed wooden pews. He had sat in the balcony there with the other blacks and looked down on his father, brothers, and sisters below.

Benjamin thought he would live, but no man can be certain of the day of his demise. Despite his plans, Old Benjamin passed away while Nat Turner was still a boy.

Perhaps Elizabeth had extracted a secret promise from her first son, Samuel, and his wife, also named Elizabeth, to never let the
wicked offense come to pass. As executor of his father's will, Samuel announced, “I promised my mother. None of it will ever come to pass!”

OLD BENJAMIN THOUGHT he would live to see it all. The afternoon of his burial, the people in the church—Nat Turner's brother Samuel, and the others named on the deed, his father's friends—made a pact.

Nat Turner had stood outside the window that afternoon when he was twelve years old. His older brother Samuel and Samuel's wife, Elizabeth, were in their twenties. The other trustees and their wives, who advised Samuel, were closer to their father's age.

Samuel Turner led the meeting. The other trustees—Samuel Francis, John Whitehead, and Turner Newsom—and their wives gathered in the church to agree that Nat Turner would never have what legally belonged to him.

“He was an old man,” Samuel Turner said of his father.

“Feeble,” John Whitehead, sitting in the church on the first pew, added. Since Old Benjamin had died, no black people had been allowed in the church. They were not even welcomed any longer to stand behind the back row.

“In his right mind, Old Benjamin would never want to bring this kind of shame upon his family… not for a slave,” Turner Newsom added.

“It doesn't just shame his wife and family; it shames our church and the whole community! Who ever heard of such a thing, making a slave, a darkie, a trustee?” Brown-haired Caty Whitehead fanned herself.

Samuel's wife, Elizabeth Turner, shook her head. “It shames you, my husband, as well as your dear mother. I always thought it was a shame Old Benjamin let the darkies sit inside the church with us anyway. It gave them the wrong notion.

“Whatever was your father thinking? And he listed that wretch's name first—even before yours!”

Samuel Francis turned the screw as he did with his own sons, Salathiel and Nathaniel. “Nat Turner is not only a darkie, but he is a child! Why would Old Benjamin put him first? Was he saying that Nat was smarter than his own, John Clarke, and even you, Samuel? If Old Benjamin wanted to name a boy trustee, why not John Clarke Turner? Poor John's name does not even appear on the deed!”

Samuel Francis's wife sniffled. “Did Old Benjamin really think so little of us?”

“God could never have wanted this.” Samuel Francis tapped a finger on the deed.

His wife began to cry. “How could Old Benjamin even think to sit us under a son of Ham?”

Samuel Turner looked pained, humiliated by his father's actions. Turner Newsom's eyes were full of empathy. “How could he have thought that white men and white women would sit under the direction of a jig?”

John Whitehead's face reddened. “Do you think he really believed it, really intended it? It's as ridiculous as thinking a white man would sit under a black preacher.”

Mrs. Whitehead nodded. “That would be a devilish thing.” She fanned herself again. “We shouldn't even have to have this dreadful conversation. Can you imagine a darkie trustee advising a white preacher? It would be appalling!” She sputtered and huffed.

Almost more to herself than to the others, she added, “I had always imagined my young son, Richard, a preacher. Who would give such authority to a slave?”

Mrs. Francis began to cry harder. “How could I let my children—Wiley, Salathiel, Sallie, and Nathaniel—attend here?” Her face clouded. “That darkie Nancie, do you think she might have used some sort of black magic she brought here from Africa?”

Samuel Turner, boyish and shamefaced, looked at the older woman.

Nat Turner ducked beneath the window that afternoon so
they would not see him. He had known these people all his life. They had patted his head. They had said he was too smart to be a slave, and they had acted as though they cared for him. They had said he knew the Bible better than anyone. Now, in God's house, they were stealing what was his.

When his father was alive, they had told his father that Nat Turner was so intelligent that he was a mystery to them. Now they were stealing his birthright.

He was the one who had studied the Bible. He was the one who knew chapter and verse.
Turn again our captivity, O L
ORD
, as the streams in the south. They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.

THEY HATED TO go against Old Benjamin's wishes, but it was best for everyone. Benjamin was tenderhearted and deluded. Now things would change.

Negroes were banned completely from Turner's Meeting Place. And Nat Turner? It was best for the community, and even best for Nat Turner, to correct things now.

It was against God's laws, wasn't it, for a slave to manage a church's money and land? What did a slave know about such things?

Twelve years old. There was no point in setting him to a task at which he could never succeed. How could a black man lead white men? If they left him to it, he would probably destroy himself as well as the church. Better to correct matters now so that by the time he reached twenty-one, he would be acclimated.

They decided that afternoon: Nat Turner would be neither free nor trustee. Better to set him, then and there, to his rightful place—a place where he would be happy and content with his life. Samuel Turner agreed. Nat Turner would be turned out into the fields.

“What must we do to correct the deed? I suppose we must take the matter to the county clerk.”

Turner Newsom had shaken his head. “Nothing needs be done. No court would hear his claim.”

Samuel Turner assured them Nat would never protest. That afternoon Samuel began to call Nat Turner “slave.” “The slave's only defense would be to call reputations into question. He would not do that to my departed father. He would not do that to my sisters or my brothers.”

Samuel Turner was right in how he judged his younger brother. That afternoon and forward, Nat Turner participated in the lie. He participated with his silence. It shamed him—every day it shamed him more. But they were his sisters and they were his brothers. It was his duty to protect them, to protect the image of his father, even if he caused injury to himself.

They were his father's white sons and daughters, all claimed, but not he. He could not help but wonder what other things his father had not shared with him. What could his father not tell him because he could not face who Nathan Turner was?

It did not matter to his father how he felt; it was Nat Turner's duty to bear it. He was slave even to his father. He was a thing. He did not need to be included.

In short order, his brother sent him, at twelve years old, to the fields as his slave.

Still, Nat Turner prayed and hoped his older brother would keep his promise and free him. Years passed and every day he worked, every day he planned to leave.

Then Cherry happened. He settled in and they married. They had a son, Riddick. Nat Turner gave up thoughts of leaving; it would be enough to be a freeman.

On his twenty-first birthday, Nat Turner confronted his brother.

I
t was impudent, Samuel Turner said, for a slave to demand to be free, to demand inheritance.

“I am a free man, Samuel! Give me my papers and my copy of the deed! You promised our father when he died!”

His older brother Samuel struck him. “Liar!”

Nat Turner was never supposed to speak the words. He was supposed to keep up pretenses, to keep his father's secret. No one was to know—except poor Samuel, who was to bear the eldest son's burden. Except for Elizabeth and John Clarke… all of them pretending not to know.

Nat was to deny who he was before his father's wife, before his sisters Nancy and Susanna, his brother John Clarke, and his baby brother, Benjamin. “I beg you to repent and give me my freedom, my trusteeship. Please… brother.” Samuel struck him again.

Two more years passed. When his eldest brother lay dying, Nat Turner was certain that Samuel would repent and free him. Called to his sickbed, Samuel whispered in Nat Turner's ear, “Your mother, your family is free. You were never my property. You were always a free man.”

Samuel's will bore no mention of Nathan, Cherry, or his mother, Nancie, as property. His family was free! He was a free man!

B
ut Samuel's wife, the second Elizabeth, had other plans.

Still in widow's weeds, Elizabeth Turner stopped Nat Turner on his way to the fields. “They treated you too kindly, like a family member and not as the slave you are,” she snarled. “But now your fate is in my hands.” She motioned to the man beside her. “I have sold you this day to this fine gentleman, Thomas Moore.” She pointed and sneered behind her veil.

Nat Turner opened his mouth to protest. But disbelief left him stunned, mute.

He was a freeman. How could this be happening? His brother's widow had no right to sell him. She had not been bequeathed Cherry, his mother, Nancie, or him and his son.

She snarled at him. “Not one word! Not one, Nat!”

“Nat Turner,” he insisted.

“I said, ‘Nat'! And if you make things difficult, if you run, I will sell your mother away.” She waved the handkerchief in her hand. Elizabeth had sold him to a man without scruples. “And you needn't worry about your wife, Cherry. I've made arrangements for her also. She and your son will become the property of Giles Reese.

“It was hardly worth the bother. Less than one hundred dollars for both of them.”

Nat Turner pleaded with Thomas Moore to purchase his wife also. He would live as a slave. Nat Turner and Cherry would both be his slaves, if they could be together.

Thomas Moore shrugged. “The arrangements have already been made.”

One hundred dollars. Even old people and children brought more than one hundred dollars. Elizabeth Turner could have given Cherry to Moore for nothing or sold her to him as a breeder.

But Elizabeth Turner was making a point about who was master and who was property. She despised Nat Turner—who he was, who God had made him. She hated him because Old Benjamin had dared to list him first—Nathan Turner before Samuel Turner, before her husband—on the church-house deed.

The order lessened her, along with her husband, and their standing in the community. Through the sale Elizabeth Turner was simply correcting things. “Stay in your place,” she told him.

She was sending the white men of Southampton a message: There were rules that even white men had to obey. There was a certain divine order. Slavery and life favored white men and there were certain indignities white women had to bear. But no white woman would stand for such public shame and humiliation. There was an order and everyone had to play his or her part. No white man, no matter how bewitched he was, had better put a black bastard before any of his lawful white children. Elizabeth Turner simply set things to right.