“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 w
hite 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.
That was wrong. No, he—He had done something bad, yesterday, with a boy. The son of a local magistrate. He had paid the boy a dime. The boy had told. He thought the boy had told.
He wasn’t sure. He was afraid. “Oh Lord God,” he exclaimed. He broke wind with a plaintive hiss and for an instant his exhalations filled my nostrils like air from a swamp bottom.
“I has always keered for niggers, tucken good keer of niggers,”
said Brantley. “I has never beat a nigger in my life. You preaches so good. I done heerd you. I’m so afeared. I’m so miser’ble. Oh, how can I be saved?”
“By baptism in the Spirit,” I replied sharply.
“If’n I could read,” he said, “maybe I’d know ’bout religion like you does. But I cain’t read nor write neither, not ary word. Oh, I’m so miser’ble! I jest wants to die. But I’m skeered of dyin’. Kin all men have pride? Kin all men be redeemed?”
“Yes,” I said, “all men can have pride. And all men can be redeemed—by baptism in the Spirit.” Then in a rush it occurred to me that this might be some kind of white man’s trap, a joke, a ruse. “But when you overheard me preach—” I paused. “When you heard me preach that day I was saying things that wasn’t for The Confessions of Nat Turner
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white men’s ears.” A sudden apprehension overtook me, and I started to turn away from him. “I was preaching for black folk,” I said in a harsh voice.
“Oh no, preacher,” he implored me, plucking at my sleeve, “I needs he’p so bad, please.”
“Why don’t you go to your own church?” I retorted. “Why don’t you go to the white man’s church?”
He hesitated, then finally he said: “I cain’t. I mean, I used to go at Nebo. That’s where my sister worships at. On’y Reverend Entwistle, the preacher there, he—” Halting, he seemed unable to go on.
“He what?” I said.
“Oh, he done throwed me out,” he blurted in a choked voice. “He said I was—” Again he paused, and with a sigh, cast his eyes toward the ground. “He said—”
“He said what?” I demanded.
“He said they will be no sotomite of the sons of Isr’el in the house of the Lord. He tole me the Bible said so. That’s what he done said, I ‘members ever’ word of it. He said I was a sotomite. So I cain’t go to Nebo. I cain’t go nowheres.” He looked up at me in anguish, tears swimming in his eyes. “Oh, preacher, how can I be redeemed?”
I was suddenly swept by pity and disgust, and I have wondered since why I said to him what I did but have failed to come up with a sure answer. It may be only that Brantley at that moment seemed as wretched and forsaken as the lowest Negro; white though he might be, he was as deserving of the Lord’s grace as were others deserving of His wrath, and to fail Brantley would be to fail my own obligation as minister of His word. Besides, it gave me pleasure to know that by showing Brantley the way to salvation I had fulfilled a duty that a white preacher had shirked.
Anyway—
“Then listen,” I told him. “Fast for eight days until next Sunday.
You must eat nothing except that once every two days you can have as much corn pone as you can fill the palm of one hand.
Then next Sunday I will baptize you in the Spirit and you will be redeemed.”
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“Oh Lord have mercy, preacher!” Brantley cried, all asnuffle.
“You done saved my life! I’m so happy!” He tried to clutch my hand and kiss it but I drew away, squirming.
“Fast, as I say,” I repeated, “and meet me at Mr. Thomas Moore’s next Sunday. We will be baptized together in the Spirit.”
The following day was a Sunday, when it was customary for Negroes to be let off for most of the time between late morning and dusk. Early that afternoon I walked the four miles up the road and presented myself at the front door of Mrs. Catherine Whitehead’s. Set back from the road several hundred yards, the house was a comfortable, rambling place made of smooth-planed clapboard (unlike Moore’s, put together with rough-hewn timbers), freshly whitewashed, shuttered, surrounded by a pleasant lawn of clover humming with bees. A dusty field of budding cotton stretched to the far woods. In the front yard reposed a gilt and cherrywood English brougham; it was drawn by a thoroughbred filly, plump, beautifully currycombed, that now stood feeding placidly in the deep grass and broke the hot afternoon silence with her champing sound.
Zinnias bloomed in neat red boxes on the front porch, I smelled a warm odor of roses from a trellis. Mrs. Whitehead was a gentlewoman, a lady of some wealth. There was nothing fancy about the place but it was far better than Moore’s; I knew that she even owned books. Not since my days at Turner’s Mill had I brushed close to white people of means, and as I stood on the porch, awaiting some response to my knock, I was made hurtfully aware of my descent in life and suddenly suspected that I reeked of mu
le dung. Idly I wondered how in the midst of this drought a place could retain such green grace, such color and lushness; then I spied in the field a windmill—which brought up water from a well—the only one for miles and a marvel to all who beheld it. Its weathered blades made a faint sad clack and flutter across the afternoon quiet.
My knock at the door was answered by Margaret Whitehead; it was our first encounter, and one that should retain momentous syllables, intonations, recollected cadences, glances, hues, harmonies, curvatures, refractions of late summer light. But I remember only a dim pretty pale girl’s face—she must have been thirteen or so—and a gentle voice that replied, “Why yes, he’s here,” unsurprised as if my skin had been alabaster-white, when I said: “Please, young missy, may I have a word with yo’
brother the preacher?”
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When Richard Whitehead appeared he had the crumbs of midday dessert still on his lips; he lost no time in directing me around to the rear door. There I waited fifteen minutes before he came back again—a slender youngish man, rather frail, with a prim hostile mouth and the same petrified eyeballs I had seen once years before in a Turner library sketch-book, amid the hell-ravaged face of John Calvin. His voice was reedy, thin, touched with all of the Sabbath’s hushed and purple melancholy.
I realized I should not have come. Queasy, I was stricken with the old familiar nigger fear, and could not help but avert my glance.
“What is it that you want?” he demanded.
I hesitated for a moment—Out with it quick, I thought—then I said: “Please, mastah, I’m a minister of the gospel. I wonders if after all the folks is gone next Sunday I couldn’t baptize a white gentleman down in yo’ church.”
A startled look came over his face, then faded. “Who are you?”
he said.
“I’m Nat Turner,” I replied. “My mastah’s Mr. Thomas Moore, down by Flag Marsh.”
“Yes, I’ve heard of you,” he said shortly. “What is it you want again?”