The Great Dismal Swamp
1821
He would never return to Southampton County. Nat Turner walked past great trees—oaks, Virginia pines, cypresses, walnuts, and magnolias—past roads he had never seen before. He could not bear to live in Cross Keys without Cherry and Riddick. The Great Dismal Swamp was days away.
Nat Turner was a hopeless man.
He had never had a complete family. Except for his mother, his African family was lost to him. His American ancestors were never known to him—he was never invited to meet his grandfather, never included in family outings. There were secrets and things given to his white brothers that would never be given to him.
His dreams of education—his labor had paid for a wasted education for his brother John Clarke—of a career, of a farm had been stolen away. To comfort himself, he had buried himself in the leaves and the pages of the Bible. He could not serve in an Ethiopian cathedral or monastery, but he had been promised a place, by his father, in the little country church.
Then that dream had been stolen.
But he had wanted peace, and he had set about making compromises with life. If he could not be a trustee or sit in the church, then he would be a circuit preacher, preaching throughout the countryside to the rejected and despised. He would be like the patriarch Jacob and satisfy himself with the speckled, spotted, and brown sheep. Maybe one day he would travel far enough to Philadelphia to meet Bishop Allen.
He had told himself, before Cherry was stolen, that he would be satisfied with the gift of her love and the gift of his small family. Maybe this was all there was, maybe slavery was God’s will for him; some men had cruel fates. Nat Turner would bear up under his. The love of his wife, Cherry, and of his son was God’s gift to him and made his existence bearable. Perhaps his dreams were only dreams and God planned no more for him than bondage—with his family as his consolation.
Nat Turner loved his Father. It was not lavish gifts that God said He wanted as proof of His children’s love. What God wanted was unyielding obedience. So Nathan Turner had been a most obedient son.
He had obeyed his mother, and to honor God, he had obeyed the earthly masters put over him. He had obeyed the earthly laws—he did not steal, he did not curse, he did not drink. Nathan Turner had obeyed not only the letter but also the heart of God’s law—he had loved God with all his heart, soul, and mind. He had loved his neighbors and his brothers—those of all nations and tongues—as he loved himself. He had even given the most difficult obedience: He had loved his enemies. As a son of peace, he had learned to turn the other cheek.
He was God’s obedient servant, even if it cost him his dignity. He had obeyed God in laying down his own will and allowing himself to love Cherry. He had laid down his own desires—to own a farm, to be a scientist, to be a bishop, to be treated as an equal. To be a man. He compromised his own desires all for the Father he loved.
In return, God made a promise: Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.
Nathan Turner had obeyed by love and faith even when it did not seem reasonable to other men. In return for his love and obedience, God had made him a promise.
Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the LORD shall be thy reward. Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall answer; thou shalt cry, and He shall say, Here I am.
If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity; And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noon day: And the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.
And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.
Now Cherry and Riddick were gone.
Where was God now? Instead of the promises, Nat Turner had received only sadness and more humiliation. What he got in return for his love and obedience was the pain of watching his heavenly Father chase after those who did not love Him. What he got in return for his obedience was God giving His favor to those who disobeyed Him, to ones who called themselves master. Nat Turner could see with his own eyes that God favored the sons who mocked Him.
No matter how hard he prayed and studied, no matter how temperate he was, no matter how he turned the other cheek and forgave others, God did not love him enough to spare him or to spare his family.
He was alone in the world.
Maybe he had not heard God at all. Maybe all along he had been deceiving himself. Maybe the One he had loved most in the world had never loved him.
Abandoned. Betrayed. God had vanished into thin air.
God had been his comfort: There was no big house, no wealth that he could look to for reassurance. All that he had was God, and Nat Turner had given his life to Him. God had been the only Father he could whisper to, the only Father to wrap an arm around his shoulders. God’s spirit and His Word had raised him. But now he was alone.
Nat Turner kept from the road and walked among the trees. The shoes were good protection, though he missed the feel of grass beneath his feet.
Maybe he had not heard God at all.
Maybe all along he had been deceiving himself. Doubt. God did not love him—denied by even his heavenly Father. The only Father he had been able to trust, the only Father he could openly claim, had turned His back on him.
Nat Turner had stood up for God and for righteousness because he loved Him. He had spoken the words that God had put in his mouth, and for them he had been beaten and ridiculed. He had stood up for God, but God had not stood up for him.
He was disconsolate. He was forsaken while those who did not love God, who mocked God and disobeyed His Words, prospered. Nat Turner continued walking, head down.
Righteous art thou, O LORD, when I plead with thee: yet let me talk with thee of thy judgments: Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? Wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously?
Nat Turner paid little attention to the sky or the birds singing around him. Instead, he thought of those he had known all his life, the men and women of Cross Keys—the Francises, the Whiteheads, the Turners. He thought of the ones he had overheard plotting against him in his father’s church.
Thou hast planted them, yea, they have taken root: they grow, yea, they bring forth fruit: thou art near in their mouth, and far from their reins.
He thought of the farms they had and the houses they’d built. He thought of the Whiteheads’ foolish son, a false prophet, in the pulpit. He thought of the power in Elizabeth Turner’s hands—soft hands that had never suffered. She had everything.
The wicked men and women had families and land and no one sold them away, hanged them, or bound them in chains. A wicked man stood in God’s pulpit and God did nothing. The wicked ones had murdered their brothers and sisters, sold them into slavery, and even murdered the land with their dreams of cotton’s wealth. Those who called themselves masters had committed adultery, raping slaves, and sold their own children away, and still the Lord said nothing.
Nat Turner thought of his mother, Nancie, of Hark, of Easter, of Will, of Berry Newsom, of the Artis brothers, and of all the others who had suffered. It did not seem fair that the ones who believed had nothing to show for their love and their labor. It did not seem just that those who made only a show of God were benefiting while the ones who turned their cheeks suffered. When would God send someone to vindicate them?
All over America, and throughout the world, the false prophets spread hatred. A precious gift of adoration, words of love smeared by power-lust, greed, and bigotry that oozed out of teachers’ mouths, dripped from pages as messages of hate. They blamed their wickedness on God. The stink of their lies spread like smoke from a wildfire.
God had turned His back on His darker children. The lighter ones said the proof was in their hands—they owned and controlled everything, including other men. The darker children of the world suffered, crying out, stretching their hands toward heaven.
The wicked ones, the plunderers, beat and murdered and stole and raped in His Name! Where was God? How long would He be silent?
How could anything change without God’s intervention? If God didn’t move, then faith was for nothing.
But thou, O LORD, knowest me: thou hast seen me, and tried mine heart toward thee: pull them out like sheep for the slaughter, and prepare them for the day of slaughter. How long shall the land mourn, and the herbs of every field wither, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein?
Then Nat Turner stopped himself. He looked briefly at the sky. God did not hear him. God did not know him. God did not love him; He preferred to prosper the wicked. He preferred to be the God of only white men.
If God turned His back, then Nat Turner would turn his.
He was finished with compromise. He would not pray anymore. He did not want to hear from God. He would find his own way to survive. He would make a life of his own and sail away.
The roads were mostly deserted. No one stopped him.
It took Nat Turner three days to reach the Great Dismal.
I got a hiding place.
Throw me overboard.
I got a hiding place.
He stepped into the forest, and darkness swallowed him.