He would leave. There was no way he could see his wife sold and made to be another man’s concubine and call himself a man. Nat Turner didn’t want to be the kind of man who gave up his manhood just to survive. He didn’t want Cherry to become the kind of wife who smiled when he was looking but frowned when he turned away. He would leave Southampton County; he had no choice.
The captors said there was no such thing as black love—husbands did not love wives, fathers did not love children, and brothers did not love sisters. Blacks were no more than dogs, or rooting pigs.
He had no choice but to leave. He had gone along with the charade long enough—too long. He had given up freedom to stay with his family. But no longer—he would simply walk away. No one could come after him. No one could produce ownership papers that said he or she owned him.
Before he left Cross Keys, Nat Turner wrote himself a pass so if anyone stopped him as a slave, he would have written permission to travel. Though whoever stopped him would most likely not be literate, a written pass looked official enough that he would not be challenged as a runaway.
Nat Turner dressed in a pair of worn pants, a shirt, a pair of his father’s shoes that he had hidden away. He never wore them in public, fearing they would be taken from him. But now he wore them and dressed in a coat and hat that had been his father’s and made his way on foot south and east forty miles to the Great Dismal Swamp.
Nat Turner did not say good-bye. He pulled his collar up around his ears and lowered his head, slinging his small bundle over his shoulder, his axe stuck through it.
Presidents had already visited the swampland—Washington and Monroe—but the Great Dismal had defied them. President George Washington had thought to earn money from the area by controlling the planned waterway, harvesting trees, and exploiting other resources there. They had used slaves to do the dirty work. But his efforts brought little success.
The Great Dismal was a mysterious place and everyone around had heard the rumors. The swamp was filled with escaped slaves who could not be tracked or found in the tropical forest.
Animals and insects were there that civilized men had never seen before. It was said that the trees talked and at night the water whispered. White men died of diseases there—all nature seemed to conspire against them.
People told stories of whole families of black people who had escaped and found a way to be free in the Great Dismal Swamp. The slaves who holed up there, it was said, were desperate, angry, ready to die—ruthless avengers who would kill a white man sooner than look him in the eye. Some lived there permanently, but for others it was a temporary refuge. Nat Turner knew that if he made it there, no white man from Southampton County would enter the swamp to search for him.
He wanted to hide where he could be swallowed into darkness, into a place of great sadness.
When he traveled previously—when it was winter, so there was little farmwork, and he was hired out to repair mills—Nat Turner always carried his Bible, the one his father had given him. Who knew when God would give him a word for the people? He had preached all over the area, like a Methodist circuit rider, even as far away as Norfolk. But this time he left the book behind.
He pulled his hat snug on his head so no one would notice the curls in his hair. Head down, he walked quickly, like a man who had business to attend to. But not so quickly he would attract attention.
He was fair enough that, at a distance, passersby might think he was a white man. He would have even more chance of not being discovered if he traveled by night.
As Nat Turner walked, he heard Sister Easter—a captive on Nathaniel Francis’s farm. He heard her voice singing to him.
In the word of God
I got a hiding place.
He needed a hiding place. Nat Turner was desperate for a place where he could hide from his troubles, from his thoughts.
In the word of God
I got a hiding place.
Throw me overboard
I got a hiding place.
The Great Dismal Swamp would be his place of escape—his Hebron, his city of refuge. It would swallow him and he would hide forever.