The Resurrection of Nat Turner, Part 2: The Testimonial (5 page)

Harriet sat at the table and looked at her husband, his nose still buried in his books, research notes scattered about.

She might have been born into a different life. She might have been born into the captive race, forbidden to dream, forbidden to write. She might have been born into a different family, a family that forbade her to speak her mind or think her own thoughts, a family that thought women inferior. She might have married a man threatened by her hopes, one who suppressed and discouraged her gifts. None of her good fortune was coincidental. It would be ingratitude not to acknowledge it all, not to be and do the things set before her.

Harriet cleared her throat. “Professor, I have been reading over the letter—the excerpts from the Virginia governor's diary.” She placed a piece of toast on her plate, waited for her husband to swim up from the text he was studying, to surface and acknowledge her. She buttered the bread and added a spoon of ruby-colored jam.

Calvin looked over the page before him, inserted a bookmark, and then looked at her. “Yes.” He reached for a piece of toast.

“It seems to me that the governor had some doubts about the trials.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Do you have the letter?” Of course he knew she had the letter. She had been carrying it around with her for days. He smiled. “I don't want to impose, but might you read from it to me?”

She pretended to ignore his teasing and removed the letter from her pocket.

“Read to me,” Calvin said, biting his toast.

H
arriet bit into her toast; she did not want to appear too eager to share—though, of course, she
was
eager. She chewed slowly. Calvin lifted his brows. She used her napkin to brush crumbs from her mouth, doing her best to look nonchalant.

“Please, Mrs. Stowe, I am keen to hear what might make you believe the governor was not in full agreement with Southampton County's handling of the rebellion and trials.”

“Professor, I know you are busy. I do not want to trouble you.”

“If you doubted my interest that would trouble me more.”

Harriet cleared her throat, laid her napkin on the table, then began reading from the diary excerpts. “Governor Floyd begins writing on August 23rd, and it is obvious that he is most concerned.

“‘I began to consider how to prepare for the crisis. To call out the militia and equip a military force for that service. But according to the forms of this wretched and abominable Constitution, I must first require advice of council, and then disregard it, if I please. On this occasion there was not one councillor in the city. I went on, made all the arrangements for suppressing the insurrection, having all my orders ready for men, arms, ammunition, etc., and when by this time, one of the council came to town, and that vain and foolish ceremony was gone through. In a few hours the troops marched, Captain Randolph with a fine troop of cavalry and Captain John B. Richardson with Light Artillery both from this city and two companies of Infantry from Norfolk and Portsmouth. The Light Artillery had under their care one thousand stand of arms for Southampton and Sussex, with a good supply of ammunition. All these things were dispatched in a few hours.'”

She looked up from her reading to meet her husband's eyes. “You recall, Professor, that Congressman James Trezvant had sent notice to the public that an army of two hundred or more runaway slaves from the Great Dismal Swamp had attacked Southampton.”

Calvin nodded. “Go on.”

“On the twenty-fourth: ‘This day was spent in distributing arms to the various counties below this where it was supposed it would be wanted.'”

Harriet turned the page. “But on the twenty-fifth the governor receives word from the general in command: ‘I received dispatches from Brigadier Richard Eppes, stating that with local militia those I sent him were more than enough to suppress the insurrection.'

“The next day the governor continues to receive requests for arms from other counties like Brunswick, Nansemond, Surry, and towns, including Greenville.

“On the third of September, he mentions trials and names I have heard before—Moses, Daniel, Andrew, and Jack. He seems to find the distance they were purported to cover astounding. ‘The insurgents progressed twenty miles before they were checked, yet all this horrid work was accomplished in two days.'”

Harriet sighed and forced herself to take a sip of tea. “Governor Floyd finds the twenty miles incredible. What must he have thought when by the end of things the rebels were said to have covered fifty miles in two days?” She began to search the pages. “Over the days, he received records of scores of slaves condemned to hang in Southampton and other counties. Then on September 17th, I begin to sense some doubt.

“‘Received an express from Amelia today, asking arms as families have been murdered in Dinwiddie near the Nottoway line. Colonel Davidson of the 39th Regiment Petersburgh states the same by report. I do not exactly believe the report.'

“The governor was so sympathetic when he first heard of the rebellion, or the insurrection, as he called it. But on the nineteenth Floyd writes, ‘News from the Colonel of the 39th says the whole is
false as it relates to the massacre of Mrs. Cousins and family in Dinwiddie. The slaves are quiet and evince no disposition to rebel.' The next day he writes: ‘The alarm of the country is great in the counties between this and the Blue Ridge Mountains. I am daily sending them a portion of arms though I know there is no danger as the slaves were never more humbled and subdued.'

“On September 23rd, he mentions two trials in particular that troubled him: ‘I received the record of the trial of Lucy and Joe of Southampton. They were of the insurgents.'”

Calvin leaned forward in his chair, his fingers steepled, his elbows on the table.

“Do you remember me telling you of them, Professor? Lucy and Joe belonged to the widow Mary Barrow and to John Clarke Turner, respectively. I remember when I was told of the trials that my heart was filled with doubt. The governor appears to have been doubtful also. He wrote, ‘What can be done, I yet know not, as I am obliged by the Constitution first to require the advice of the council, then to do as I please. This endangers the lives of these negroes, though I am disposed to reprieve for transportation I cannot do it until I first require advice of council and there are no councillors now in Richmond, nor will there be unless Daniel comes to town in time enough.'”

Harriet pushed her toast away. She had no appetite. People died for no reason. She continued, forcing her way through the reading, “Then on September 27th, ‘I have received record of the trial of three slaves for treason in Southampton. Am recommended to mercy, which I would grant… but in this case I cannot do so, because there is not one member of the Council of State in Richmond. Wherefore, the poor wretches must lose their lives by absence of the councillors from their official duties.'”

Harriet refolded the letter and stuffed it back in its envelope. It was appalling how little care men had for their brothers. “All this is making me ill.”

“And indignant, my dear Harriet.”

“But it was so long ago, Professor. What good does it do to dig it all up now? It is twenty-five years hence and as the governor stated, the poor wretches have already lost their lives. I cannot bring them back.”

“Perhaps, my wife. But the truth is still a precious gem that does not lose value with age. Truth might at least ease the suffering of loved ones left behind.”

The two of them discussed the diary entries. “They are too detailed for me to doubt them.” When they were finished it was decided. She could not travel to the South to investigate; there was a bounty on her head. Instead, Harriet would travel to New York to share the letter with Frederick Douglass and her brother Henry.

Cross Keys Area, outside Jerusalem, Virginia

Christmas 1830

I
nside the stove warmed the small cabin that was packed with twenty to thirty people—survival made all of them heroes.

Nat Turner made his way around the room, greeting them: Sam, Hark, and the freemen. He leaned to kiss his mother on the cheek. In the corner the children played and he walked to join them. On Sundays, after church, he taught them to read. But before he could begin a lesson this day, his wife, Cherry, came to him.

“It is Christmas, husband, let them play.” She led him to a chair. He looked down at his feet. They felt nothing now, but soon he knew he would feel spiky pain as they thawed.

Nat Turner looked around the small, crowded living space at the people gathered there. It had been a hard winter—hard for slave owners, brutal for slaves—no longer people but black-draped skeletons. Few of the captors had enough to eat and were hard-pressed to find heart to share the little that kept them alive with captives.

The warm air in the cabin carried the bittersweet smell of the hardworking people and mixed it with aromas from the kitchen.

God had sent him back for them.

Eyes shifted from the stove to conversations and back again. Nat Turner smelled the warm fragrance of baking sweet potatoes from the hosts' garden. A brine of vinegar and salt water steamed from a kettle on the iron stove. As people entered the cabin, shivering
from the cold, they made their way to Thomas Hathcock's wife, freewoman and hostess, stationed near the pots. One would come with a few precious potatoes, a single squash, or a cup of dried beans. All of it swirled into the kettle. Each one brought a metal cup or pan, and when the food was finished they would share.

Mrs. Hathcock had a reputation. Though she was known for her preserves, she could make anything delicious. She did wonders with everything she touched.

Next to the kettle was a large pot of mixed greens—mustard and collards that her husband had rescued from the weather—already tender and kept warming. One of the women brought a small but prized piece of salt pork. Mrs. Hathcock added a tiny, precious portion to the greens to season them. She added lard and a bit of the salt pork to a cast-iron skillet and began to steam-fry a head of cabbage and bits more of it to some of the other dishes to season them.

Daniel came through the door with his mother, both of them Peter Edwards's slaves. It was rare, but their master kept them together as mother and son. In her hands was a bundle tied like treasure in a rag. She beamed.

“My master butchered last week and gave me these.” Two pig ears, a snout, a tail, and four hooves, frozen from the cold. “There's chitlins, too—I cleaned them real good.” She looked around at the people. “You don't have to worry.”

The people's eyes followed the porcine jewels; their mouths salivated. Smiling, Mrs. Hathcock dropped them into the steaming pot of vinegary water.

Daniel helped his mother to a chair. She smiled. “Master Edwards let me have them instead of feeding them to the dogs.” It was a Christmas treat; for most of them it was the only meat they would taste all year. Nat Turner heard the empty stomachs grumbling. He saw anticipation in their eyes and smiles.

Another woman came and set a lidded jar on the table. “This is something, right here!” From the jar she pulled three pig feet and
one ear. She had boiled them and pickled them in brine. Nat Turner smiled back at her. He knew what a sacrifice she had made. She had gone to bed hungry many nights, knowing she had the pork, but saved this Christmas portion to share.

She got a knife and cut the treat, passing tiny pieces around. Children's eyes rounded and glowed as they sucked on the bones—gnawing on the bones, sucking on the marrow.

Smiling and gracious, his mother gave her portion away to Mother Easter, the old woman who sat beside her. Though his mother had been away from Africa more than thirty years, like a good Ethiopian Christian, she still did not eat pork. Cherry gave hers to their son, and Nat Turner gave his to her.

People huddled together, laughing and talking, gathered from the scattered farms they lived on. Communion was the gift they shared. There was no wine or unleavened bread for them. There were no hats, cloaks, mittens, or presents. There was nothing for them except the hardscrabble meal they had scraped together. Captivity had taken its toll—so many without coats and shelter froze to death during the night. So each one celebrated that he had awakened that morning, clothed and in his right mind. Survival was the gift they shared. All of them heroes.

This was not like the Christmases Nat Turner had seen and sometimes shared at his father's house.

At his father's house there had been evergreens. Nat Turner remembered the smell of pine. There was holly with red berries to decorate the room. There was glazed ham and a holiday goose then. The spicy, sugary aroma of apple preserves and brandied peaches filled the room. There was hominy baked with cheese. He could not eat with the others in his father's house, but his father would bring a plate to him and to his mother with bits of succulent things to taste.

He recalled holding in his hands candy and a book—sometimes a coat new to him, a hand-me-down—given as presents.

He remembered inside his father's church, where he and the
other black people were allowed to sit on the back pew when his father was alive. Inside, at Christmas, the church was filled with holly and mistletoe. He recalled the scents of dried lavender, rosemary, and rose petals.

The people gathered in this cabin had none of what Nat Turner remembered. God had sent him back from the wilderness for them.

Twenty-eight people crowded into the small cabin. The Artis brothers, part Cheroenhaka Nottoway Indian, sat talking to Hark, Sam, Dred, and some of the other men. “They have taken our land, saying we are not Indians because our mothers wed black men. Now we must pay rent to white men for our own land.” Frown lines were worn into his cheeks. “Indians that marry white men keep their land,” Exum Artis said.