|
Sec. 5, Ch. 27 -- Blood on the Cross
Insurrection or Holy War?
And your name it might be Caesar sure,And got your cannon can shoot a mile or more,
But you can't keep the world from moving around
Nor Old Nat Turner from gaining ground.
Folk Saying, ca. mid-19th century
However much perceived as "fanatical," Nathaniel Turner,
the man unveiled in the "Confessions," was a man of conscience who
chose death and martyrdom to a convenient, comfortable, self-serving freedom.
After more than a century, his calm self-assurance in the midst of torture and
human slaughter has extended itself into our contemporary world, possessing
still the power yet to fascinate and overwhelm us.
If Turner were indeed
"mad," as his detractors have argued, it was the indignant madness of
Christian manhood. If one would not stand up against the abominations of Cross
Keys slavery, what indeed would one stand against? Turner intended
to pay for his purported crimes with his own life.
In the very first lines of his narrative, Turner asserted his
readiness "to atone at the gallows" for having "laid the
groundwork of that enthusiasm, which . . . terminated so fatally to many, both
white and black." Like Wesley, Turner was not inclined toward emotionalism
bereft of the divine logos. Turner did not rush into a holy war. His
relationship with Christ began when he was seventeen years old.
At that time,
the Holy Spirit urged him, "Seek ye the kingdom of heaven." That was
his spiritual program for the last fourteen years of his life. Pure emotionalism
could not have sustained itself over such a period. The decision to make war on
Cross Keys came about ever so gradually and reluctantly. Turner did not rush
toward his death nor the death of others.
At his trial, November 5, 1831, Turner made a statement
seemingly at odds to that which he made in the "Confessions." When he
was brought into the slave court and arraigned "for making insurrection,
and plotting to take away the lives of divers free white persons," Turner
"pleaded Not guilty; saying to his counsel, that he did not feel
so" (Foner, 52-53).
Turner was "Not guilty" yet he was ready
"to atone." Though he expressed no regret for the slaughter of the
slaveowners, Turner willingly accepted the responsibility for the actions of
those who followed him. If there was no guilt, why atone? Turner’s seemingly
contradictory response to his moral dilemma can be understood only in the
context of his Christian consciousness.
The legalistic, secular language used by the Court causes the
linguistic confusion. Turner had no independent legal status and thus he gave no
credence to the farce of the slave court.. Turner did not discover his
identity, his humanity in the laws of Virginia and so he refused to be
categorized by its terminology. The Court and Turner spoke two different
languages: one, political and legal; the other, religious and symbolical. In the
"Confessions," Turner addressed Gray, "Sir, you have asked me to
give a history of the motives which induced me to undertake the late
insurrection, as you call it."
Like the slave court, Gray used the term
"insurrection" to describe Turner’s religious war against Cross Keys
slaveholders. Turner chose not to characterize that which he and others had done
by the legal term. Thus, Turner spoke incisively and truthfully when he said he
was not guilty of "insurrection."
"Insurrection" implies a revolt or a rebellion
against political authority. Turner’s Rebellion was only incidentally an
attack on political authority. Turner was not a proto-John Brown. His war had a
religious source, not a political one. Turner’s war had to do with the moral
world in which Christian slaves and Christian slaveholders interacted. Most
commentators on the deeds of Southampton, however, have tried to stuff Turner
into the Napoleonic or Toussaint L’Ouverture mold of "revolutionary"
hero.
Turner's objections to the term "insurrections" signaled, as the
rejection of July 4th signaled, to his reader that his war was
outside the traditional political arena. Turner rejected such political terms as
"insurgent," "insurrectionist," and
"revolutionary." Turner’s war was of a magnitude that such terms
failed to encompass the strivings of Christian slaves.
In the "Confessions," Turner turned his narration
immediately away from the tones of politics to those of religion and to the role
played by the divine in his birth. What Gray called "insurrection,"
Turner offered such terms as "great promise," "great
purpose," "fight the Serpent," "great work," and
"work of death." In Turner’s lexicon, these were religious terms.
Clearly, Turner did not use the term "holy war." But that is indeed
the implication of his narrative. Clearly, he believed he operated under divine
sanction. The general view, however, continues to be that Turner was driven
unconsciously by material external forces— political, economic, social,
international (Aptheker, pp. 7-32).
Though negative materialistic factors existed, Turner used
none of these as a means to explain the "history" of the
"insurrection." As far as we know Turner was willing to accommodate
slavery in the Pauline sense. Turner’s primary impulse was a moral and ethical
one. Clearly, in the "Confessions," the recurring underlying question
that Turner posed was, What is just and Christian?
Slaveholders in Cross Keys
had perverted the new covenant of Christ, committing intolerable abominations.
From his religious perspective God was indeed just. As an ascetic, Turner wanted
no compromise with the Law, the Ten Commandments. He felt no guilt for the
sacrifice God required of him. For he who "loses his life for [Christ] sake
and for the Gospels’ sake will save it" (Mark 8.34-38).
* * *
* *
Mockingbirds at Jerusalem
(poetry
Manuscript)
* * *
* *
*
* * * *
 |
Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
|
|
Greenback Planet: How the Dollar Conquered
the World and Threatened Civilization as We Know It
By H. W. Brands
In Greenback Planet, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands charts the dollar's astonishing rise to become the world's principal currency. Telling the story with the verve of a novelist, he recounts key episodes in U.S. monetary history, from the Civil War debate over fiat money (greenbacks) to the recent worldwide financial crisis. Brands explores the dollar's changing relations to gold and silver and to other currencies and cogently explains how America's economic might made the dollar the fundamental standard of value in world finance. He vividly describes the 1869 Black Friday attempt to corner the gold market, banker J. P. Morgan's bailout of the U.S. treasury, the creation of the Federal Reserve, and President Franklin Roosevelt's handling of the bank panic of 1933. Brands shows how lessons learned (and not learned) in the Great Depression have influenced subsequent U.S. monetary policy, and how the dollar's dominance helped transform economies in countries ranging from Germany and Japan after World War II to Russia and China today. He concludes with a sobering dissection of the 2008 world financial debacle, which exposed the power--and the enormous risks--of the dollar's worldwide reign. The Economy |
 |
* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
* * * * *
The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
* *
* * *
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
* * * * *
* *
* * *
update15 December 2011
|
