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Section 1,
Chapter 1
Nathaniel
Turner
Christian Martyrdom in Southampton
A Theology
of Black Liberation
By Rudolph Lewis
* * * *
*
Scholarship, Sacred Documents, &
Folklore
An Overview of the
Response to Turner's World
In the great sweep of American history, few,
if any, can be likened to Nathaniel Turner, the leader of the
1831 bloody Rebellion of Southampton County, Virginia. His band
of seven in hours grew to seventy. On foot and horseback in
clouds of dust, Turner and his men, from house to house, swept
through the Cross Keys community and slaughtered numerous
Southampton slaveholding families, mostly women and children.
These deeds were done in the name of religion and the true
faith. And it was this profession that made the whites of
Virginia uneasy in their skins.
Considered in the whole, a century and a half
later, Turner, a devout Christian slave, continues to stand
apart, in estimation, distinctly from other early 19th century
revolutionaries, such as
Gabriel Prosser of
Virginia (1775-1800) and
Denmark Vesey of South Carolina
(1767-1822). Prosser and Vesey seem more accessible and
defensible. Commentators on American leaders of slave revolts
tend to find Turner more opaque and controversial.. In short, Turner has fallen short of full
admiration, even by those who consider his deeds heroic.
Historians and romancers of history have
rendered the character and temperament of Prosser and Vesey more
to their liking and imagination than that of the
"notorious" Nat Turner. Born in the midst of the
Revolutionary War, the young Prosser, slave of Thomas Prosser,
was thought handsome, though he missed two front teeth (The
Negro in Virginia, p. 195). Hired out by his master to
Richmond merchants, the leader of the insurrection plot of 1800
in Richmond, Virginia, was a twenty-four-year old, six-foot-two
blacksmith.
"Like the artisans and free blacks among
whom he labored, he [Prosser] found that his dreams stood him on
the radical edge of a democratic movement that was securely
rooted in bourgeois ideology: his wish was to pull down ‘the
merchants’ and ‘possess ourselves of their property’,"
according to Douglas R. Egerton. "As an artisan he
[Prosser] was a radical, but as a slave artisan, he was a
revolutionary" (Gabriel’s Rebellion, pp. 30-31).
The stately, brilliant, hot-tempered, and
older Vesey was the architect of the 1822 Charleston, South
Carolina plot. "In 1800, Denmark drew a prize of $1500 in
the East-Bay-Street Lottery, with which he purchased his freedom
from his master, at six hundred dollars, much less than his real
value" (Hamilton,
Negro Plot, p. 57). Vesey was about thirty-three
years old when he received his freedom. Between 1800 and 1822,
Vesey, as a free person of color, made his livelihood as a
carpenter within Charleston society.
Similar to Prosser, Vesey was an artisan in a
large urban trading center. Richmond and Charleston were both
slave ports, cities of international trade. Probably over
two-thirds of African captives transported to America
disembarked at ports in Virginia and South Carolina.
Richmond and Charleston also possessed a great variety of people
from different European nations, classes, and vocations in which
floated numerous ideas based on Enlightenment thinking,
especially from Jacobin France and the Isle of Hispaniola.
As in any great trading center, there were
numerous people always coming and going. In great contrast, Turner
lived in the small isolated rural hamlet of Cross Keys in
Southampton County, Virginia. It was a backwater community in
which numerous families had lived in the same country for
generations. In such places tradition is long-lived and sustains
itself against all external influences and attacks. Centuries pass
in such places and changes in religion, manners, and mores are
nearly imperceptible..
Individually, Prosser, Vesey, and Turner also
differed in their responses to religion. Gabriel Prosser’s
religiosity has been strenuously questioned. According to
Gayraud S. Wilmore, the young Gabriel Prosser was not "a student of
the Bible." But Prosser was, Wilmore insists, "strongly
drawn to lead an insurrection among the slaves by religious
convictions," (Black Religion and Black Radicalism, p.
75). Wilmore derived his intuitive conclusion, most likely, from
the incidental fact that Prosser was born within a Christian slave
community. That Prosser had convictions, we are certain; that they
were "religious," we doubt. Certainly, Christian slaves
were among Prosser’s conspirators (The
Negro in Virginia,
p. 112). Nevertheless, some scholars oppose Wilmore’s moderate
view.
In his history of the Richmond conspiracy,
Douglass Egerton discounts Prosser’s use of religion as a means
of organizing his Rebellion. In their court testimony, Prosser’s
fellow conspirators did not maintain the notion that Prosser was a
religious man. Egerton states that Gabriel refused "to
cast his appeals in terms of West African religion" and also
rejected the use of "messianic terms." Nevertheless, all
tend to agree Prosser had a soft place for those denominations and
sympathizers who took strong positions against slavery.
"Gabriel warned that ‘Quakers, Methodists, and French
people’ were not to be harmed" (Gabriel’s Rebellion,
pp. 51-52).
Whatever Prosser’s religious stripe, scholars
generally agree, as Wilmore wrote, "The Gabriel plot was
probably the first well-planned, consciously revolutionary attempt
in a long history of slave revolts on the mainland" (Black Religion and Black Radicalism, p. 76). That Virginia produced
one more great leader, in the person of Gabriel Prosser, was not
surprising to those who were intimate with the genius of men such
as Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe.
Vesey was a Methodist class leader of the
African Church in Charleston (Wilmore, p. 83). In contrast to
Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey used the Bible to substantiate the
legitimacy of his Rebellion. According to James Hamilton, Jr., in
his 1822 account of the servile plot, Vesey removed "the
scruples of the religious, by the grossest prostitution and
perversion of the sacred oracles." Vesey inflamed and
confirmed "the resolute, by all the savage fascinations of
blood and booty" (Hamilton,
Negro Plot, p. 57).
According to witnesses (his fellow
conspirators) at the Charleston trials, all of Vesey’s
conversations were about the connection of religion and slavery.
He often played on the analogy of the African slave and the
children of Israel in bondage (Harding, p. 115). Turner, I should
note here, never made any direct reference to Israel or to Jews in
his "Confessions." His rhetorical mode is primarily
narrative and focused singularly on the New Testament. According
to Hamilton, Vesey used religion as a tool for organizing his
revolt. From the Christian slaveholder’s point of view, Vesey
did not preach "true Christianity," the religion of
white Southerners, more precisely, the Christianity reserved for
Christian slaves.
Though caught in slavery’s web, Prosser and
Vesey, were modern men, minds molded by the Enlightenment, a
culture that stretched from the 17th to the early 19th
centuries. Historians and novelists have been attracted by this
aspect of their characters. Enlightenment philosophers and
theologians promoted a critical view of religion, and emphasized
reason over revelation, a natural theology rather than a biblical
one.
Though God was still in the
picture for most philosophes, he stayed vaguely in the
background, desiring human good. Religion was fine as long as
it . . . didn’t make, in the name of "revelation,"
higher claims than human reason itself could assert. Miracles
. . . were out of the question since nothing could disrupt the
order of nature, not even God. The so-called miracles
recounted in the gospels were simply "ridiculous,"
snorted Voltaire, and the story of Jesus’ resurrection a
"fantasy." The Christianity approved by the
Enlightenment—and adopted by a remarkable number of
influential clergy, . . . was an ethical system and no more.
Kant summed up the eighteenth century when he declared
religious beliefs a matter of moral judgment by one’s own
conscience and posited Jesus as model of moral perfection
(Rosenthal, pp. 20-21)
This philosophical outlook is often viewed as
the mark of the modern man, one who distances himself from bloody
religious wars and religious intolerance (Runes, p. 92). Vesey and
Prosser have been honored by such appellations as
"civilized" and "modern." Deservedly, these
two revolutionary conspirators have received a place among the
great revolutionary martyrs of the 19th century,
alongside
John Brown of Harpers Ferry.
With respect to religion, Nathaniel Turner
(1800-1831)
differed radically from
Gabriel
Prosser and even
Denmark
Vesey. Turner alone
possessed all the markings of a biblical prophet and an apostle of
the "Crucified Christ." Like most Christians in
Virginia, Turner believed in revelation, divine intervention in
history, miracles, the resurrection, heaven and hell, judgment
day. All these elements are easily recognized in his
"1831
Confessions." Though
Garrisonian abolitionism may have
been in his purview, a reform some have argued was the motivation
for the Southampton rebellion, Turner, as a Christian held in
bondage, would not settle for anything less than the "kingdom
of heaven," a community of the righteous in the world.
Turner, unlike
William Lloyd Garrison, was not a political
propagandist, a secular intellectual, nor did he consider the bible a source of
propaganda, as was also the case with Denmark Vesey. For Turner, the scriptures were God's truth among men; they
are important for understanding man’s relationship to
God. In addition, according to Turner, he had direct encounters
with the Divine, numerous times over a fourteen-year span. Beyond
institutional builders, such as
Richard Allen,
much less protean, Nathaniel Turner
was probably one of the most remarkable religious figures of the
19th century, in his words and in his deeds.
As a Christian slave, Turner’s religious
grounding, though similar, was incisively different from these
institutional leaders. Turner was not a churchman, an
institutional builder, nor a "black religious nationalist (Ogbonna,
p. 51). It was yet his intense desire nevertheless to become a
member of the established Methodist church in Cross Keys. His
rejection by the white slaveholding Methodists was probably more of a spur
to rebellion than
abolitionist propaganda or the revolutionary fervor stirred by
Toussaint L'Overture in Haiti. Turner became disillusioned with the
religious leaders and unbiblical teachings of Turner’s Methodist
Church. Nathaniel Turner received a higher calling.
Thus, when the theological implications of the
"1831
Confessions" in its environment are considered
seriously, Turner, spiritually and intellectually, seems more
attuned, more than the whole of his generation, to the
first-century Christian gospel message, its universality and its
eschaton.
In the isolated backwater hamlet of Cross Keys, Turner preached
but he was more than just a preacher. Nathaniel Turner was a
God-taught prophet, and, possibly, an apostle, a messenger, to
Cross Keys slaveholders, according to the "1831
Confessions"
and the folk testimony of the Christian slaves of Cross Keys.
As a Christian slave, Nathaniel Turner was not a
champion of ethnic thinking, as many have claimed. Turner’s
religious perspective made no appeal to "African
religions" or "African nationality." According to
Gayraud S. Wilmore, Nathaniel Turner "discovered that the God
of the Bible demanded justice and that to know him and his son,
Jesus Christ, was to be set free from every power on earth."
His "conversion and development as a slave preacher are basic
to any true understanding of what motivated him to
insurrection," (Black Religion and Black Radicalism,
p. 89).
Wilmore, a Christian theologian, was probably
the first to point out this developmental aspect of Turner’s
religiosity. A closer look at the peculiarity of Turner’s
religious environment and his spiritual development within that
society can rescue Turner’s life from fantasy and
misapprehensions.
Sources
Consulted Egerton, Douglas R.
Gabriel’s Rebellion:
The Virginia Slave Conspiracies of 1800 & 1892. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina
Press, 1993. Hamilton, Jr., James.
Negro Plot: An Account of the late Intended Insurrection Among a Portion of the
Blacks of the City of Charleston, South Carolina (Boston 1822). Excerpted in
Patricia W. Romero.
I Too Am
America: Documents from 1619 to the Present. New York: The
Association for the Study of Negro Life and Culture, 1969, pp. 53-58.
Harding, Vincent.
There Is a River: The Black Struggle for
Freedom in America. New York: Vintage Books, 1983. Ogbonna, Jeffrey and Green Ogbar. "Prophet Nat and God’s
Children of Darkness: Black Religious Nationalism." Journal of Religious
Thought,
53/54 (1997), pp. 51-72. Rosenthal, Peggy.
The Poet’s Jesus: Representation at
the End of a Millennium. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Runes, Dagobert D., ed.
Dictionary of Philosophy.
Totowa, New Jersey: Littlefield, Adams & Co., 1974. Wilmore, Gayraud S.
Black Religions and Black Radicalism.
Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1972. Workers of the Writers’ Program of the Work Projects
Administration in the State of Virginia, compilers.
The
Negro in Virginia. Winston-Salem, North Carolina: John F. Blair, Publisher, 1994.
Nathaniel
Turner:
Christian
Martyrdom in Southampton
A
Theology of Black Liberation
By Rudolph Lewis
Chapter 2: Holy Man, Hoax, or Fiend?
/ Chapter 2 Holy Man, Hoax or Fiend *
* * * *
Nathaniel
Turner
Christian
Martyrdom in Southampton
A
Theology of Black Liberation
By Rudolph Lewis
*
* * * *
Zippety Doo Dah, Zippety-Ay: How Satisfactch'll Is
Education Today? Toward a New Song of the South
Dr. Joyce E. King on
Black Education and New Paradigms
*
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music website >
http://www.kalamu.com/bol/
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The State of African Education
(April 200)
Attack On Africans Writing Their Own History Part 1 of 7
Dr Asa
Hilliard III speaks on the assault of academia on Africans writing and
accounting for their own history.
Dr Hilliard is A teacher,
psychologist, and historian.
Part 2 of 7
/
Part
3 of 7 /
Part 4 of 7
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Part 5 of 7 /
Part 6 of 7 /
Part 7 of 7
*
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Basil Davidson's "Africa Series"
Different
But Equal /
Mastering A Continent /
Caravans
of Gold /
The King and the City /
The Bible and The Gun
* * * *
*
 |
West Africa Before the Colonial Era: A
History to 1850
By
Basil Davidson
This
book is excellent as an introduction to West
African history. It begins with a brief
overview of region's history from earliest
times but the focus of the book is on the
thousand years between the 9th and the 19th
centuries A.D.
Comprehensive overviews of the political
histories of both well and little known West
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These include the histories of the empires
of Ghana, Mali, Songhay, Kanem-Bornu, Oyo,
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important cities of Timbuktu, Jenne and Gao
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Apart from these
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dispels the myth that Africa had no history or
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concise and very easy to read.
D. E. Chukwumerije
* * * *
*
|
African Slave Trade: Precolonial History,
1450-1850
By Basil Davidson
The best general
account
of the Atlantic slave trade. It is the story
of one of the most enormous crimes in all
human history. Basil Davidson states that by
examining three important areas of Africa in
the history of slavery 'against a general
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colonial invasion and conquest? |
 |
* * * *
*
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John Henrik Clarke—A Great and Mighty Walk
This
video chronicles the life and times of the
noted African-American historian, scholar
and Pan-African activist John Henrik Clarke
(1915-1998). Both a biography of Clarke
himself and an overview of 5,000 years of
African history, the film offers a
provocative look at the past through the
eyes of a leading proponent of an
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Egypt and Africa’s other great empires,
Clarke moves through Mediterranean
borrowings, the Atlantic slave trade,
European colonization, the development of
the Pan-African movement, and present-day
African-American history. |
 |
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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update 28 June 2008 |
