The Resurrection Of Nat Turner: The Testimonial Part 3

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 embarra.s.sment, embarra.s.sment 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 G.o.d. 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, Dougla.s.s 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 Const.i.tution and the Church; both, he felt, had been bloodied and rendered useless by slavery. Dougla.s.s 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 Dougla.s.s tapped his cane on the floor.

Without Frederick Dougla.s.s, 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 Dougla.s.s's a.s.sociation, she might never have read the works written by the hands of black authors like William Wells Brown or Dougla.s.s 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. Dougla.s.s, she might never have known that G.o.d 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 G.o.d. Their words were cousins to her own, sometimes offering lance and balm to places she had not known were tender.

Without Mr. Dougla.s.s's influence, she might never have shared a meal with a Negro-not as servant but as equally welcomed guests at the table. Certainly 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. Dougla.s.s, 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 a.s.sociating 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 ent.i.tled 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 Dougla.s.s. 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 embarra.s.sed 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 G.o.d, 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 a.s.sociation with Frederick Dougla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 Dougla.s.s reminded her that she had much to learn about others... and about herself. "Study to shew thyself approved." Harriet was willing to learn.

Frederick Dougla.s.s 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 G.o.d's earth that needs no compa.s.sion 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.

G.o.d 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. Jos.h.i.+ng, 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 G.o.d put us here just to be nothing? To tote, lift, and hold up walls?

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

He is our G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.syria 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 t.i.tles, 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 n.i.g.g.e.r, 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.

Watching them, Nat Turner remembered that it was not long ago that he was the same.

THOMAS GRAY, A boy with peach fuzz around his lips and in his armpits, lay back in the gra.s.s. "My father is going to apprentice me to a lawyer so I can be an attorney like him or maybe a judge like my grandfather." He pulled a dandelion and blew it. "I think sometimes I would rather be a writer instead."

The boys laughed, most of them twelve years old or so. They were from scattered farms but sometimes got together to play, as they'd done since they were smaller children.

John Clarke Turner shook his head at Thomas Gray's words. "A writer?"

Richard Whitehead ran his hands over his hair to smooth his cowlick into place. "I'm going to be a preacher."

Young Salathiel chewed a blade of gra.s.s. He laughed. "Ha! You? A preacher?"

"I am going to be a farmer, too. Maybe I'll try my hand at cotton. But my mother, Caty, says that I would make a fine preacher."

Salathiel laughed again. "You have what it takes-full of gas and hot air." Whitehead punched him in the shoulder. Salathiel shook it off. "I'm going to be a landowner. The land as far as I can see is going to be mine." He turned to John Clarke Turner. "What about you?"

"A tobacco planter or cotton. I'll own a great plantation. I will be a wealthy man, smoke cigars, and have a beautiful wife and lots of children."

Salathiel laughed. "And make lots of slaves." He raised and lowered his eyebrows. "Make lots of money." The boys laughed, punching one another.

They looked at Benjamin Phipps. He shrugged. There was silence and then Thomas Gray, looking at the other free boys, spoke up. "Maybe our children will marry one another."

"Maybe." John Clarke Turner laughed.

Nat Turner and Hark stood off to the side, listening. The other boys weren't looking at them; the two of them weren't included in the conversation. He spoke up anyway. "I have been thinking that I would like to be a general, like Was.h.i.+ngton, and Hark could be my colonel."

Hark, who was a young slave on the Moore farm, struck a jester's pose. "That's me! Colonel!" The other boys laughed. Hark's eyes pleaded with Nat to stop.

"My mother wants me to be a preacher. She says G.o.d has smiled on me and that I am a prophet." Nat Turner looked at Salathiel and Richard Whitehead. "But maybe I'll also be a farmer or a plantation owner with a farm next to yours."

It was a joke to them that he, a slave, might have dreams. The free boys laughed again.

"One day I will be a freeman, like the great Bishop Allen from Philadelphia. I will pay the price for my mother's freedom. My mother will dress in fine clothes, wear a warm coat, and sit on the pew next to yours."

Salathiel stood, strode over to Nat Turner, and hit him in the mouth. "You will take care how you speak about my mother."

Nat Turner tasted salty blood on his lips. He would not let them kick him aside. He would not let them make him less.

THROUGH THE CABIN window, Nat Turner watched the boys tramping back inside from the snow. Davy trailed behind them.

"Kick the snow off your feet," one of the women warned them. "Act like you got good sense. Act like you got home training or you'ah be sorry." Better her threats than a hangman's noose; angry words spoken out of love.

Nat Turner looked at the mothers and the sons, then across the room at his own mother. This would be his last Christmas. The G.o.d Who Provides for All had told him to watch for a sign in the heavens.

Hathc.o.c.k and the Artis brothers had resumed talking. "We are just farmers. We only want peace. They force our hands."

The dreams that the captors had for the captive farmers were not enough. What they wanted for him was not enough. What they dreamed for the boys and girls was not enough-there were no dreams.