The mythology of Nat Turner: black theology and black revolt in the shaping of American myth and symbol

PDF

Download

Open document

Flip pages

Summarize

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content

THE MYTHOLOGY OF NAT TURNER:
BLACK THEOLOGY AND BLACK REVOLT IN THE SHAPING OF AMERICAN
MYTH AND SYMBOL

by
Joshua Damu Smith

________________________________________________________

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(ENGLISH)

May 2010

Copyright 2010 Joshua Damu Smith

ii
Dedication

I dedicate this dissertation to my lovely wife Marsee,
who has patiently waited for the completion of my doctoral
degree.

iii
Acknowledgements

I would first like to thank God for supporting me in
the completion of this dissertation with His bountiful
grace and boundless wisdom. I must also thank and
acknowledge my wife Marsee for her patience throughout the
duration of my academic career at USC. I thank my parents,
Edward and Vanessa Smith, whose stories of college life
inspired me as a child to follow my educational journey to
its completion. I thank my father for always encouraging me
to think big and my mother, who not only taught me my first
lessons in reading, but who spent countless hours helping
me with homework assignments throughout grade school. I
thank Wade Thomas-Harper, whose diligent recruiting efforts
convinced me to apply to USC and whose persistent
admonitions motivated me to complete my doctoral work at
USC. Finally, I thank my dissertation committee, Judith
Jackson Fossett (chair), Thomas Gustafson, Anthony Kemp,
and Sheila Briggs. I also consider Thomas Cox to be an
unofficial member of this committee and I thank him for all
of his sincere and thoughtful responses to drafts of my
dissertation. I am probably an unconventional student in
many ways and I would like to thank everyone on my
iv
committee for their encouragement, support, wisdom and
patience as I found my way.
v
Table of Contents

Dedication ii

Acknowledgements iii

Abstract vi

Introduction 1

Chapter 1: Nat Turner’s Antebellum New World 31
Paternalism 52
Christianity 91

Chapter 2: Nat Turner as Signifying Monkey 126
David Walker 137
Fredrick Douglass 173
Harriet Jacobs 235

Chapter 3: The Psychographic World of Thomas Gray 274
The Theatricality of Plantation Culture 275
The Cultural Context of Gray’s World 289
The Confessions as Cultural Window 296

Conclusion 354

Bibliography 363

vi
Abstract

Nat Turner and his 1831 Southampton County, Virginia
slave rebellion leave a mythic footprint on American
culture that has since forged a permanent part of the
mythology of race and revolt in America. The Confessions of
Nat Turner (1831), the testimony of Turner as transcribed
by Thomas Gray, is the most important source for
information about Turner’s rebellion. However, it is one
part of a rhetorical continuum comprised of propaganda-
filled statements by political officials, transcriptions of
interviews with co-conspirators, court records, newspaper
reports, and anonymous tips to the press. Compromised by
Gray’s editorial decisions and other political forces, The
Confessions of Nat Turner must also be read in light of
Turner’s actions. In and of itself, Turner’s rebellion is
its own artifact. Taking on violent action befitting the
mold of America’s Revolutionary tradition and calling upon
America’s Christian tradition as a self-proclaimed preacher
and prophet, Turner becomes conflated with his rebellion
and becomes an indomitable entity within Gray’s redacted
narrative and within American myth and symbol. In sum,
Turner becomes emblematic of black revolution, embodying a
narrative of a black autonomy throughout the antebellum New
vii
World. This dissertation examines these dynamics through
close readings of The Confessions of Nat Turner and several
related literary, historical and religious documents.
1
Introduction

This dissertation examines Nat Turner’s 1831
Southampton County Virginia slave revolt in which Turner
led 60-80 slave rebels in the property destruction and
death of roughly 60 whites. As a self-proclaimed Christian
preacher who boasts of having received apocalyptic visions
and as the architect of a slave rebellion with symbolic
parallels to the American War for Independence, Turner’s
rebellion encapsulates much more than a motivated group of
angry slaves. The significance of this revolt is as much
about the cultural narrative that emerges out of the revolt
as it is about the rebellion’s immediate physical and
political impact on Virginia and the rest of the South.
By cultural narrative, I am referring to the
collection of stories about Turner that cumulatively
narrate a black antebellum “New World,” one that stretches
south well beyond U.S. borders and one that serves as the
black counterpart to the aftermath of the American
Revolution of 1776. To be clear, any further references to
a “black antebellum New World” in this dissertation refer
to black freedom from slavery in the Americans and to the
civic freedoms blacks would be able to imagine in world
without slavery, segregation and other forms of
2
institutionalized racism. Indeed, if the American
Revolution creates New World benefits and freedoms for the
white inhabitants of England’s North American colonies, a
black antebellum New World would be preceded by a political
revolution of the same magnitude and creating the same
civic advantages for blacks. Though it’s duration is just
more than 24-hours, though its geographically contained
within a single Virginia county, and though it concludes in
the execution of all conspirators—including it leader,
Turner’s rebellion becomes a material point of reference
from which to imagine and narrate the prospect of a black
world replete with the human decencies prescribed under the
American Constitution.
Because Turner’s rebellion is such a strong point of
reference for imagining black political possibilities, the
prospect of a black antebellum New World becomes
inextricably connected to the prospect of violent black
revolt. Many of the contemporaneous discussions about
Turner in the aftermath of his rebellion explore the links
between Turner’s rebellion, the iconography of the American
Revolution, and the unfinished political business of
American Revolution relative to slavery. The more time
that passes after Turner’s revolt, the less Turner’s
rebellion is viewed as an isolated incident and the more
3
the narration of the rebellion intersects with themes
conflating American Revolutionary possibilities with black
freedom. To be sure, the American struggle for
Independence is one deeply embedded in the value and
prospect of freedom, political renewal, providential
intervention and territorial expansion. A generation after
the American struggle for Independence, Turner’s rebellion
illustrates that these ideals maintain a level of immediacy
in the black community that is not present in the white
community with the same level of intensity. Turner’s
invocation of Christian scripture, his use of violent
force, his messianic vision for black freedom, and his
attempt to escape from the geographical center of his
bondage place Turner within the mythological space forging
American concepts of revolution and national destiny.
Turner’s rebellion places center stage the whole
question of what revolution means in American and who is
qualified to participate in it. Hence, as Eric Sundquist
notes, by the early nineteenth century, “the authority of
the Revolution. . .become[s] the subject of anxious
meditation.”
1
Specifically, controversy over the meaning of
revolution brings a very specific set of complications

1
Sundquist, Eric. To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making
of American Literature. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1993. p. 30.
4
about symbolism to the American political leadership of the
nineteenth century. Indeed, the philosophical questions and
cultural dilemmas looming over slavery forge an important
proving ground for America’s second generation of political
leaders, the success or failure of which lingers in the
shadow of America’s Founding Fathers. A generation removed
from the American War for Independence, President Andrew
Jackson and other political elites of the period wrestle
with their own identities and the extent to which they
uphold the ideals of the Founding Fathers. Though
temporally and geographically limited in scope, the
symbolism and political messaging emerging out of Turner’s
rebellion is explosive enough to draw second generation
political elites into a focus on a “national crisis over
slavery’s limits everywhere”
2
and “a return to the
fraternally divisive energies of the revolutionary
generation.”
3
This focus on America’s founding
revolutionary struggle draws Turner and the nation’s
political leadership into a competition of ownership over
American symbolism. Turner certainly makes a case for the
black community’s stake in the symbolism. In his rebellion,
he brings to the forefront the compelling parallel

2
Ibid.
3
Ibid.
5
experience offered by the African American community with
respect to American symbolism: The incessant escape treks
of slaves from the South to the North, the slave revolt
attempts of the early nineteenth century, the Christian
beliefs embraced by the slave community, and the other
multiple and varied quests for freedom by the black slave
community are a mirror the heart and soul of the
revolutionary generation. This symbolic duality of
experience renders African Americans as the inverted
opposites on the other side of the white American looking
glass. Within the black experience in America, whites see
mirror images of themselves, though with paradoxical
awkwardness, for the black plight challenges the white
American sense of liberty as much as it mirrors it.
Ultimately, because the institutionalization of white
freedom rests upon the establishment of black servitude,
the black experience in America works against and
symbolically revives the legacy of the white American
pursuit of political and civic liberty.
For white landowners and slaveholders, prospective
challenges to white freedom are foremost. The prospect of
black revolt and a resulting world of black civic freedom
challenges a competing vision of American (white) freedom
rooted in the privileging of white landowning males in the
6
original draft of the Constitution. The original draft of
the Constitution catered overwhelmingly to white men of
economic means, while the Bill of Rights functioned as a
concession to the masses of individuals in the American
colonies without financial or social clout. Southern
landowners are particularly important with respect to the
privileging of white landowners, for their land ownership
is institutionally and economically tied to slaves.
This relationship between land, slaves and the freedom
of the southern white male is at the crux of this
dissertation’s focus on narrative. Specifically, slaves
and land act as the material artifacts that dramatize a
southern version of white male freedom. In both
conversations and letters to colleagues and family members,
southern white men narrate stories about their acquisition
and ownership of slaves and land.
4
These narrations become
the way in which these men imagine their freedoms to be
perpetual and preeminent.
5
The process of buying slaves and
the narration of acquiring and owing them together become
rights of passage rituals that affirm white men’s elevated

4
Johnson, Walter. Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum
Slave Market. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999.
pp. 78-116.
5
Ibid.
7
status in the social hierarchy in the South.
6
Narrating the
process of purchasing and owning slaves become a way in
which white slaveholders and prospective slaveholders flex
their socioeconomic muscles or at least create the charade
that they have them.
7
In narrating their ascension up the
plantation social hierarchy, white male slaveholders
imagine freedoms that exist and those that do not.
8
Both the
process of purchasing slaves and the prospect of owning
them fosters a creative space out of which white men of
means construct socioeconomic fantasies bolstering their
senses of freedom and self-worth.
These men are so invested in their fantasies that the
narrations the men create out of their fantasies are just
as much scripts as they are stories. The narrations not
only reflect what the men believe is possible, but script
the actions of the men in an on-going social drama. Their
stories impose upon plantation life a theatricality that
belies its fiction. In talking about, writing about,
speculating upon and negotiating over the purchasing of
slaves, slaveholders and prospective slaveholders are
acting out their fantasies. The financial speculation and
planning involved in the discussion of prospective

6
Ibid.
7
Ibid.
8
Ibid.
8
slaveownership allows these men to act out a portion of
their fantasy. The formulation and musing on the logistics
of a slave purchase gives their fantasies about
slaveownership a tangible quality, one they can act in and
upon. This speculation over slaveownership--whether within
the context of wishful thinking or within the context of an
actual bid or negotiation over a prospective slave--serves
as a metonymic substitute for everything that
slaveownership makes available materially or socially to
the prospective slave owner. Figuratively, the part
becomes the whole. The narration becomes what it narrates.
In telling stories of slaveownership, white men live out in
real time what their stories indicate they are in the
process of becoming. Historian Walter Johnson comments:
For slaveholders. . .the slave market [holds] dreams
of self-transformative possibilities. Before they
ente[r] the slave market or inspec[t] a slave, many
slaveholders ha[ve] well-developed ideas about what
they c[an] find there. These ideas ha[ve] less to do
with the real people they. . .meet in the market,
however, than they d[o] with the slaveholders
themselves, about the type of people they c[an] become
by buying slaves. As they tal[k] about and wr[i]te
about buying slaves, slaveholders ma[p] a world made
out of slavery. . . .As they narrat[e] their upward
progress through the slave market, slaveholders small
and large [a]re constructing themselves out of slaves.
. . .And as slaveholders mov[e] upward through the
social hierarchy, they gai[n] access to ever more
rarified fantasies of what it mean[s] to be a white
man and a slaveholder in the antebellum South.
9

9
Ibid. pp. 78, 85, 88.
9

Essentially, what it means to be a white man and a
slaveholder in the antebellum South has everything to do
with what slaveholders imagine it means to be a black
slave. Because slaveholders’ concept of black slave
personhood is so closely tied to the slaveholders’
fantasies of social mobility and self-esteem, their notions
of black slaves have less to do with actual slaves and more
to do with the leverage the prospect of an owned slave
lends to white men. Black bodies serve as collateral for
these fantasies. In the very prospect of the life of
leisure that slaves produce for their masters, slaveholders
are able to step into roles of esteemed social prestige.
Long before the potential economic output of a slave
materializes and often long before the purchase of a slave
is finalized, white male slaveholders and prospective
slaveholders are able to project onto themselves an
empowered social identity. Their narration of what they
become as a result of slaveownership is actually one of the
vehicles by which they become what they narrate.
Hence, the slave that a prospective slaveholder could
buy on the auction block or the owned slave that has the
potential to double or triple the slave master’s wealth is
10
actually an imagined slave.
10
This imagined slave, animated
through narrative, fosters the social transformation of
white slave purchasers and owners. The actual slave, often
far from being as pliable as the slave owner imagines,
serves as a material representation and placeholder for the
slaves of the slaveholder’s imagination. The corporeality
of the actual slave serves as a sign of an endless number
of imagined slaves and a limitless amount of economic
output. In essence, slaves serve as cultural ciphers,
figurative zeros, each addition of which creates an
infinite geometric progression of socioeconomic value for
the slave master. The continuity of this formula depends
upon slaves’ utter subservience to the master and utter
lack of an independent will. Though the domination of
slaves at this level is not consistently possible, the
physical, legal and institutional protections undergirding
the power of the slave master keep enough slaves under
subjection for slaves to play the part convincingly,
keeping the narrative of white male social significance
alive.
However, the continuity of this charade is
significantly interrupted by Turner’s rebellion. Not only
does Turner’s slave revolt spoil outright the slaveholder’s

10
Ibid. p. 89.
11
fantasies of slave compliance outright, but it represents a
powerful counter-narrative that also calls upon an imagined
slave, a figure who sharply contrasts with his counterpart
in slave holders’ fantasies. Essentially, Turner’s revolt
embodies a subversive counter-narrative that features a
different “slave,” not compliant, but willing to rise up.
The image of this slave becomes increasingly more vivid in
the years leading up to Turner’s revolt because of material
conditions on the ground throughout the plantation
economies of the Americas. For whites, the imagined slave
invoked by Turner is one that has a deep history in the
fear of slave revolt in America. As early as the
seventeenth century, within a few decades of the
introduction of slaves in the colonies, slaveholders
expressed about possible slave “dissatisfaction.” Those
fears facilitate the construction of the imagined slave
rebel.
11
As historian Herbert Aptheker notes, often “the
fear [of slave revolt] exist[s] quite independently of any
connection with an actual outbreak.”
12
Just as the prospect
of a slave purchase creates incessant and blissful
fantasies of plantation life for slaveholders, so too does
the prospects of slave rebellion create perpetual

11
Aptheker, Herbert. American Negro Slave Revolts. New
York: International Publishers, 1963. p. 19.
12
Ibid.
12
nightmares about slave revolt. These nightmares contribute
in the construction of an imagined slave, one fitting of
the most gruesome and terrifying descriptions.
The Haitian slave revolt of 1791 is largely
responsible for the fabrication of this imagined slave.
Violently overthrowing long-standing French colonial rule,
Haitian slaves initiate a 13-year struggle that culminates
in the world’s first independent republic created entirely
by former slaves.
13
However, the most pronounced aspect of
the revolt for whites is the extreme nature of the violence
behind it. The wholesale burning of white planter
communities, the dismemberment of human bodies and the gory
killing of babies all characterize the kinds of violent
behavior in which Haitian slave rebels engage.
14
The
gruesome death and destruction engendered by this violence
quickly crystallizes into vivid narrative imagery of
terrorist slaves. This imagery becomes embedded in stories
about Haitian terror that reach the States. As literary
critic Eric Sundquist remarks, “the outbreak of revolution
in 1791 brings a flood of white planter refugees to the
United States, some ten thousand in 1793 alone, most of

13
Hunt, Alfred. Haiti’s Influence on Antebellum America:
Slumbering Volcano in the Caribbean. Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press, 1988. p. 2.
14
Ibid. pp. 20-21.
13
them carrying both slaves and tales of terror to the North
and South alike.”
15
Though stories of the slave violence in
Haiti “reflect[s] the chaos. . .gripp[ing] the island” the
narrative imagery of slave terrorist violence is
exaggerated in the captive minds of American whites. Not
only do stories of Haitian terror feed American white
paranoia of slave revolt, but also white American absence
from the Haitian conflict requires white Americans to
recreate mentally the imagery depicted by white refugees of
Haiti. American whites generate within their imaginations
rebel slaves that are even more terrifying than the Haitian
slaves. The combinations of their paranoia with their
imaginations foster the ultimate rebel slave, a slave of
the imagination, but one that is nonetheless terrifying.
The narrative of black terror emerging out of the Haitian
Revolution creates a nightmarish imagined slave in the
minds of whites.
As the reports of both small-scale slave revolt and
large-scale attempts at slave revolt in the States increase
in the aftermath to the Haitian Revolution, the imagined
slave terrorist has an even greater presence in the minds
of many whites. This does not diminish at all the potency

15
Sundquist, Eric. To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making
of American Literature. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1993. p. 32.
14
of actual slave rebels, but only indicates the recurring
power of the slave rebel’s story as a significant counter-
narrative to the narrative of white supremacy. This
counter-narrative grows as the Haitian Revolution inspires
other slave revolts. Two slave rebellion attempts, one
during the Haitian Revolution and one less than twenty
years after it, are particularly notable in this regard.
Gabriel Prosser, a black slave, and Denmark Vesey, a free
black, lead slave revolt attempts that have the potential
to mobilize thousands of slave rebels in revolt. The
rebellion attempts are stopped before they grow into actual
revolts, but when white authorities uncover the plots of
Prosser and Vesey, they are perplexed that Prosser and
Vesey are able to compel so many slaves to revolt.
The self-transformation fantasies of white male
slaveholders require a belief that blacks are essentially
child-like creatures that need and ultimately prefer the
oversight of whites to grow into mature spiritual and civic
beings. At its roots, this way of thinking is
paternalistic. In relationship to his slaves, the white
male slave owner views himself as a father figure whose
benevolence and guidance not only nurtures his slaves into
maturity, but also endears them to his leadership. Though
the treatment of his slaves may be far from benevolent,
15
this generally does not hinder his perception that his
actions are benevolent. What adds to this charade is that
slaves, both for survival and political strategy, often
play the role of the contented slave, reinforcing in the
mind of the slave owner that his benevolence is genuine.
Hence, the discovery of Prosser’s and Vesey’s revolt plans
create conundrums for slaveholders. White American
slaveholders are already undone by the stories of Haitian
terror, but the Haitian rebellion still fits within their
paternalistic logic: White American slaveholders convince
themselves that Haitian slaves are simply owned by
negligent masters. American slaveholders tell themselves
that the poor treatment of Haitian slaves by white Haitian
slaveholders over time creates enough unrest amongst
Haitian slaves to stir revolt. The dilemma American whites
face when they make this argument is having to explain why
contented slaves participate in revolt. The idea of a
slave terror whose exceptional aversion to slavery is
nurtured by slave owner neglect is alarming, but
ideologically manageable. However, the idea of a contented
slave becoming a rebel is ideologically irreconcilable and
accompanied by an insatiable degree of alarm and shock.
Sundquist comments:
16
Accommodation and assimilation (or appearances to that
effect) [are] no guard whatsoever against rebellion.
Most shocking in the conspiracies planned by Gabriel
Prosser. . .and Denmark Vesey. . .[is] the fact that
those most intimately involved [are] among the most
trusted slaves.
16

The inability of slaveholders to determine what contributes
to slave rebel behavior and the inability to determine the
signs of its occurrence enlarges the figure of the imagined
slave rebel. The mystery of when and how the imagined
slave rebel strikes creates an anxiety that is difficult
for whites to mask, though they try ardently.
What amounts to a growing anxiety for whites becomes a
growing anticipation for blacks. The imagined slave rebel
is just as vivid for blacks as it is for whites. Only the
imagery associated with it for blacks is not filled with
terror. The imagined slave in the black imagination is one
that signifies tremendous political possibility. To be
sure, Haiti, though a symbol of terror and death for
whites, becomes for blacks “a primary symbol of black
regeneration in the New World.”
17
The prospect of an
American version of Toussaint L 'Ouverture is not lost upon
American slaves who hear about revolution in Haiti. Black
American slaves are just as privy to the stories of Haitian

16
Ibid. pp. 33,55.
17
Hunt, Alfred. Haiti’s Influence on Antebellum America:
Slumbering Volcano in the Caribbean. Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press, 1988. p. 3.
17
unrest as whites. However, the political connotations that
emerge from these stories are vastly different for blacks
than they are for whites. Historian Alfred Hunt notes how
the symbolism of Haiti for blacks is comparable to the
symbolism of the American Revolution for whites: “If Thomas
Jefferson and Thomas Hart Benton inspir[e] whites with
their visions of American destiny, the Republic of Haiti
[gives] blacks assurances that they too [can] participate
in these New World dreams and aspirations.”
18

This is a thought that is certainly not lost upon
David Walker. As a politically active free black, he
publishes a document that forges links between the Haitian
Revolution and what he believes to be the imminence of a
comparable black revolution in America. He communicates
this concept in a document he publishes that he titles
Walker’s Appeal. Drawing structural and thematic parallels
between The Constitution, The Declaration of Independence,
Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, and the Bible, Walker
consolidates the cumulative implications of The Haitian
Revolution and the subversive black political activity that
it inspires. One of the most compelling implications of the
Haitian Revolution’s aftermath is Walker’s own version of
the imagined slave within the Appeal, one that precedes

18
Ibid.
18
Turner, but also anticipates Turner. It serves as a
prophecy, predicting the emergence of an American Toussaint
L 'Ouverture. Walker outlines the qualities of this
revolutionary leader and the rest of Walker’s Appeal
becomes what one might imagine the political ideology of
this revolutionary leader-to-be.
Turner emerges on the political scene two years after
the publication of the Appeal, “fitting the bill” that the
Appeal “prescribes.”
19
Turner fleshes out the imagined
slave rebel that Haitian infamy narrates, that Vessey and
Prosser anticipate and the Walker outlines. As such, Turner
becomes a symbol of black political revolution, inspiring
the likes of Fredrick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, both of
whom cite Turner in their respective slave narratives.
Turner serves a strategic citation in Douglass’s and
Jacobs’s writings, becoming a kind of political shorthand
and code for black political subversion and possibility.
He also represents the discursive revisionary tradition of
the signifying monkey, a rhetorical trope in the black
vernacular tradition that puns language to harvest
secondary meanings that often critique the discourses of

19
Fossett, Judith Jackson. University of Southern
California. Taper Hall, Los Angeles. 28 Feb. 2003.

19
white hegemony. Both the signifying monkey and Turner’s
expression of it underscore the subversive political power
of black literacy. However, in light of Turner’s
affiliation with Christianity and his incarnation of its
typology, Turner has as much to do with Christian
scriptural literacy, as he does with English language
literacy.
Specifically, he underscores a tradition in black
culture that conflates the reading of Roman alphabetic
signs with Christian prophetic, typological and
hermeneutical signs. Because the instruction in Christian
practices and the reading of Christian scripture frames the
context in which many blacks learn to read, their reading
of words is heavily tied to the import of biblical meaning
into their plight for freedom. The significance of this
is that the power of literacy for blacks is not just the
intellectual powers sharpened in the practice of reading,
but also the political and spiritual powers harnessed in
reinterpreting biblical words used among whites to
reinforce the institutional oppressions of blacks. Hence,
literacy for blacks is as much about discursive revision as
it is about reading. Black engagement with hermeneutics
has a strong impact on the way in which blacks challenge
20
the cultural narratives that contextualize their
oppression.
A few particular matters of biblical interpretation
surface with respect to black engagement with Christian
scripture. The first has to do with the typology of the
Old Testament, especially the typology of the Old Testament
book of Exodus, which chronicles the story of the Israeli
escape from Egyptian slavery. The biblical story is not
only significant because of the typological, symbolic and
metaphorical parallels that blacks draw between their own
plight and the plight of the Jews in their escape from
Egypt, but also because the biblical allusions of this
story are already significant parts of how whites
conceptualize their plights in America. This triple
mirroring of the Jews of Exodus with the blacks and whites
of America in terms of Old Testament typology and symbolism
ascribes to black associations with the Exodus story an
uncanny legitimacy. Because of the American Puritans, who
align themselves allegorically with the Israelites of the
Old Testament, the typology of this Exodus story is a
lasting part of American culture. Both American Blacks and
Whites draw from the Exodus story to characterize
themselves as contemporary Israelites trekking perpetually
through an American wilderness. While Blacks and Whites
21
construct different kinds of social and political agendas
from the Exodus tropes, a typological wilderness language
of progress, future and geography is common to both groups.
The respect that blacks and whites share for biblical
symbolism is one part of a broader shared biblical paradigm
between blacks and whites centered on biblical authority
and the scope of biblical law upon their nineteenth century
southern antebellum world. This becomes important because
of the way in which blacks make appeals to biblical law as
a means of elevating the moral, legal and cultural claims
against slavery. Because of the shared respect that blacks
and whites have for biblical law, black citations and
reinterpretations of scripture effectively place black
claims of injustice in a higher court. Blacks reject
compartmentalizing God from his creation and appeal to him
as lord of both heaven and earth, putting human affairs
within the context of his active domain and making him the
practical and ultimate judicator of human injustice.
Turner materializes this biblical framework insofar as he
leads a violent rebellion that he asserts is an expression
of God’s judgment of human injustice. Walker, Douglass,
Jacobs reinforce and complement what Turner accomplishes
materially in their appeals to biblical law to contest
slavery rhetorically.
22
What gives Turner, Walker, Jacobs and Douglass further
leverage in this regard is the fact that their abolitionist
efforts take place during the Second Great Awakening.
Extending roughly from the 1790s to the 1840s, the Second
Great Awakening is a national and interracial Christian
revival, which helps to solidify the Protestant Christian
influence on American culture at large and the South
especially. It is marked by “a widespread flowering of
religious sentiment and unprecedented expansion of church
membership,” which results in thousands of black Americans
converting to Protestant Christianity.
20
The revival places
an emphasis on repentance and God’s wrath against sin. It
also cultivates a belief in apocalyptic signs. These signs
represent God’s judgment upon collective sin, but also
reinforce the notion of God’s judicative intervention into
human affairs. The Awakening’s thematic focus on God’s
judgment underscores the emphases that Turner, Walker,
Douglass and Jacobs place upon the superiority of God’s law
over human law relative to slavery. This notion that God’s
law overrules human law puts an emphasis on another
important dynamic of the critique that Walker, Turner,

20
Finseth, Ian Fredrick. “The Second Great Awakening and
Rise of Evangelicalism” in Liquid Fire Within Me: Language,
Self, and Society in Transcendentalism and Early
Evengelicalism, 1820 – 1860. M.A. Thesis in English,
University of Virginia, August 1995.
23
Douglass and Jacobs levy upon American Christianity.
Walker, Turner, Douglass and Jacobs call attention to the
Holy Spirit as one of the key expressions of what the Bible
purports to be God’s triune nature. The Holy Spirit is also
a key figure relative to references to spiritual renewal
and revelations of God’s will. Additionally, allusions to
the Holy Spirit often refer to distinctions between what
the New Testament calls “the spirit of the law” and “the
letter of the law.” The dogmatism of human doctrine is
often represented by “the letter” and the refreshing purity
of God’s will is often represented by “the spirit.” For
Walker, Turner, Jacobs, Douglass and several other black
and white spiritual leaders impacted by the Second Great
Awakening, references to the Holy Spirit represent a purer
and truer mode of Christian life. The combination of
Turner’s affiliation with the Holy Spirit and other key
signifiers of the Second Great Awakening only magnify
Turner’s conversion into a symbol of revolution. To be
sure, the dominant symbolism of American Revolution and
early American history contains many conflations of
revolution with biblical typology. The tying of both
revolution and biblical typology to Turner and his
rebellion render Turner a symbol that perpetuates a
narrative of black political possibility.
24
This focus on cultural narrative is to create an
alterative approach to Turner scholarship. It forges a
middle ground between the limits of information about
Turner biographically and the mythology about Turner that
surfaces as a result of his rebellion. This approach
attempts to move past the analysis of Turner that is often
handicapped by the insufficiency of empirical information
about Turner and his rebellion. It attempts to view
Turner’s rebellion outside its empirical box. Much of
which has been handicapped by the limited historical
information available about Turner and his political
philosophy becomes available through narrative. This is
not at all to downplay the significance of historical and
empirical investigations of Turner, much of which has
served to mitigate misconceptions about Turner.
Historians have been able to deduce important information
contextualizing Turner’s life through research about whites
who owned Turner, court documentation of Turner’s trial,
newspaper writing about the criminal investigation of
Turner, documentation of statements by government officials
about Turner, information about the historical moment
contextualizing Turner’s rebellion, and information about
the way of life of blacks and whites in the South at the
time of Turner’s rebellion. While illuminating, this
25
information does not provide a clear sense of Turner’s
person: his early life in slavery, his role as a preacher
in the slave community, the evolution of his political
philosophy, his relationship with family members, friends
and other slaves. So much of what would provide insight
about Turner’s leadership in the Southampton County,
Virginia slave revolt of 1831 is not available and may
never be available.
Certainly, The Confessions of Nat Turner is one response
to the dearth of information about Nat Turner. However,
the publication raises far more questions than it
potentially answers. Published two weeks after Turner’s
public hanging, The Confessions is the alleged
transcription of Turner’s testimony as dictated to Thomas
Gray, a white lawyer involved in the court trials of the
Turner rebellion, but one who has no formal legal ties to
Turner specifically. The document is suspiciously arrayed
in legal regalia, sandwiching the confession itself between
copyright verifications and what are purported to be court
records. However, what is alleged to be court
documentation within The Confessions is not in the official
court records. Additionally, what is presumed to be
Turner’s testimony is highly suspect. To begin with, The
Confessions is curiously similar to a version of Turner’s
26
story published anonymously in a letter to a Virginia
newspaper one month before Turner’s capture and two months
before the publication of The Confessions. Its account is
so similar to the information in The Confessions and so
reflective of the writing and structure of Gray’s writing
that some historians are convinced that the letter is
written by Gray.
21
Historian David Allmendinger is
particularly convinced of this, alleging that Gray composes
what is purported to be Turner’s confession long before he
meets Turner:
As to Nat’s guilt, Gray had persuaded himself long before
the first jailhouse interview. He had learned enough in
August and September from witnesses at the trials and
survivors in Cross Keys to draw that conclusion. He had
seen with his own eyes the evidence at specific places,
and, in addition, he could draw upon the pool of
information that had been accumulating in Jerusalem. By
the middle of September, he had enough evidence to sketch
a general outline of Nat Turner’s life and to reconstruct
an almost correct chronology of the rebellion. With
these sources on hand, he began to take down the
confession on 1 November. Much of what Gray knew before
that date found its way into The Confessions of Nat
Turner.
22

In light of the fact that Gray finishes the manuscript of
The Confessions so quickly after interviewing Turner

21
Greenburg, Kenneth S., ed. The Confessions of Nat Turner
and Related Documents. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s,
1996. p. 78.
22
Allmendinger, Jr. David. “The Construction of The
Confessions of Nat Turner.” Nat Turner: A Slave Rebellion
in History and Memory. Ed. Kenneth S. Greenburg. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2004. p. 37.

27
(within less than five days of Turner’s capture),
Allmendinger’s view is well worth considering. Beyond the
question of the “pre-writing” of The Confessions, there are
several questions surrounding the nature of the supposed
interview itself. For example, what would have motivated
Gray to represent Turner’s testimony verbatim and would
Turner have fully represented his story, knowing the power
dynamics circumscribing the recording of his testimony?
This is where the turn to cultural narrative becomes
important. Empirical uncertainty will continue to plague
the explorations of Turner and his rebellion. However, his
impact on American racial discourse cannot be overstated.
His rebellion draws attention to the competition between a
narrative of white paternalistic male preeminence in the
Antebellum South and the formation of a black revolutionary
identity.
The three chapters of this dissertation bear this out.
Chapter One explores how Nat Turner becomes a symbol of
black revolution and how this troubles the dominant
narrative of white masculine social privilege in the
Antebellum World of the American South. Chapter One further
explains how this narrative, deeply impacted by paternalism
and Christianity, becomes vulnerable to significant
challenge when Turner’s rebellion converts spiritual and
28
American revolutionary symbolism into a material artifact.
Uncovering this narrative requires some analysis of The
Confessions, but also of other complementary documents.
Chapter One conceptualizes The Confessions as one portion
of a rhetorical continuum informed by propaganda-filled
statements by political officials, transcriptions of
interviews with captured co-conspirators, court records,
newspaper reports, anonymous tips to the press, and white
community gossip. Because all of these rhetorical
mechanisms are subject to scrutiny of the same cultural
gatekeepers, one can extend the analysis of The Confessions
to comparative explorations of general public discussions
and to several “Turner” documents preceding The Confessions
by a few weeks or months. Across this broader spectrum of
rhetoric, propaganda, and public discussion, the slippages
and inconsistencies in white representation of Turner’s
revolt in The Confessions are enlarged, creating more
opportunities to delineate the subversive narrative of
black revolution expressed in Turner’s revolt.
Chapter Two explores this counter-narrative through the
literary voices of blacks who write about Turner within the
same period of Turner’s rebellion. It argues that Nat
Turner is central to an articulation of multi-voiced
political agendas touted by the black abolitionists
29
Fredrick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and David Walker. This
is important because most written information or commentary
about Turner from the nineteenth century stems from whites.
Commentary about Turner from blacks who lived during
Turner’s rebellion provides critical perspectives on
Turner’s significance that white commentators ignore or
contradict. Certainly, Douglass, Jacobs and Walker
underscore Turner’s codification into a symbol of black
revolution. They also emphasize the political utility of
Turner’s rebellion long after Turner’s execution. As a
repeated allusion and revolutionary symbol in their
writings, Turner raises the political stakes for Douglass,
Jacobs and Walker. For Walker, Turner’s effect is
anachronistic: Walker alludes to someone like Turner in
Walker’s written political manifesto and Turner leads the
Southampton County slave rebellion two years after the
manifesto is published. However, for all three
abolitionists, Turner energizes their political causes.
Chapter Three returns to the discursive tension between
the story of Turner’s rebellion and the narrative of
paternalistic white male preeminence, but it locates this
tension in a close reading focused exclusively on The
Confessions and focused heavily on the psychology of Thomas
Gray. Chapter Three argues that The Confessions is a
30
textual reflection of the tension between the theatricality
of plantation myth and the potency of Nat Turner and his
rebellion to unmask the travesty of this myth. This myth
cuts across the dominant ideologies of white masculinity
and heroism. Reactionary responses to Turner’s revolt by
these men expose how significantly Turner’s revolt contests
the cultural primacy of white male heroic traditions. For
the elite classes of men, the prospect of Turner’s heroic
leadership draws too many parallels between Turner and
America’s founding political and spiritual male leadership.
In the end, Turner’s subjectivity is too dominant a
through-line to be dismissed.
The resilience of Turner’s subjectivity, even within
rhetorical structures designed to undermine his
significance is a reflection of the power of Turner’s
narrative. Though an unmediated version of Turner’s story
remains unwritten, the fact of the rebellion becomes
Turner’s de facto story. The materiality of Turner’s revolt
leaves a mark on the historical record that cannot be
erased and a plot line in the American story that cannot be
ignored.

31
Chapter 1: Nat Turner’s Antebellum New World

This chapter is about how Nat Turner becomes a symbol
of black revolution and how this troubles the dominant
narrative of white masculine social privilege in the
Antebellum World of the American South. This narrative
tells the story of what many white planters, slaveholders
and other aspiring cash crop entrepreneurs imagine an
idealized plantation life to entail. This idealized life
honors the planter at the expense of all others in the
antebellum southern world. Specifically, this planter
fantasy rests upon the perpetual subjugation and
patronization of blacks, women and men of lower class
standing. The narrative that perpetuates this fantasy rests
heavily on paternalism and Christianity. Specifically, the
language of patriarchic benevolence and the language of
Christian typology and morality provide validation for this
narrative, rendering palatable as a model white male social
and cultural mobility. However, this narrative is
significantly challenged by Turner’s rebellion and counter-
narrative that emerges out of it. The fact of Turner’s
rebellion not only challenges the black slave’s role in the
white male plantation fantasy, but also connects this
challenge to symbolism that magnifies the cultural
32
authority of Turner’s challenge. Just as the language of
paternalism and Christianity lend increased cultural
authority to the white planter fantasy, the language of
Christianity and revolution enlarge Turner’s cultural
authority. Specifically, Turner’s leadership role in the
1831 Southampton County, Virginia slave rebellion is
shrouded in overtones of the American Independence struggle
and symbolism tied to Christian typology. The themes tied
to Christian and American Revolutionary motifs raise the
stakes of Turner’s rebellion. Turner’s rebellion not only
challenges the imagined world of actual and aspiring white
planters, but also materializes a political possibility
that for both blacks and whites had also only been
something that could be imagined. Converting decades of
hope for and suppressed phobia of a black revolution into a
material artifact, Turner raises the prospect of other
kinds of black revolution. Hence, Turner and his rebellion
become symbols that represent and help people to imagine a
revolution-forged black Antebellum New World.
Turner so powerfully invokes the political imagination
because his rebellion materializes what for decades only
exists in the imagination. From the earliest
manifestations of American colonial unrest, a black slave
version of American Independence engages blacks, whites,
33
abolitionists and slavery apologists alike. Whether they
are supportive of abolition or not, the American struggle
for Independence opens up a place for them to imagine
abolition. Preceded by major slave revolts overseas, failed
attempts, and smaller-scaled revolts in the States,
Turner’s rebellion converts the anticipation, imagination,
and anxiety surrounding American slave revolt into a
tangible artifact. Turner’s rebellion materializes the
duality of American Independence, rendering the freedom of
American slaves as the unfulfilled counterpart to the
American colonial struggle for freedom. Like the slaves of
the Haitian Revolution in relationship to the French
Revolution of 1789, Turner’s violent subversive activity
creates “a distilled representation of the doubleness of
the democratic ideal born in the Revolutio[n] of 1776.”
23

This doubleness comes across as much for Turner’s
engagement with Christian typology as for his engagement
with the symbolism of the Revolution. He taps into a long
American tradition of invoking Christian mythology to
validate political ends. Christianity informs much of
early American history in making available biblical stories
and symbols that lend narrative continuity to political and

23
Sundquist, Eric. To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making
of American Literature. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1993. p. 31.
34
social ideas across the full spectrum of political thought.
In Turner’s case, Christianity fosters a subversive
element. Its symbolism supports the kind of revolutionary
activity in which Turner engages. In particular, as a
devout Christian, Turner is a self-proclaimed prophet.
Inspired by apocalyptic visions and Old Testament typology,
Turner believes that he, like the biblical figure Moses, is
called by God to deliver his fellow slaves from the bondage
of slavery. Resting upon the authority of biblical
precedent, Turner translates his spiritual calling into a
revolutionary political agenda. In his appeal to biblical
narrative and symbolism, Turner has an uncanny resonance
with a white southern culture that is at steeped in
Christian tradition and slavery’s institutionalization.
Though Turner is dismissed on several levels because he is
a slave, his claims to spiritual authority have an uncanny
air of credibility in a culture heavily influenced by
biblical symbolism and typology. In what comes across as a
gesture to biblical prophecy, Turner echoes Haiti’s call to
resolve the discrepancies distancing white and black
freedom in an age of independence. He “lay[s] bare the
paradoxical way in which slavery and revolution [are]
35
linked throughout the antebellum history, dark twins of a
national ideology riddled with ambiguities and tension.”
24

The tensions and ambiguities of this national ideology
receive unprecedented exposure and attention through
Turner’s rebellion, for the rebellion consolidates these
tensions and ambiguities in a single event. Through
violent revolt, Turner creates a material artifact that
makes tangible all of the overtones, through-lines, and
suspicions about slave revolt that charge the political
atmosphere in the South in 1831. In the decade leading up
to Turner’s rebellion, there are so many political events
and activities that carry with them overtones of slave
revolt that Turner’s 1831 rebellion comes across as an
inevitability: In 1822, Denmark Vesey, a free black, plans
a massive slave revolt that is discovered and stopped by
white authorities before it has a chance to succeed.
Involving roughly nine thousand armed slaves, secret
consultations with the President of Haiti and a strategy to
destroy Charleston, the fifth largest city in the U.S. at
the time, Vesey’s pre-exposed revolt plans have the
potential to create revolutionary consequences far greater

24
Ibid.
36
than Turner’s.
25
Seven years later, David Walker, another
free black, further invokes the prospect of black American
revolution when he draws upon rhetorical tropes in the
Declaration of Independence and Constitution to publish and
circulate a manifesto for black independence from slavery.
Approximately one year after this, the first assembly of
the Negro Convention commences, an event that begins the
Negro Convention Movement. This movement focuses on the
assemblage of free black leaders and white abolitionists to
improve the condition of blacks in America, which for them
means abolition, but also the creation of black colleges
and the resettlement of blacks to Canada.
26
Considering the
revolutionary implications of Vesey and Walker, both free
blacks, a whole assemblage of free blacks united around
political goals subversive to the slave order in the South
is a daunting prospect for southern whites.
On January 1, 1831, barely three months after the
first Negro Convention assembly, William Lloyd Garrison,
the most famous white abolitionist of the period, publishes
the first edition of his abolitionist newspaper, The

25
Robertson, David. Denmark Vesey: The Buried History of
America’s Largest Slave Rebellion and the Man Who Led It.
New York: Knopf, 1999. p. 4.
26
Aptheker, Herbert. Nat Turner’s Slaver Rebellion,
Including the 1831 “Confessions.” New York: Dover, 2006.
pp. 23-24.
37
Liberator. In jeremiad fashion, Garrison warns America of
the sin of slavery, advocating not only for slavery’s
abolition, but also for the Union’s abolition. Convinced
that the legal faultiness of the Constitution makes any
kind of juridical abolition of slavery impossible, Garrison
makes impassionate demands for the Union’s dissolution. As
if to echo the bombastic tone invoked by Garrison in his
newspaper publication, several reports and suspicions of
both planned and attempted slave revolts circulate
throughout the South from the Winter through the Spring of
1831. Louisiana, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and the
Carolinas are among states calling upon the War Department
for increased presence of the military in “at risk” areas.
27

Just as these reports of slave unrest in the States
increase, reports of slave unrest abroad begin to surface:
In the spring, summer and fall of 1831, reports of slave
uprisings in Martinique, Venezuela, Antigua, St. Jago and
Jamaica are particularly notable.
28
This cumulating sense of

27
Ibid. pp. 19-23.
28
Aptheker, Herbert. Nat Turner’s Slave Rebellion,
Including the 1831 “Confessions.” New York: Dover, 2006.
pp. 16-19; The Liberator [Boston] 12 Mar. 1831: p.43.;Niles
Weekly Register [Baltimore] 19 Mar. 1831: p. 52.;The
Liberator [Boston] 26 Mar. 1831: p.43.;The Liberator
[Boston] 30 Apr. 1831: p.71.;The Liberator [Boston] 7 May.
1831: p.74.;The Liberator [Boston] 4 Jun. 1831: p.90.;The
Liberator [Boston] 17 Sep. 1831: p.151.;The Liberator
38
impending doom upon slaveholders nationally and globally
galvanizes the Virginia State Legislature. With Virginia
Governor John Floyd already expressing in the prior year
his concern that “a spirit of dissatisfaction and
insubordination [is being] manifested by slaves in
different parts of the country,” the Virginia Legislature
(along with other southern legislatures) passes a series of
laws limiting the ability of blacks to travel, assemble,
and become literate, activities closely associated with
black political subversion.
29

Because Turner’s rebellion takes place in such a
heightened political atmosphere, it lays bare in
unprecedented ways the tensions and ambiguities of
slavery’s place in the American story. It is able to draw
so much attention to these tensions and ambiguities because
it materially consolidates all of the political tension of
the historical moment into one revolutionary exclamation
point. Just as significantly, the rebellion also translates
Southampton County, Virginia into a stage dramatizing a
counter-narrative poignantly contradictory to the cultural

[Boston] 24 Sep. 1831: p.155,quoting the Bermuda Royal
Gazette of August 9, 1831.

29
Aptheker, Herbert. Nat Turner’s Slaver Rebellion,
Including the 1831 “Confessions.” New York: Dover, 2006.
pp. 19, 27-32.
39
narrative of white masculine social privilege in the
Antebellum World of the American South. Turner’s symbolic
consolidation and dramatization of the black revolutionary
possibilities imaginatively available is one of the most
powerful threats ever to be levied against white male
elites in the South. This is because Turner’s rebellion
puts a spotlight on the centrality of cultural narrative to
the privileged status of elite southern white men and on
the ability of a compelling counter-narrative to unravel
it. Specifically, Turner draws attention to two dynamics:
the centrality of the role of the happily submissive slave
to the narrative of the white male plantation fantasy, and
to the vulnerability of this narrative to revision when the
happily-submitted slave no longer plays the role. Turner’s
challenge to the concept of the happy slave is troubling
for the socially elite men of the South because of the role
of paternalism and Christianity in the antebellum southern
world.
Within the context of paternalism, the practice by
which male slaveholders control their wives, children and
slaves within the context of fatherly care, male
slaveholders presume that they can nurture their slaves
into loyalty. Male slaveholders think so highly of what
they consider to be kind treatment of their slaves that to
40
gain a reputation of mistreating slaves threatens the
slaveholder’s honor. Hence, happy slaves become proof of
the slave owner’s social value. Turner’s rebellion
discontinues this narrative. Not only does Turner, a slave
understood to have been content with his master, become an
example of the inconsistency of the happy slave myth, but
also Turner raises the possibility that there are other
slaves who are rebels in stealth. Christianity also
contributes to the idea of the happy slave because a common
belief amongst slaveholders is that slaves exposed to
Christianity are tempered by over-annunciating certain
aspects of the religious tradition: the notion of
submission to authority, the power of Christ’s meekness and
the ultimate triumph of a heavenly life (presumably as
compensation for the lack of triumph on earth). Moreover,
Christianity provides moral justification for
slaveownership, rendering the enslavement of blacks a moral
responsibility, one that tempers slave dispositions and
develops them morally. Consequently, the slave owner who
cares for his or her slaves with spiritual mentorship is
considered to be a model of Christian citizenship.
Christianity and paternalism help forge a cultural
narrative from which male slaveholders draw a contrived
sense of honor. However, the continuity of this narrative
41
rests upon slaves fulfilling their role in the story. To
be sure, slaves create for elite southern white men a
lifestyle commensurate with the cultural narrative of their
social dominance, producing for them the physical proof of
white male social superiority and the self-evident
justification for a social class of slaveholders. As
acceptance in the elite class in the Antebellum South
generally means being a large-scale planter (owner of cash-
crop business enterprise) the ownership of slaves by the
elite class is inextricably linked to its accumulation of
wealth, their ownership of land, and their leadership
within the religious institutions of the southern Christian
community. All of these socio-economic markers serve as
props in a cultural narrative of honor reminiscent of
chivalric codes. Like medieval kings, these men view their
land as the territorial boundaries of economic kingdoms,
their slaves as children-subjects and their associations in
church institutions as the “symbolic and social
expressions” of [their gentry-like] “social dominance.”
30

Hence, slaves are also the creative capital from which
slaveholders imagine their lavish lifestyles. Slaves are

30
Scully, Randolph Ferguson. Religion and the Making of Nat
Turner’s Virginia: Baptist Community and Conflict, 1740-
1840. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008.
p. 24.
42
the vectors mapping the imaginative scope of socio-economic
dominance for the southern male elite, forging the
narrative continuity for their exalted place in southern
Antebellum world. As cultural historian Walter Johnson
comments, as these men
talked about and wrote about buying slaves, [they]
mapped a world made of slavery. They dreamed of
people arrayed in meaningful order by their value as
property, of fields full of productive hands and a
slave quarter that reproduced itself, of well-ordered
households and of mansions where service was swift and
polished. They dreamed of beating and healing and
sleeping with slaves; sometimes they even dreamed that
their slaves would love them. They imagined who they
could be by thinking about whom they would buy.
31

Slaves are just as crucial conceptually as they are
economically to the narrative forging social privilege for
white male elites in the South.
Turner simply turns this narrative on its head. He
introduces a daunting subtext to the myth of the happy
slave by demonstrating that slaves like himself that are
presumed to be happy are no less susceptible to rebellion
by their displayed mood. As literary critic Eric Sundquist
comments, “Nat Turner was [in effect] in every [white
slaveholding] family whether [the slave] acted on his

31
Johnson, Walter. Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum
Slave Market. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999.
pp. 78-79.
43
violent impulses or not.”
32
Taking for granted the slave
rebel’s gender not only speaks to the ease with which black
male political and spiritual leaders become messianic
figures, but also to the anxieties amongst elite white
males about their empowered masculinity becoming upstaged.
In sum, Turner’s rebellion creates an alternative to the
imagined world of the southern gentleman and competes with
it convincingly because of the material potency of the
rebellion. Turner lays bare the historical and cultural
battle of meaning out of which the white male privilege
emerges, drawing attention to the utter fragility of the
code of honor upon which white male social privilege
depends.
In the Fall of 1831, the narrative supporting this
code of honor is challenged by the explosive counter-
narrative emerging out of Turner’s rebellion. As this
counter-narrative is perpetuated, Turner turns increasingly
into a symbol of revolution, a symbolization that rests
partly in irony: In terms of its physical, geographical and
temporal scope, Turner’s rebellion is not revolutionary at
all. Rather, it is a short-lived event that does not extend
beyond the locality of Southampton County: Having mustered

32
Sundquist, Eric. To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making
of American Literature. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1993. p. 54.
44
a small group of slaves that eventually grows to somewhere
between 60 and 80 rebels, Turner rallies his co-
conspirators in a nighttime death raid of the homes of
Southampton’s white families on August 22, 1831.
33
Far
short of a revolutionary upheaval of Southern slavery,
Turner’s cohort of slaves kills close to 60 whites and is
eventually suppressed by local militias and state-level
military reinforcements.
34
Though evading capture for over
two months, Turner is eventually apprehended and executed
by hanging.
35
In sum, Turner’s rebellion begins and ends
within roughly a 24-hour period and is stopped long before
it has the faintest resemblance to a large-scale
overturning of slavery in the South.
36

In light of the short duration of Turner’s rebellion,
first-hand accounts of Turner—his life as a slave, his pre-
rebellion organizational meetings, his political
influences, his philosophical frameworks—might create the
context by which to forge Turner into a figure of black

33
Greenburg, Kenneth. Introduction. Nat Turner: A Slave
Rebellion in History and Memory. Kenneth Greenburg ed. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2003. p. xii.
34
Ibid.
35
Greenburg, Kenneth ed. The Confessions of Nat Turner and
Related Documents. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1996. p.
3.
36
Greenburg, Kenneth. Introduction. Nat Turner: A Slave
Rebellion in History and Memory. Kenneth Greenburg ed. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2003. p. xii.
45
revolution and political possibility. However, the matter
of Turner’s biography and political philosophy is also part
of the irony of Turner’s mythological legacy: There are few
resources that document Turner’s life and political
ideology. In terms of the historical sources chronicling
Turner’s intentions, years in slavery, future plans, and
connections to other slave revolt leaders, much of what
historians have been able to gather is secondary, tertiary
and often speculative. As historian Kenneth Greenburg
remarks, “Nat Turner may be destined to live forever in our
memory as the most famous, least known person in American
history.”
37
Quintessentially representative of Greenburg’s
statement, the best historical account of Turner and the
rebellion, The Confessions of Nat Turner, is laden with
controversy and uncertainty. Edited and published by
Thomas Gray, one of the white lawyers connected to the
Southampton slave revolt court trials, it is the alleged
dictation of Turner to Gray of Turner’s life as a slave and
of Turner’s involvement in the rebellion. Given the
contrasting subject-positions of Gray and Turner, questions
about the authenticity of The Confessions are multiple and
complex: What are the power dynamics surrounding Gray’s

37
Greenburg, Kenneth. “Name Face, Body” in Nat Turner: A
Slave Rebellion in History and Memory. Kenneth Greenburg
ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. p. 3.
46
interview with Turner? What kind of editorial liberties
does Gray make in the transcription? What political forces
outside of Gray affect the transcription and publication of
The Confessions? What economic, marketing and ideological
forces inform the context of the publication of The
Confessions? Does Gray interview Turner at all? The varied
editorial and political possibilities concerning The
Confessions make the issues surrounding its authorial
design and interpretation a constant debate. For all
intents and purposes, no one can be sure that Turner writes
any of The Confessions.
While continued efforts to uncover previously unknown
or under-reviewed artifacts and documents about Turner
certainly hold the key to fleshing out Turner as a
historical entity and his rebellion as a historical event,
the single most powerful fact of the Turner ordeal is
perhaps the least considered with regards to Turner
empirically and mythologically: The rebellion itself. The
irrefutable fact that the rebellion happened at all is a
more authentic testimony than anything Turner could have
written or spoken. Though short-lived, geographically
contained and fatal for its leader, the rebellion makes the
possibility of slave revolution in America tangible. It
draws together the sum total of stories of past rebellions
47
and under-acknowledged fears of rebellion into a corporeal
experience. Its palpability is not only documented through
oral and written testimony, but through deaths, property
destruction and legal proceedings, elements that take on a
physicality beyond the rebellion’s duration as an event.
In the lack of any uncontested documentation of Turner’s
testimony, Turner’s rebellion itself becomes the historical
document of Turner’s testimony. Even more powerfully,
somewhere between what we might imagine Turner’s intentions
were and what we can document as the physical enactment and
repercussions of his rebellion, Turner becomes the
rebellion. Given that Turner’s rebellion is the only
confirmed factual document of his biography and political
philosophy, Turner and his rebellion simply cannot be
considered apart from each other. However, this limitation
on knowledge of Turner only amplifies his historical and
mythological significance. The tabooed fears surrounding
American slave revolt in the early nineteenth century
combined with the narratives of masculine heroism, American
patriotism and Christian millenarianism with which Turner’s
revolt is inextricably aligned, make Nat Turner, the human
actor, historically and mythologically inseparable from Nat
Turner, the event.
48
The equation of Turner with his rebellion is the
dynamic that converts Turner into symbol of revolution, one
that disrupts the narrative continuum fostering social
privilege for the southern male elite. This concept of
narrative competition becomes tangible within the context
of a rhetorical matrix comprised of propaganda-filled
statements by political officials, transcriptions of
interviews with captured co-conspirators, court records,
newspaper reports, anonymous tips to the press, white
community gossip, and informal communication networks
amongst slaves that comment about, reflect upon and emerge
out of Turner’s rebellion. The Confessions is part of
this matrix, its inclusion of which further exposes the
limitations of its ability to confirm facts about Turner.
Indeed, Gray does not write The Confessions in a vacuum.
Not only is he influenced by and responsive to the
anxieties looming over the general public, but is part of
and subject to an influential circle of lawyers,
publishers, law enforcement officers, judges and other
public officials who regulate what is said about Turner,
who says it and when.
38
This inner circle seeks to ensure

38
Allmendinger, Jr. David F. “The Construction of The
Confessions of Nat Turner” in Greenberg, Kenneth S. Nat
Turner: A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2004. pp. 24 - 25.
49
that public representation of Turner is in accordance with
the cultural narrative of honor consolidating the socio-
economic power of the South’s male elite.
39

This is a monumental task. The fact that Turner
rebels on the violent terms exhibited in his rebellion,
that his vision for revolt enlists other slaves, and that
his actions cause severe physical and financial damage to
the Southampton community are a profound contradiction of
the southern male elite’s claims to social privilege. The
physical etching of Turner’s subversion onto the southern
planter world displaces the symbolism representing white
male social entitlement in the South. Moreover, the
rebellion’s counter-narrative has resonance with the
general public: Because the stories and bloody evidence of
Turner’s terror hit close to home for much of the general
white public, the public is very open about its fear of
Turner and of the prospect of future rebellions. Though
whites in the general public are committed ideologically to
the pretentious claims of the South’s honor code, the
prospect of one of their own slaves being a Nat Turner in
disguise causes them to be more practical about the threat

39
Ibid.
50
of Turner and other slave rebels.
40
Consequently, the
general public is more apt, even if inadvertently, to
acknowledge Turner’s subjectivity and his free-willed and
conscious participation in the revolt. The general white
public is also more apt to characterize Turner’s rebellion
as part of a general pattern of rebellion, linking Turner’s
insurrection to accomplished and attempted slave revolts in
the past and to the rumor of other slave revolts in the
future. Hence, the general public contributes to the
unofficial counter-narrative that undercuts the official
pronouncements on Turner’s rebellion from newspapers, court
records and other documents or statements authored by
public officials and members of culturally sanctioned
institutions. This situation puts white gatekeepers of the
South’s social order in a quandary. The political inner
circle guarding the transmission of Turner’s story must
diminish the force of Turner’s counter-narrative while
responding to the very real threat of Turner’s rebellion to
spark more slave violence. This amounts to an eclectic and
ultimately contradictory group of repressive influences on
Turner’s story. Because so many different eyes keep

40
Sundquist, Eric. To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making
of American Literature. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1993. p. 54.

51
Turner’s persona under surveillance, the regulation of
Turner’s public representation loses some of its precision.
Ironically, the hyper-surveillance of Turner’s persona
mitigates the control that the political inner circle
wields over it.

52
Paternalism

Paternalism compounds this scramble to construct a
Turner narrative validating the social privilege of white
male southern elites. This is because paternalism is rooted
in a seductive theatricality that has a real impact on the
Southern paternalist’s confusion of fact with fiction.
Specifically, many male slaveholders hold a real sense of
endearment toward their slaves, one that they believe
enlists their slaves’ loyalty—or at least should. While
this way of thinking is a gross exaggeration of most white
interaction with black slaves, it enables slaveholders to
re-narrate all slave behavior as an expression of loyalty
to the master. Even slave behavior that is not an
expression of loyalty can be accounted for in paternalism:
Rebellious slaves become cast as “naughty children” whose
mischief only demonstrates their need for a slave owner in
the first place. However, Turner’s rebellion deviates so
much from the paternalism script that slaveholders are not
prepared to account for Turner’s actions, hence the
scrambled, uncoordinated and mostly ineffective effort to
control Turner’s story.
The Turner-paternalism clash is further compounded by
the geography of Southampton County, Virginia. Southampton
is part of a trio of Virginia counties isolated from the
53
rest of the state because of swampy areas and because the
rivers that border the counties run in directions that make
the rivers virtually useless as trading routes.
41
Hence,
Southampton experiences an extreme version of a “resident
slaveownership ” that is critical to the perpetuation of
paternalism in the South. As slavery historian Peter
Kolchin notes, the slaveholders of the American South are
unlike most slaveholders in Latin America and the
Caribbean, who live away from their large plantations and
assign the supervision of slaves to an overseer.
42
Rather,
most American slaveholders possess just a handful of slaves
that they oversee personally.
43
While the chivalric Gone-
With-the-Wind-estates that inform the bulk of Dixie
nostalgia and lore do exist in the South, they are in the
minority relative to the domains of small to medium-sized
slaveholders, which often consist of only one or two
slaves.
44
The import of this dynamic to the culture of
American slavery is that many American slave masters

41
Scully, Randolph Ferguson. Religion and the Making of Nat
Turner’s Virginia: Baptist Community and Conflict, 1740-
1840. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008.
p. 14.;Greenburg, Kenneth ed. The Confessions of Nat Turner
and Related Documents. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s,
1996. p. 7.
42
Kolchin, Peter. American Slavery 1619 – 1877. New York:
Hill and Wang, 1993. p. 31.
43
Ibid.
44
Ibid. p. 32.
54
reside, work closely and share some of their most intimate
spaces with the slaves they own. Regardless of the
inherent exploitive nature of this arrangement,
slaveholders form a quasi-familial pride and interest in
their slaves that convinces the slaveholders that, in the
ownership of their slaves, they are fulfilling their a
moral duty.
45
Kolchin further explains that:
the typical southern slave owner kn[ows] his or her
slaves by name and interact[s] with them on a frequent
basis, not only directing their labor but also looking
after their welfare and interfering with their lives.
Masters s[ee] their slaves not just as their laborers
but also as their ‘people,’ inferior members of their
extended households from whom they expec[t] work and
obedience but to whom they ow[e] guidance and
protection. Not all masters t[ake] their
paternalistic responsibilities seriously, but the
small size of slaveholdings and the resident
character—and mentality—of slaveholders produce[s]
unusually close contact between master and slave and
foster[s] among many slaveholders a strong
paternalistic self-image.
46

Historian Kenneth Greenburg concurs. He comments on the
unique intimacy that blacks and whites in Southampton
share, one close enough to render paternalism valid:
Blacks and whites in Nat Turner's world fac[e] each
other every day. This [i]s not a terrain of absentee
landowners who rul[e] anonymous slaves. On most
farms, including Nat Turner's, masters and slaves
liv[e] and wor[k] together in small numbers and in
close proximity. Hence, this [is] an 'intimate'

45
Ibid. p. 111.
46
Kolchin, Peter. American Slavery 1619 – 1877. New York:
Hill and Wang, 1993. pp. 111-112.
55
rebellion. Many of the 200 black and white casualties
kn[o]w the people who kil[l] them.
47

Within this context, white confusion, anxiety and shock are
natural responses to the behavior of Turner and his
conspirators. With the close-knit bonds that slaveholders
presume they have with their slaves, whites do not forecast
the radical measures Turner takes to free himself and other
blacks. Slaveholders take an insiders knowledge of their
slaves for granted. Making generous assumptions about how
well they keep their slaves in their control, whites
inadvertently grant Turner and his conspirators the freedom
to plan and execute their insurrection without the pressure
of suspicion and heightened surveillance. From the
slaveholders' perspective, the slaves are in plain sight,
making Southampton the most unlikely place for a slave
revolt.
The explosive clash between Turner’s rebellion and a
paternalist world validated by master-slave intimacy takes
on varied rhetorical turns within the context of the print
media covering the aftermath of Turner’s revolt. White
journalists set out to reframe the story of Turner’s
rebellion in terms of paternalistic dismissals of Turner’s

47
Greenburg, Kenneth ed. The Confessions of Nat Turner and
Related Documents. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1996. p.
7.
56
sanity and free-willed decision to rebel. However, these
attempts only amount to a motley compilation of plantation
myth apologetics. Because white journalistic reports must
rely on competing, contradictory and often unverified
information on the Turner rebellion, discursive challenges
to Turner’s subjectivity are fragmented. The print media
represents an un-harnessed collision between voiced public
fears, pretentious assurances by authorities, and dubiously
sourced allegations about the rebellion itself. This lack
of synthesis between rhetorical reactions to Turner’s
revolt leaves discursive holes through which Turner’s
empowered subjectivity seeps. In tandem with journalistic
documents preceding it, The Confessions delineates this
tension between a paternalistic vision of southern slavery
and the empowered black subjectivity that Turner’s
rebellion invokes. One particular expression of this
tension comes across in the way that the investigation of
Nat Turner exceeds the quest for basic facts about his
rebellion. On one level, the who, what, when, where, why
and how of Turner’s revolt is so heavily evidenced in the
carnage, physical destruction and eye witness testimony of
the event that an investigation of Turner’s rebellion is,
on the surface, straight forward. However, because of the
blatant challenge that Turner’s rebellion poses to a
57
paternalistic vision of slavery, journalistic inquiry into
the rebellion becomes elongated and convoluted.
Specifically, the most direct and obvious answers to
inquiries about Turner unravel paternalism’s myths so
thoroughly that Virginia’s cultural power brokers prefer to
defer basic questions about Turner’s revolt. Instead of
settling on the empirical truth of Turner’s activities, the
inquiry into basic facts and practicalities about Turner’s
rebellion only serves to camouflage breakdowns in the
paternalistic framework. Journalistic convolution of the
practical detail of the rebellion is a smokescreen for the
ideological and cultural issues that bear much greater
weight upon paternalistic ties to the southern gentleman’s
code.
The opening lines of The Confessions highlight this
dynamic. As an extension and product of the two and a half
month journalistic investigations preceding it, The
Confessions illustrates how the Turner investigation
displaces empirical conclusions about Turner’s rebellion.
Ironically, direct answers to questions about Turner and
his rebellion are displaced with more questions. The
journalistic community keeps the inquiry process active so
as to avoid landing on answers that challenge a
paternalistic vision of the South. Essentially, The
58
Confessions and correlated journalistic accounts of
Turner’s rebellion produce a construct of mystery, which is
intended to defer meaning. Because empirical facts about
Turner’s rebellion so blatantly challenge the paternalistic
social order, this postponing of empirical conclusions
about Turner’s rebellion is also a matter of paternalist
honor. Turner’s forceful and explosive expression of slave
discontent leaves little room for ambiguity on this matter.
A murderous attack on white slaveholders by an otherwise
“well-mannered” and “obedient” slave is a blatant
contradiction of the paternalist ideology. In no uncertain
terms, Turner’s rebellion undresses paternalism’s
iconography and removes the vestiges of its
pretentiousness. Hence, to preserve even a semblance of a
paternalist’s decorum, paternalists must distance
themselves from the most basic information about the
rebellion. In turn, by deferring the confirmation of basic
information about the rebellion, paternalists also defer
their own shame. They leverage their political and
economic influence on journalistic outlets to keep
inquiries of the rebellion active. By framing the matter
of Turner’s rebellion in terms of an open and on-going
question, paternalists create the discursive space to
attempt an upstaging of the narratives that honor Turner as
59
an empowered subject, a heroic revolutionary and a
messianic figure.
Filled with statements that might fit in an 1831
version of The National Enquirer, the opening line of the
preface to The Confessions provides a case in point: “The
late insurrection in Southampton has greatly excited the
public mind, and led to a thousand idle exaggerated and
mischievous reports.”
48
Right away, Gray puts the fact and
nature of the rebellion within the vein of rumor. Though
the rebellion’s occurrence has been confirmed by this time
and though much of the white public affirms its challenge
to white cultural hegemony, Gray camouflages absolute
acknowledgement of this by talking of the insurrection
within a tone of inconclusiveness. This rhetorical
strategy is very similar to the opening lines of newspaper
articles published within two weeks of the insurrection,
which cast doubt on both the nature and existence of the
Turner uprising. For example, The Richmond Compiler makes
the following statement two days after the rebellion:
“This city was thrown into some excitement yesterday in
consequence of a report in circulation that there was some
insurrection of negroes in the county of Southampton. We

48
Gray, Thomas. Preface. The Confessions of Nat Turner in
The Confessions of Nat Turner and Related Documents.
Kenneth Greenberg, ed. Boston: Bedford Books, 1996. p. 40.
60
made it our business to trace these reports and we have
ascertained the following facts.”
49
With the words
“excitement” and “report in circulation,” the first line
gives prior news about the rebellion the tenor or rumor.
The second line then emphasizes how this article cuts
through loosely reported information to arrive at the
facts. The rest of the opening lines have a similar
structure: Three days after the rebellion, The
Constitutional Whig reports: “On the road, we met a
thousand different reports, no two agreeing, and leaving it
impossible to make a plausible guess at the truth.”
50
One
week after the rebellion, The Richmond Enquirer reports:
“So much curiosity has been excited in the state, and so
much exaggeration will go abroad, that we have determined
to devote a great portion of this day’s paper to the
strange events in the county of Southampton.”
51
Almost two
weeks after the rebellion, The Constitutional Whig reports:
“We have been astonished since our return from Southampton.
. .in reading over the mass of exchange papers accumulated
in our absence, to see the number of false, absurd, and

49
The Richmond Compiler 24 Aug. 1831.
50
The Constitutional Whig [Richmond] 25 Aug. 1831.
51
The Enquirer Compiler [Richmond] 30 Aug. 1831.
61
idle rumors circulated by the Press, touching the
insurrection in that county.”
52

The significance of this kind of commentary over the
course of the Turner investigation is that information
about the rebellion is not nearly as inconclusive as the
printed reports attest. Not only does the bloody evidence
of slave revolt leave its mark in the homes of several
unsuspecting white families, but also the general public is
cognizant and vocal about Turner’s material impact on
Southampton County. The daunting physicality of the Turner
revolt lays out a counter-narrative and subtext that cannot
be ignored. Granted, the discourse of paternalism takes on
a pervasive presence in the South’s cultural matrix. In the
minds of many whites, paternalism convincingly casts blacks
as perpetually childlike beings void of the agency to
execute independent decisions to resist slavery. However,
the pointed nature of the violence of Turner’s rebellion
leaves no question as to the agency of the blacks
responsible for it. The glaring reality of Turner’s
murderous acts is not lost upon the larger portion of
Southampton’s white population. What the printed media
describes as rumors are the general public’s well-founded
conclusions about the destructiveness of Turner’s revolt

52
The Constitutional Whig [Richmond] 3 Sep. 1831.
62
and the prospect of others. This is important given the
fact that most printed reports on the Turner revolt submit
to the influence of paternalist apologists. Hence, the
belittling of the public’s voiced fears as mere gossip and
conjecture in Virginia newspapers reflects paternalism’s
battle over narrative continuity. The repeated refutation
of public rumor, gossip and exaggeration in the
paternalistically slanted printed media is a reactionary
response to the informal though forceful counter-narrative
of slave revolution. This narrative eludes practical
containment because of the sheer force of it in the public
mind. Every time journalists condescend to the public
gossip of Turner, they inadvertently draw attention to the
power of the larger subtext of revolutionary slave
rebellion and the power of this subtext to affirm Turner’s
subjectivity.
The counter narrative upholding Turner’s subjectivity
and revolutionary potency betrays the patriarch’s felt
conviction that his intentions and actions are genuine
expressions of good will toward the slave. Though
ultimately pretentious and misplaced, the patriarch’s
belief that he possesses a basic sense of good will toward
the slave creates a real sense of betrayal. Incredibly,
this sense of betrayal carries tremendous weight, even
63
though the patriarch’s sense of good will is largely a
creation of ideology and rests within a cultural facade.
This is because the patriarch’s sense of betrayal is not
actually tied to his perception of good will. Rather it is
connected to an observable breakdown in the ethos of
reciprocity. Essentially, it stems from Turner’s blatant
admission that the sense of good will is not mutual.
Non-reciprocity in a paternalist world is a direct
attack on the patriarch’s honor and, by extension, his
identity. This is because his honor depends upon the
dishonored constituents of his paternalist world affirming
it. Even though the patriarch alleges to the implicit
authority and validity of his socio-economic power, the
patriarch still looks for and requires assurances of his
paternalist legitimacy through expressions of reciprocity.
The failure of people in his sphere of power to offer these
affirmations comes across to the patriarch as a
considerable breach of trust and a very pronounced sign of
disrespect. A lack of reciprocal deference by the
patriarch’s familial subjects is such a detraction from his
sense of honor that in cases, such as Turner’s, in which
the disrespectful act is so emphatic and public, patriarchs
must defer the sentiment of disrespect to convey something
more affirming of their honor. In particular, expressions
64
of bewilderment and shock camouflage feelings of shame and
disrespect. Rather than acknowledge Turner’s successful
affront to their collective sense of dignity and esteem,
patriarchs would rather convey sentiments of shock and
bewilderment. The idea behind this conveying of
astonishment and puzzlement is that it isolates Turner
rather than the paternalists as recipients of shame. Shock
and bewilderment put attention on the audacity or insanity
of Turner to do something that paternalism would render
dishonorable, illogical and uncharacteristic of a black
slave.
The second and third lines of Gray’s preface
illustrate how this deferral of sentiment works. Rather
than flesh out the sense of shame and betrayal that
Turner’s rebellion invokes amongst paternalists, these
lines harp upon a very pronounced sense of shock and
bewilderment, enlisting Turner as the recipient of shame:
It is the first instance in our history of an open
rebellion of the slaves, and attended with such
atrocious circumstances of cruelty and destruction, as
could not fail to leave a deep impression, not only
upon the minds of the community where this fearful
tragedy was wrought, but throughout every portion of
the country, in which this population is to be found.
Public curiosity has been on the stretch to understand
the origin and progress of this dreadful conspiracy,
and the motives which influences its diabolical
actors. The insurgent slaves had all been destroyed,
or apprehended, tried and executed (with the exception
of the leader,) without revealing any thing at all
65
satisfactory, as to the motives which governed them,
or the means by which they expected to accomplish
their object.
53

The implicit sentiment of the first part of this passage is
the incredible sense and enormity of shock felt by the
white community. Though Gray does not express this
explicitly, his exclamatory language (“atrocious
circumstances,” “deep impression,”), large-scale
descriptions (“first instance in our history,” “every
portion of the country”), and crisis-bent rhetoric
(“cruelty,” “destruction,” “fearful tragedy”), make shock
the prevailing tone of this line. The second portion of
the passage expresses bewilderment and mystery. To remark
that “public curiosity has been on the stretch to
understand” is to suggest that there is not the faintest
clue as to the motives of the revolting slaves. Gray goes
on to allege that the apprehension of Turner’s co-
conspirators does not “[reveal] any thing at all
satisfactory.” Of course, this is not true. By the time
The Confessions is published, much testimony has been
documented by eyewitnesses and captured co-conspirators.
54

53
Gray, Thomas. Preface. The Confessions of Nat Turner in
The Confessions of Nat Turner and Related Documents.
Kenneth Greenberg, ed. Boston: Bedford Books, 1996. p. 40.
54
Allmendinger Jr., David. “The Construction of The
Confessions of Nat Turner” in Nat Turner: A Slave Rebellion
66
Some of this testimony is factored into proposed theories
about the origins of the revolt several weeks before Turner
is captured.
55
Gray plays ignorant to all of this in the
preface, distancing himself from any logical explanations
of Turner’s motives. By conveying the sentiments of shock
and bewilderment, Gray limits the possible motives for
Turner’s actions to illogical ones. Gray underscores this
notion in the syntax and word choice of the second line of
this passage. He leverages these rhetorical tools to
construct a tenor and tone of logic, which he juxtaposes to
Turner’s alleged illogic. Specifically, Gray renders the
white public as an enquiring gaze, The Confessions as a
public microscope and Turner’s mind as a petri dish.
Connotatively, the words “origin,” “progress” and “motives”
in this line take on a scientific and legal edge that re-
writes white anxiety as a measured “curiosity.” Hence, in
relationship to what Gray later calls Turner’s “gloomy
fanaticism,” whites come across as logical, civil, and
sensible.
56
This juxtaposition essentially isolates Turner

in History and Memory. Kenneth Greenburg ed. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2003. pp. 24 - 42.
55
Ibid.
56
Turner, Nat. The Confessions of Nat Turner. William L.
Andrews and Henry Louis Gates Jr., eds. New York: The
Library of America, 2000. p. 247.

67
as the irrational one. However, given the physical,
emotional, and psychological stresses of slavery upon the
slave, the logical reasons for a slave revolt are not hard
to generate.
Clearly, to acknowledge that there is a basic common
sense to slave revolt is to disrupt the discursive
continuity of paternalism. If whites are convinced that
slaves are pre-disposed to a contented child-like
dependence upon whites, whites must explain a slave revolt
in terms of astonishment and mystery. Any attempts to be
more specific than this must render the revolting slave as
irrational, diabolical or subject to the influences of
abolitionist whites. The idea in this is to enlist Turner
and his cohorts as notorious figures who are such
deviations from the norms of the southern slave society
that the slave rebels are more social anomalies than
indications of change in the paternalistic status quo.
In pursing this logic, The Confessions follows several
weeks of similar characterizations of the revolt by local
newspapers. The Confessions and the newspapers are subject
to the influence of the same political and cultural
powerbrokers, hence reflecting that same pretentiousness.
In particular, the newspapers lean upon strong defenses of
paternalism’s continuity and render Turner’s rebellion as
68
less forceful than popularly alleged, as an extension of a
runaway slave attempt that gets out of hand, and as a
product of white leadership. All of these explanations
point to paternalism’s stability and to the basic
eccentricity of any slave crazy or misguided enough to
instigate a revolt. Within a few days after the rebellion,
Virginia’s Norfolk Herald prints an article that
communicates this emphatically. It alleges that “all
accounts” of Turner’s rebellion are consistent
in representing the affair as one which originated
with a few, without any concert or understanding even
with the slaves of their own county. The published
letter below (from a highly respectable individual) is
explicit on this [matter]. The number that commenced
the bloody work was only seven: three white men and
four blacks—mere marauders bent on plunder; but having
[placed] their hands in human sacrifice, became
infuriated, and, like bloodhounds, pursued the game of
murder.
57

This excerpt from The Norfolk Herald article exposes
several rationalizations of the Turner revolt consistent
with paternalism’s discursive hegemony. To begin with, the
excerpt shows that the journalist plays down the potency of
the slave rebel force. Not only does this newspaper
account allege that the rebellion originates with just a
handful of people, but that their efforts are not even
concerted. A non-concerted effort by slaves to rebel speaks

57
“Insurrection in Southampton County.” The Norfolk Herald
26 August 1831.
69
more to the common place of runaway slave activity. The
characterization of the Turner rebels as runaway slaves is
much more amenable to the paternalist establishment than
the depiction of the Turner rebels as revolutionaries. The
prospect of runaway slaves is less threatening to
paternalism’s discourse because whites view runaway slave
activity as a common though manageable attribute of slave
life. Paternalism does not depict runaway slaves as
fugitives bent on violence or disposed toward revolutionary
action. Rather, the discourse of paternalism typifies
runaway slaves as naughty children who simply step out of
line. In rendering runaway slaves with qualities
characteristic of all children who are disobedient at one
time or another, paternalism is able to absorb the
narrative of the runaway slave without undercutting the
premise of the paternalist ideology. The rest of the
excerpt extends this defense of paternalism by highlighting
the leadership of whites in the revolt. Hence, even if the
implication of disorganized runaway slaves is not enough to
disassociate Turner’s rebels from revolutionary intent, the
reference to whites severs the association completely.
Given the pointed nature of Turner’s violence and the
extensive disruption that it creates for Virginia’s slave
society physically and discursively, crediting Turner with
70
the damage would be an extensive affront to the
paternalist’s ego. Hence, the journalist shifts the agency
of the rebellion’s leadership to white conspirators, whom
the general public correlates with the subversive activity
of the white abolitionist movement.
Though despised by white slaveholders, the political
actions of white abolitionists are much more obliging to
paternalist discourse than a narrative of black slaves
engaged in violent revolution. For paternalists, white
abolitionists are a hated, but expected, foe. In
paternalist discourse, whites are allowed the agency to
revolt. Black slaves are not. The Norfolk Herald news
article can write off the Turner revolt as a rare
expression of slave revolutionary activity by tying the
agency of the activity to whites, which the newspaper
alleges to comprise almost half of the original
conspirators. Establishing whites as the instigators of the
revolt, the newspaper can make the rationalization that
simple-minded runaways behave as “marauders bent on
plunder” and “bloodhounds pursu[ing] the game of murder.”
Outside of an association with whites and runaways, the
nuance of terror tied to the words “marauder,” bloodhound,”
and “murder” attributes to Turner’s revolters more power
than paternalism wants to grant them. However, tied to a
71
context of white influence, the newspaper article sends a
different signal. Essentially, the message the article
sends in this statement is this: Only by the influence of
politically inspired whites do a group of unorganized
runaway slaves transform a basic attempt at petty theft to
engage in a haphazard and reckless effort to overthrow
slavery.
On the same day that the Norfolk Herald publishes this
article, another Virginia newspaper, the Richmond Enquirer,
publishes an article that communicates the same message.
However, this article is more pointed in its
characterization of the Turner rebels as runaways:
It is supposed that most of these marauders and
murderers were runaway negroes who had broken in upon
the white population, for robbery and other mischief.
There is no appearance of concert among the slaves—
nothing that can deserve the name of insurrection,
which it was originally denominated.—There is some
story of a few white faces being seen, or supposed to
be seen, among them.
58

This excerpt is explicit in its depiction of the Turner
rebels as runaways and continues in its downplaying of the
revolutionary intent of the revolt by labeling the rebel
activity as “mischief,” a word which carries strong
conceptual connotations with childhood antics. The writer
of this article reveals the pointedness of his rhetorical

58
“Latest Account.” The Richmond Enquirer 26 Aug. 1831.
72
strategy in the careful selection of this word. The
journalist juxtaposes the word “mischief” with the word
“insurrection,” one that carries strong connotations of
revolution and one he harps on as a misnomer relative to
Turner’s revolt. Essentially, the journalist distinguishes
what he alleges to be the childish misconduct of the Turner
conspirators with what is only rumored to be the
revolution-laden activity of black adults. Finally, he
mentions the presence of whites amongst the conspirators.
This is an allegation he implies originates from an
unofficial source. In remarking, “there is some story of a
few white faces being seen,” the writer of this article
exposes the fact that the allegation of white involvement
is not confirmed. To say, “there is some story” is to put
white association with the revolt in the vein of rumor.
This same nuance is also present in the Norfolk Herald
article, which indicates that its allegation of white
involvement in the Turner revolt is also from an unofficial
source. To recall this statement from the Norfolk Herald:
“the published letter below (from a highly respectable
individual) is explicit on this [matter]. The number that
commenced the bloody work was only seven: three white men
and four blacks.” The Norfolk Herald cites its source as a
letter written by an anonymous person to whom the newspaper
73
can only lend credibility by indicating that the anonymous
writer is “a highly respectable individual.” This is a
convoluted way of saying that the involvement of whites in
the Turner revolt is only a rumor. The writer clearly
wants to give this rumor the nuance of fact. Given the
gravity of the physical and discursive effects of Turner’s
rebellion, paternalism must be defended, even if by sketchy
claims.
The fact that the Norfolk Herald and Richmond Enquirer
publish their articles on the same day suggests that both
of them draw information from this same person. Because the
publication of both of these articles is just four days
after the rebellion, neither of the publications contacts
enough official sources to make more credible claims
against the potency of the rebellion. Nor has enough time
transpired for political and cultural powerbrokers to
construct a more coherent and credible narrative in
contestation of Turner’s revolutionary potency.
Consequently, the newspapers must draw upon even the
weakest defenses of paternalism. Recognizing that the
depiction of the rebels as mere runaways is not enough to
make a strong case for their weakness, the newspapers
include a shaky allegation of white involvement in the
revolt.
74
The allegation of white involvement in the Turner
revolt is one that is inviting for paternalist apologists
to embrace, but one that diminishes in force as the reality
and scope of Turner’s rebellion begins to hit home. The
idea that whites could have instigated the Turner revolt
remains a popular theory, but does not receive attention in
newspapers past the first couple of days after the
rebellion. In light of unavoidable confirmations of the
rebellion’s bloody aftermath, journalists must up-play
black agency. However, even in this acknowledgement of
black volition, they construct a narrative palatable to
paternalism. Specifically, they embellish the allegation
that thievery is the primary motive of the Turner
insurgents. Another article by the Norfolk Herald
illustrates this explicitly. Published a day after the
rebellion, it offers another defense of paternalism, which
several journalists adopt later throughout the Turner
investigation. A single sentence from this article conveys
the entirety of this dynamic:
The insurrection was represented as one of most
alarming character, though it is believed to have
originated only in a design to plunder, and not with a
view to a more important object—as Mrs. Whitehead
being a wealthy lady was supposed to have had a large
sum of money in her house.
59

59
The Norfolk Herald 24 Aug. 1831.
75
In this case, the writer expresses shock directly by
describing the rebellion as “alarming.” However, the words
that follow it are even more telling. The rest of the
sentence depicts Turner and his conspirators as mere
burglars. By alleging that the intent of the
insurrectionists is robbery, the writer demotes them from
revolutionaries to common thieves. Particularly notable is
the subtle juxtaposition of possibilities that the writer
employs to accomplish this: “It is believed to have
originated only in a design to plunder, and not with a view
to a more important object.” Stating “only in a design to
plunder” speaks to the commonality and normalcy of
something like slave thievery in a paternalist world.
Essentially, for paternalists, robbery by slaves is the
kind of expected mischief that a slave might pursue as an
extension of his or her nature. Because paternalism
endorses the myth that slaves are naturally inclined to
engage in simple-minded, short-sighted pursuits as a matter
of course, the allegation that slaves are merely involved
in petty theft underscores the slave rebels’ child-like
natures and their corresponding need for white guardianship
and oversight. Though deviant, thievery by slaves is a low-
stake activity that is completely absorbable and manageable
in a paternalist framework. Hence, the writer re-narrates
76
the Turner revolt to read as an incident of slave thievery
that gets out of hand, not as a revolutionary action that
challenges the cultural framework of paternalism
altogether. On the same token, the writer juxtaposes this
version of the story with an alternative reading more
consistent with the white public’s fears. The phrase “and
not with a view to a more important object” is an implicit
admission that an alternative version of the Turner’s story
exists. Though the writer is far from giving credit to
Turner’s revolutionary forcefulness, he is compelled to at
least acknowledge the alternative reading because, in the
minds of the general public, the alterative reading is the
primary reading. The general terms that the writer uses to
describe this alternative reading speaks to the dominance
of the alternative reading. “More important object” is a
general euphemism for a fear that the writer does not want
to articulate directly. A more specific articulation would
flesh out the fear in ways that would make the fear more
real in the public’s mind. “More important object” is a
stand-in for a Turner narrative that embraces the
revolutionary intent, action and consequence of Turner’s
revolt. Though the writer uses the phrase “more important
object” to deflect Turner’s empowerment as a subject, this
rhetorical move actually enlarges the prospect of Turner’s
77
subjectivity. By depicting Turner’s subjectivity as a
euphemism, the writer leaves room for the reader to fill in
the blanks with stories that have already been confirmed by
death, bloodshed, property damage and military
dispatchment. Though the writer sets up a plausible
reading of Turner’s actions on the terms of paternalism,
the material consequences of Turner’s actions speak much
more powerfully to “a more important object,” one that has
already been validated, specified, and fleshed-out in the
public’s mind.
The power of the subtext implied by “a more important
object” is not lost upon white journalists. Even the
carefully-crafted paternalistic characterization of the
rebellion’s insurgents in the Norfolk Herald article is not
enough to suppress the counter-narrative championing the
rebellion’s potency. As the material effects of Turner’s
rebellion continues to sober the white public, white
journalists turn to another rationalization of Turner’s
revolt. Unable to deny Turner and his fellow insurgents
agency in the revolt altogether, some journalists highlight
the agency of slaves complicit with slavery. In
particular, some journalists make the comment that most
slaves are simply not agitated at all. Both the Richmond
Herald and Norfolk Herald comment, “there is little
78
disaffection among the slaves.”
60
In highlighting the lack
of dissatisfaction amongst most slaves, journalists from
these newspapers put forward the idea that most slaves do
not share the sentiments of Turner and his co-conspirators.
Five days after The Richmond Herald and Norfolk Herald make
this claim, the Richmond Compiler makes another claim that
builds upon the premise of the first. Essentially, the
Richmond Compiler alleges that some slaves help to quell
the rebellion and underscores the loyalty of these slaves
to their masters:
It deserves to be said to the credit of many of the
slaves, whom gratitude had bound to their masters,
that they had manifested the greatest alacrity in
detecting and apprehending many of the brigands. They
had brought in several and a fine spirit had been
shown in many of the plantations of confidence on the
part of the masters, and gratitude on that of the
slave.

. . .It is believed that all the brigands were
slaves—and most, if not all these, the property of
kind and indulgent masters.
61

This excerpt is very clear in communicating that the vast
majority of slaves are not only satisfied with their
masters, but trust their masters far more than they trust
slaves inclined to revolt. The Richmond Compiler goes on
to allege that the fidelity that most slaves have toward
their masters is such that these slaves participate in

60
Richmond Herald 24 Aug. 1831.; Norfolk Herald 24 Aug.
1831.
61
Richmond Compiler 29 Aug. 1831.
79
apprehending other slaves linked to the revolt. In making
this claim, The Richmond Compiler reiterates a
paternalistic vision of the South that depicts an
endearment of slave to master by virtue of the master’s
kindness and the slave’s childlike need for protection and
oversight. Noting that all of the masters of the revolting
slaves are “kind and indulgent,” The Richmond Compiler
further underscores the paternalistic vision as the norm
and the rebellious behavior of the Turner cohort as an
aberration. That is, if so many other slaves are content
with their masters and if the masters of the revolting
slaves are known to be kind, Turner and his cohorts must be
eccentrics and not indications of an unsettled slave
population in general. However, this characterization of
Turner and his co-conspirators is not very convincing in
light of the more powerful subtext that Turner’s rebellion
invokes by virtue of its occurrence. Based on the military
response to Turner’s rebellion and the characterization of
this military response in print, white authorities are much
more attuned to the themes of revolution latent in Turner’s
efforts than their paternalistic narratives convey. A
diary entry from Virginia’s governor illustrates this
emphatically. In less than 24 hours after the commencement
of Turner’s revolt, Governor Floyd writes:
80
This will be a very noted day in Virginia. At
daylight this morning the Mayor of the City put into
my hands a notice to the public, written by James
Trezvant [sic] of Southampton County, stating that an
insurrection of the slaves in that county had taken
place, that several families had been massacred and
that it would take a considerable military force to
put them down.

Upon receipt of this information, 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., 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 Calvary and Captain John B. Richardson with light
artillery, both from this city and two companies of
Infantry from Norfolk and Portsmouth. The light
Artillary 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.
62

Governor Floyd’s sense of the scope of the need of the
military response to Turner’s rebellion is immediately
noticeable. Noting the murders that Turner’s rebels commit
by the time Governor Floyd receives word of the rebellion,
Governor Floyd determines that “a considerable military
force” is required. The governor is so anxious about the

62
Floyd, John. Diary Entry 23 Aug. 1831. The Southampton
Slave Revolt: A Compilation Of Source Material Including
The Full Text Of The “Confessions” Of Nat Turner. Ed. Henry
Irvin Tragle. New York: Random House, 1973. pp. 251-252.
81
scope and urgency of the military need to put down the
revolt that he complains about the impracticalities of
constitutional law in the approval to authorize military
force. Feeling that a response to Turner’s rebellion is of
the most critical nature, he takes full advantage of his
executive powers as governor to bypass constitutional
procedure and authorize military force independently of
other branches of Virginia state government. Remarkably, a
calvary, artillery and infantry are dispatched from
multiple cities within just a few hours. To amass such a
powerful military effort so quickly speaks to a matter much
more grave than a few petty slave thieves blindly following
a group of abolitionist idealists. In fact, the expediency
and efficiency with which Governor Floyd is able to
dispatch troops suggests that local and state governments
are well prepared for an occurrence of the nature of
Turner’s rebellion. To be able to dispatch so many troops
on a moment’s notice suggests that something on the scale
of Turner’s rebellion has already been anticipated. The
government’s military response to Turner’s rebellion is
immediate, decisive, and coordinated. It can only reflect
the government’s anticipation of an event like Turner’s
rebellion. Political and military officials are not
dismissive when they hear news of Turner’s rebellion. They
82
do not act as though they believe that slaves are
essentially childlike and disinclined to make independent
decisions to sabotage slavery in a violent fashion. They
take news of Turner’s rebellion with the utmost
seriousness, responding aggressively with a military effort
that is pre-coordinated and anticipated. A closer look at
the nature of this military dispatch further underscores
this point. In a letter that Governor Floyd writes to his
cabinet members to report on his response to the rebellion,
he provides a more detailed description of the military
dispatch, one that speaks to military system well-
positioned to respond to local disturbances:

Executive Department
August 24, 1831

Dear Sir:

I have this moment received of yesterday—And take
great pleasure in saying to you that strong and
decisive measures were taken yesterday to put down the
unhappy Insurrection in Southampton.

I have ordered four of the finest companies into
Southampton to receive orders from the General of the
Brigade with orders to call out the Militia of Sussex
and Southampton if necessary, and have sent them one
thousand stand of arms and ammunition under the
protection of the Light Artillery—captain Harrison’s
troop of Light Dragoons will be at Southampton by
twelve o’clock this day, the other troops will be
there by tomorrow morning.

I have ordered to Petersburg give five hundred muskets
and arms besides for Seventy Calvary—four hundred
83
muskets and Pistols, Swords, etc. are on their way and
will be in Petersburg in two hours from this time.

I have now ordered eight hundred stand of arms to be
forwarded to your county and to Greensville with
ammunition sufficient, say ten ball cartridges to each
musket.

These arms will be on the road so soon as
transportation can be procured, which will be in a few
hours—They will move from this to the Town of
Petersburg and thence by the most usual route to
Brunswick C.H.—I wish the Colonial of the Brunswick
Regiments to send to Petersburg a sufficient guard to
protect the arms on their way, orders have been issued
to them to this effect.

The Colonel of the 39
th
Regt. At Petersburg has
received orders to detail a guard and to furnish
transportation from that place for those arms—with
instructions to deliver the muskets to the guard from
Brunswick and return to Petersburg, unless necessity
should require them to continue with the wagons, —five
hundred stand, cartridges, & etc., are for the
Regiments in Brunswick, and three hundred for the
Regiment in Greensville, now the scene of war.

Should this insurrection prove more serious than the
present force can subdue, perhaps more arms may be
necessary—if so, they shall be forwarded to Petersburg
when I am informed of the facts where transportation
can be had, when a guard will accompany them to the
Regiments wanting them.

With great respect I am Yr Ob Svt.

s/John Floyd/

James H. Gholson Esq.
Brunswick, C.H.
63

63
Floyd, John. August 24, 1831 in The Southampton Slave
Revolt: A Compilation Of Source Material Including The Full
Text Of The “Confessions” Of Nat Turner. Henry Irvin
Tragle, ed. New York: Random House, 1973, pp. 264-265.
84
At the very beginning of this letter Governor Floyd takes
pride in taking decisive and assertive action in response
to the “Insurrection,” which he capitalizes. The
capitalization of “Insurrection,” gives Turner’s rebellion
the seriousness of a celebrated military battle. Later in
the letter, he even depicts the revolting area as “the
scene of war.” Within barely more than a day after the
commencement of the rebellion, Governor Floyd has all but
made a formal declaration of war. Responding to Turner and
his cohorts as official aggressors against the state,
Governor Floyd puts into motion and into official language
actions commensurate with a response to a threat to
national security. The detailed military logistical
information alone is enough to indicate the Governor’s deep
investment in a strong military response to the rebellion.
It also speaks to his familiarity with the nature of a
serious military attack. Since he is Virginia’s chief
executive official, this should be expected. However, his
reporting on the detailed intricacies of the military
dispatch, even down to the number of balls assigned to each
musket, suggests that he is well-versed and rehearsed in
this kind of military action. Finally, as if over 2000
units of weaponry are not enough, he informs the executive
committee that “should this insurrection prove more serious
85
than present force can subdue. . .more arms may be
necessary.”
The fact that the governor so quickly agrees to such
aggressive military actions suggests that his mind is
prepared for this moment long before it occurs. There is
clearly enough known and feared slave unrest in the months
before Turner’s slave rebellion to convince Governor Floyd
and other government officials in the South to prepare
militarily for a serious confrontation with violent slaves.
However, this stirring with reference to slave rebellion is
part of a long history of slave rebellion, fear of slave
revolt and the militarization of the South. Contrary to
the most popular adages of paternalism with reference to
the nature of slaves, the South treats the threat of
violent slave unrest with the utmost seriousness.
As Herbert Aptheker articulates and thoroughly
documents in American Negro Slave Revolts, “widespread fear
of slave rebellion [is] characteristic of the South.”
64
It
is an inevitable product of the material and cultural
conditions of slavery. Because paternalism is a cultural
script that relies more on pretense than substance, the
resistance to paternalism’s tenants are much more plentiful

64
Aptheker, Herbert. American Negro Slave Revolts. New
York: International Publishes, 1943. p. 39.
86
than patriarchs can acknowledge without shame or
embarrassment. Aptheker cites several reluctant admissions
of the fear of slave rebellion of which I will not explore
at length here. However, his commentary on some of the
material manifestations of this fear does warrant some
exploration. In particular, I am referring to the
correlation he observes between the fear of slave revolt
and the creation of American law enforcement and military
culture:
Behind the owner, and his personal agents, stood an
elaborate and complex system of military control. In
the cities were guards and police, for the countryside
were the ubiquitous patrols, armed men on horseback.
Their duties, performed at intervals varying with the
state of society at any given moment, including
searching the hovels and hearts of the slaves for
signs of disaffection, detaining and lashing Negroes
found abroad without proper authorization, and
searching out and disbanding secret assemblies of
slaves, usually, or at least ostensibly, gathered for
religious purposes. . . .Behind this were the state
militias which, in the South, were ‘fairly efficient’
armed bodies. . . .Moreover, as a measure of
additional precaution and as a result of the prestige
of the military profession in the South, numerous and
well-armed voluntary organizations abounded. Finally,
but by no means of least importance, stood the armed
might of the federal government, a large percentage of
which was stationed within the South itself.
65

Many slaveholding whites, regardless of their professed
belief in the premises of paternalism are well aware of
both the occurrences and prospects of slave rebellion in

65
Ibid. pp. 67 - 68.
87
its violent and destructive forms. In 1831, Turner’s
rebellion is but the latest expression of a larger
resistance movement. Indeed, the severity and
insidiousness of slavery in the U.S. makes slave
insurrections inevitable. Though the number of organized
slave rebellions on record is relatively small compared to
the various other forms of slave resistance,
66
the tally of
slave insurrections in American history is only a record of
accomplished slave rebellions or well-known attempts.
67
The
historical record does not factor in several other acts of
organized violent resistance that evade the history books

66
Many of these other forms of resistance have been
relegated to the term “passive resistance.” This term has
emerged as a way of describing the most popular ways blacks
resist slavery in the nineteenth century. The implication
of this term is that blacks are largely powerless to resist
slavery in material or violent terms short of the
eccentricities of someone like Nat Turner. By extension,
one must conclude that most slaves resort to low-stake acts
of resistance that counter the slave system, but that are
relatively easy to hide. For example, a slave might
deliberately “lose” the work tools required for a task or
work slower to complete duties on the plantation field. A
more pointed form of subversion might be that a house slave
slips poison or finely ground glass into the master’s food.
These methods of resistance are certainly amongst the locus
of techniques slaves employ in response to the hegemony of
slavery, but skew the dynamic of slave resistance in the
historical record when figured as the centerpiece of
subversive activity by slaves.
67
For example, just 30 years before Turner’s rebellion, a
slave named Gabriel Prosser attempts a massive slave
rebellion, one with the potential to surpass the impact of
Turner’s. Short of the efforts of a black informant,
Prosser’s rebellion might have accomplished this, an idea
not lost upon slaveholders shortly after Prosser’s attempt.
88
as attempts or evade formal recognition in the historical
record because of how the nineteenth century world
chronicles them. One example of this is the physical fight
between the famed slave autobiographer Fredrick Douglass
and one of his white overseers, an incident that is only on
record because Douglass is one of the few slaves privileged
to read, write and present his story in printed form.
Douglass’s fight with the overseer is a form of violent
slave rebellion, but one that Douglass’s overseer fails to
punish or report because of how radically it revises
paternalist narratives that render rebellious slaves as
unlikely, eccentric or reformable under the strong arm of
the slave system. As newspaper reports on Turner’s
rebellion affirm, another popular way of misrepresenting
violent slave rebellion in the historical record is to
blame it on the influence of white abolitionists. Fredrick
Douglass comments on this dynamic in his second
autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom. Describing the
intellectual journey that leads to his literacy, Douglass
meditates on the term “abolitionist” and what he considers
to be its curious application in the southern slave world:
If a slave, for instance, had made good his escape
from slavery, it was generally alleged, that he had
been persuaded and assisted by the abolitionists. If,
also, a slave killed his master—as was sometimes the
case—or struck down his overseer, or set fire to his
89
master’s dwelling, or committed any violence or crime,
out of the common way, it was certain to be said, that
such crime was the legitimate fruits of the abolition
movement.
68

The particular instances of slave resistance that Douglass
cites are very telling. Striking their overseers, killing
their masters, burning property, and committing other forms
of violent and destructive crime, the slaves that Douglass
characterizes are far cries from those depicted in the
paternalistic vision of the South. The manner in which
Douglass describes these slaves is also suggestive on some
level of their commonality. Douglass certainly does not
depict them as eccentric. Rather, he communicates the idea
that when slaves do behave in the manner he is describing
that slaveholders cite the influence of white
abolitionists. As Douglass conveys in the excerpt, the
references to abolitionists are code for the subversive and
revolutionary undercurrent latent in slave life.
The very fact that paternalists must manufacture the
excuse of abolitionist influence speaks to the ways that
violent slave resistance happens often enough to contest
the paternalist narrative. Besides, the prospect of slave
violence is not far fetched within the context of slavery’s
institutional dependence on violence. Between rapes,

68
Douglass, Fredrick. My Bondage and My Freedom. New York:
Penguin, 2003. pp. 120-121.
90
whippings, hangings, beatings, and amputations, the heavy
investment of American slavery in the culture of violence
makes retributive violence on the part of slaves only a
matter of course. Consequently, the question of the motive
of violent slaves is a redundant one. Even though the
culturally pervasive and institutionally aggressive reach
of slavery makes violent resistance impractical for many
slaves, the harsh conditions of slavery are clearly intense
enough to compel some slaves to consider violent rebellion.
Hence, under slavery, potential violence is always
simmering. Confirmed knowledge of a future slave revolt is
a small matter compared to the perpetual threat of slave
violence. The forcefulness of Turner’s revolutionary
actions renders him as an empowered subject in the face of
paternalism’s pervasive presence. His rebellion is so
effective because it takes place at the apex of a
revolutionary build up of black resistant forces. He is the
spark that causes an explosion in the political fumes that
had been simmering for years. He and his rebellion are the
material manifestations of a subtext that had been in the
making for the previous four decades. The prospect of a
revised Antebellum New World for blacks becomes tangible
through Turner’s revolutionary actions.

91
Christianity

Just as revolutionary as Turner’s actions is the
symbolism that Turner enlivens in his affiliation with
Christianity. Turner’s wielding of the Christianity’s
lexicon creates a powerful challenge to the paternalist
hegemony because of the intimate place that Christian
discourse holds in the Antebellum South and, more
particularly, in the social privileging of the South’s male
elites: Christianity imposes upon paternalists the moral
imperatives to care and provide spiritual nurture for their
slaves while also extending to slave masters the moral
honor associated with this supposed benevolence, generosity
and charity. Though a true sense of good will and
kindheartedness of slave masters toward slaves is rare, the
charade of compassion and humanitarianism generally extends
to paternalists a felt sense of altruism and the perception
by peers that paternalists are honorable. Paternalists
amplify this position of honor by playing active roles in
their churches and by subscribing their slaves to Christian
teachings. The proliferation of the Second Great
Awakening, a protestant Christian revival movement
extending from the late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth
centuries, leads to the popular and public esteem of
Christian leaders. Paternalists receive double honor when
92
demonstrating a personal commitment to Christianity and a
commitment to their slaves’ spiritual development. In the
end, Christianity fosters a discourse that rewards
paternalists with honor for the active roles they play in
their local churches and for the material and spiritual
care that they extend to their slaves. Granted, the
paternalist conception of material care rarely consists of
more than the basic food and clothing that human beings
require to live, making the provisions they extend to
slaves more a reflection of an exploitation than care of
slaves. The paternalist conception of spiritual care is
just as misleading. Rather than facilitating their slaves’
spiritual growth, paternalists force their slaves to
subscribe to lop-sided interpretations of Christian
scripture that imply the perpetual submission of blacks to
whites. Such poor treatment of slaves essentially cancels
out any legitimacy to the paternalists’ personal Christian
devotion. Nonetheless, the semblance of Christian
commitment combined with the power and pervasiveness of
Christian discourse extends to the paternalists an honor
that for them is more forceful than the implications of
hypocrisy.
However, the slippages of Christian discourse and the
inconsistencies in the construct of paternalist benevolence
93
are not lost upon Turner. He poses a challenge to the
paternalist charade that becomes embodied in his rebellion.
His leadership in the violent upheaval of Virginia slaves
draws attention to the theatrical nature of the paternalist
Christian commitment and exposes the duality of Christian
discourse, which Turner leverages for his own political and
spiritual purposes. Specifically, Turner taps into the
spirit of the Second Great Awakening with the revival’s
emphasis on repentance and God’s wrath against sin. His
rebellion draws upon a narrative of divine vengeance that
has credence because of the overthrow of French
colonialists by Haitian slaves just 40 years earlier. This
successful political and military victory of slaves over
French colonialists is so startling and unfathomable to
whites in America that God’s divine intervention on behalf
of slaves becomes a plausible explanation for the success
of Haitian slaves. In the minds of many whites, the
Haitian Revolution represents the prospect of God’s divine
wrath upon America for the sin of slavery. Combined with
the apocalyptic overtones accenting the Second Great
Awakening, the Haitian Revolution creates a compelling
historical and cultural backdrop from which Turner takes
command of Christian discourse. The designation of Turner
as a Christian preacher and prophet by himself and others,
94
Turner’s use of Christian language in his communication
with slaves, and the characterization of Turner’s
encounters with supernatural phenomena in The Confessions
forge a locus of language, symbolism and typology that
challenges the paternalist use of Christian discourse. Not
only does the fact of the rebellion contest claims by
paternalists that they uphold a kind slavery, but the
correlation of Turner’s political aims with Christian
language links his revolutionary activity to divine
recompensatory vengeance. Hence, Turner’s contestation of
the paternalist code of honor is two-fold: He embarrasses
paternalist slaveholders by leading a slave rebellion that
contradicts the idea that slaves are drawn into happy
submission by Christian kindness and he materializes the
signifiers of God’s wrath against the sin of American
slavery.
The corporeal nature of Turner’s expression of
rebellion combined with the undercurrent of mythology and
theology energizing Turner’s efforts makes his prophetic
authority plausible amongst whites. Though most white
public figures and much of the general white populace make
public comments downplaying the political and spiritual
validity of Turner’s efforts, privately, many whites
entertain the idea that Turner’s rebellion is an
95
apocalyptic sign signifying their need to turn from the sin
of slavery. The euphoria surrounding the conversations of
both blacks and whites during the Second Great Awakening
creates an environment conducive to a belief in Turner as a
prophet and his rebellion as a prophetic sign. Indeed
several of the Second Great Awakening conversations occur
in an atmosphere of “stark emotionalism, disorder,
extremism, and crudeness.”
69
The charismatic explosiveness
contextualizing Christian conversion is so intense in the
Second Great Awakening that it opens converts to a belief
in a broad range of supernatural and prophetically
significant occurrences. Amongst Christian whites that
believe in the apocalypse, Turner’s rebellion is arguably a
prophetic event. Hence, the concurrence of Turner’s
rebellion with the Second Great Awakening significantly
enlarges Turner’s spiritual validity amongst whites. Though
many whites might not be willing to admit it publicly,
Turner’s rebellion resonates with some of their most
deeply-felt Christian beliefs, which have strong ties to
the typology of the Old Testament and its locus of
narrative sequences featuring large-scale interventions of

69
Hatch, Nathan. The Democratization of American
Christianity. New Haven: Yale University, 1989. p. 222.
96
God upon nature and elaborate expositions by prophetic
entities.
70

Contextualized by Turner’s revelations of paranormal
celestial phenomena and of his gifts as a preacher,
Turner’s rebellion draws upon dualistic themes within the
Bible. Being both lampooned and revered as a preacher-
prophet, Turner carries with him the evangelistic overtones
correlated with Christian preachers and the overtones of
the restitutive and judgment-laden oracles correlated with
Old Testament prophets. Beyond it’s basic horror and
controversy, the story of Turner’s rebellion has such
strong cultural resonance because of its deep entrenchment
in the central themes of scripture. Because these themes
have strong currency amongst both blacks and whites, the

70
New Testament typology also resonates with the mood of
the Second Great Awakening. Specifically, this is true
with reference to the New Testament Books of Revelation and
Acts. The book of Revelation in particular lends a strong
sense of immediacy, currency and legitimacy to what Second
Great Awakening adherents view as spiritual signs. Old-
Testament-esq in its symbolism, premised as a written
oracle of things to come, and often understood in terms of
things presently imminent, the book of Revelation
underscores the relationship between New Testament
overtones of redemption, mercy, and grace with Old
Testament themes of wrath, judgment and restitution. The
opening sequence of the book of Acts has the same effect.
Commencing in a tangible outpouring of God’s Spirit and a
proliferation of strong Christian evangelical activity, the
opening sequence of Acts also highlights prophetic
references from the Old Testament that point to apocalyptic
signs in the heavens.
97
empowered subjectivity touted by Turner’s story of
rebellion has a forceful impact in communities of both
races. Moreover, the revivalism of the Second Great
Awakening extends scriptural literacy to a large part of
the of the white and black illiterate population. Though
many cannot read printed words, as a result of revivalism,
they are able to “read” Christian symbolism and prophetic
signs endorsed by scripture. The sharing of a mytho-
religious vocabulary between blacks and whites certainly
allows whites to manipulate Christian God-fearing slaves
with regards to Christian concepts of submission, but the
use of Christian language also works in the favor of black
challenges to slavery. The prospect of this hermeneutic
reciprocity is exampled by the Christian devotion of Nat
Turner’s owner, Samuel Turner, a distinct product of the
Second Great Awakening.
Samuel Turner’s family become committed Methodists at
the beginning of the revival and Samuel Turner continues
the tradition several decades later.
71
Facilitating
Christian gatherings in Southampton, the Turners become
prominent Christian leaders in their community during the

71
Oates, Stephen B. The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner’s
Fierce Rebellion. New York: HarperPerennial, 2004. p. 9;
Kolchin, Peter. American Slavery 1619 – 1877. New York:
Hill and Wang, 1995. pp 116 -117.
98
period of Nat Turner’s rebellion.
72
Of course, the most
remarkable part of Samuel Turner’s devotion to Christianity
is that it is a devotion shared with his own slave, the
infamous Nat Turner, who proclaims himself to be both a
Christian preacher and a prophet. The two Turner’s are
strong professors of the same religious creed, both men
drawing from Christianity to justify two radically
different positions on the morality, ethical validity and
spiritual rectitude of slavery. However, the Second Great
Awakening only intensifies this sharing of Christianity’s
language and symbolism, bringing to the forefront
Christianity’s most potent signifiers.
In particular, the intensity of the religious revival in
the Second Great Awakening is marked by a call to turn away
from spiritual depravity and the prospect of one’s
deliverance from the terrors of an impending apocalypse.
The Haitian Revolution of 1791, a dramatic slave rebellion
that culminates just as the decades-long Second Great
Awakening begins, accentuates this call. Haiti’s slave
revolt, with its storied gore and terror, serves as a
convenient case in point for revivalist preachers who
compel many to convert to Christianity with warnings of
hellish consequences for those who refuse Christian

72
Ibid. p. 117.
99
discipleship. Though both blacks and whites alike answer
the call to Christian discipleship, the conversion
experience of whites in particular has direct links to the
Haitian slave revolt insofar as the revolt can be construed
as an expression of God’s wrath against slaveholders. As
recipients of God’s wrath, slaveholders are displaced from
positions of honor before God
The apocalyptic overtones that stem from the Haitian
Revolution also bear upon Turner’s revolt. Because of the
lingering stories of Haitian terror that invoke vivid
images of pagan horror and destruction in the mind of many
whites several decades later, Turner and his rebellion fit
neatly within America’s mythological epistemology of Haiti.
This epistemology infuses Turner’s rebellion with a mythic
synergy that directly challenges the cultural narrative
rendering honor and social distinction to white southern
men. This happens in a couple of ways, one by negating a
source of honor and the other by applying a source of
dishonor: The negation of slaveholder honor rests within
the controversy over Turner’s motives. Turner’s
associations with the Haitian Revolution elevate the stakes
of Turner’s rebellion beyond rationalizations by whites
that Turner is motivated by petty theft, temporary
insanity, or some other politically neutral cause. In its
100
association with Haiti, Turner’s rebellion convincingly
shatters the popular myth that slaves are happy in their
bondage. This myth is critical to a positive application of
the southern code of honor upon white slaveholding men
because slaveholders consider the positive welfare of their
slaves to be their Christian duty and, by extension, a
source of honor. Negating this possibility places these
slaveholders in positions of dishonor. The direct
application of dishonor upon slaveholders rests within the
Haitian Revolution’s overtones of divine vengeance.
Turner’s association with the Haitian Revolution extends
the imprint of this dishonor upon white slaveholders by
rendering them recipients of God’s wrath—both as
individuals and as a group.
73
Revivalist theology warns of

73
Turner’s correlation with Haiti ties both white
slaveholders and Turner to the Old Testament tradition of
prophetic restitution. In particular, Turner’s
identification as a prophet invokes the prospect of a
redemptive darkness correlated with the biblical typology
of the prophet. Biblical prophets, particularly in the Old
Testament, are the harbingers of terror and doom. While
they also communicate the forthcoming of God’s blessings,
they are always the messengers through whom God
communicates His anger, disapproval, and plans to inflect
judgment. Both written and oral accounts of Turner attest
to his subscription to visions of the future that speak to
apocalyptic terror. The apocalyptic tenor of Turner’s
visions corresponds with the prophetic gloom of Old
Testament prophets succinctly. Indeed, the invocation of
an apocalypse is suggestive of the “dark” side of God, a
providence infused with terror. As the Old Testament
illustrates, this divine horror is often connected to
101
the consequences of individual sin (hell) and of the
consequences of collective sin (apocalypse).
This carries great weight given slavery’s heavily
pronounced status as a collective sin. During the early
years of the Second Great Awakening in particular,
revivalists denounce slavery emphatically. As historian
Stephen Oates explains, “by 1801 frenzied camp meetings
li[ght] up the Southern backwoods, as Methodists, Baptists,
and maverick Presbyterians all [join] in the evangelical
crusade against godlessness,” a crusade that includes
protest “against the evil of slave owning.”
74
These
religious leaders are so vehement that they make “some
whites feel guilty enough to liberate their slaves.”
75

This denunciation of slavery by revivalists stems from the
same spirit in which they denounce the individualized sin
of prospective converts. Revivalist warnings of the
consequences of personal sin are coupled with warnings
about the consequences of communal sin. Making calls to

communal acts of sin. However, the horror is also a
fundamental aspect of individual encounters with God in the
raw. The Old Testament endorses a belief that a face-to-
face encounter with God is a spiritual threshold crossing
from degeneracy to divine sublimity, one that could only
happen in the moment of one’s death or destruction.
74
Oates, Stephen B. The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner’s
Fierce Rebellion. New York: HarperPerennial, 2004. p. 9;
Kolchin, Peter. American Slavery 1619 – 1877. New York:
Hill and Wang, 1995. p. 9.
75
Ibid.
102
conversion within large group settings, revivalist
preachers are not only able to annunciate the prospect of
hell for individual sinners, but the prospect of divine
vengeance on a group of sinners. Hence, the two kinds of
sin have a metonymic relationship. To speak of one is to
invoke the other. This association forges an uncanny
connection between Turner’s apocalypse-invoking revolt and
white Christian belief systems. The conversion experience
of Second Great Awakening Christians is so colorfully
intense that what converts believe about the dynamics of
individual sin is associated with their beliefs about
communal sin.
The timing of Turner’s revolt in relationship to this
Christian revivalist emphasis strengthens the believability
of Turner as an agent of divine retribution. In the minds
of many white Christians influenced by the idea of the
apocalypse, the occurrence of the Haitian Revolution makes
them believe that Turner’s rebellion is the consequence of
the unheeded warnings of Haiti. If Haitian slaves could
rattle a centuries-old European power, what was to stop
American slaves from usurping a decades-old former colony?
The stories of the scope and intensity of Haiti’s
devastation lead some white American slaveholders to
believe in the imminence of “the end” in the 1790s. How
103
much more imminent is the apocalypse in the 1830s when
Turner’s rebellion materializes Haitian-styled terror on
American soil. In the end, the revivalist emphases on
emotions, erratic expressions of change, prophetic events
and other tangible indications of God’s intervention in
human affairs make Turner’s alleged call from God
plausible. Given the spirited nature of the revivalist
movement, converts to this vein of Christianity are open to
a broad scope of biblically prophetic phenomena, which
would make Turner’s revolt a matter of course. The spirit
of the Second Great Awakening reinforces the felt
conviction that Turner’s prophetic claims are valid.
The newspaper media of the early nineteenth century
documents the tension of this dynamic. The narrative
progression of the articles accounting for Turner’s
rebellion is an extension of the discursive struggle
emerging out of the attempt to account for Turner’s
rebellion without exalting his revolutionary associations.
This struggle often hinges on the subtle connotations of
simple words and labels. For example, the designation of
Turner as a Christian authority figure in the white press
is incredibly significant. Notably, white authority
figures recognize Turner as a “preacher” early in the
investigation. For example, two days after the rebellion,
104
an army general writes a letter that is later published in
The Richmond Compiler. This letter labels Turner as a
“preacher.”
76
One day later, an anonymous person in Virginia
writes a letter calling Turner a “prophet.”
77
This letter
is later printed in The American Beacon. One day after
this, the senior editor of The Constitutional Whig writes a
letter that labels Turner “The Preacher-Captain.”
78
At face
value these are all terms of honor. Within a Christian
context, “preacher” and “prophet” are terms of honor given
to Christian leaders appointed by God. However, in
Turner’s case they are likely terms of mockery. As
historian Kenneth Greensburg notes, the designation of
blacks by terms of honor by whites is generally done to
dishonor blacks.
79
The idea is that the title of honor
over-annunciates the person’s actual importance and as a
consequence draws attention to the person’s low station in
life and the inappropriateness of receiving the title in
the first place.
80
As infamous as Turner is by the late
summer of 1831, this practice is particularly popular with

76
The Richmond Compiler 29 Aug. 1831.
77
The American Beacon [Norfolk] 29 Aug. 1831.
78
The Constitutional Whig, [Richmond] 25 Aug. 1831.
79
Greenburg, Kenneth. “Name Face, Body” in Nat Turner: A
Slave Rebellion in History and Memory. Kenneth Greenburg
ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. pp. 6-7.
80
Ibid.
105
respect characterizations of Turner in the press.
Greensburg explains:
It is important not to misunderstand this widespread use
of honorific attachments to Nat Turner’s name in the
Virginia newspapers of 1831. Such titles [are] not
intended to honor the man, but to mock him. For white
Southerners, an inflated title next to the name of a
slave [is] the functional equivalent of naming him a
great warrior or leader of the ancient world. To call a
slave “Cato,” “Caesar,” “Hercules,” or “General” [is] to
create what appear[s] to masters as an oxymoron designed
to generate contempt rather than respect.
81

Turner’s mock heroic designations play into reactionary
efforts by whites to negate his political significance.
By reverting to a common practice of jovial condescension,
whites reassure themselves, relegating Turner and other
would-be slave rebels to a non-threatening category. On
the surface, this strategy is consistent with the way that
whites rewrite the narrative of black subversion to
correspond with the cultural narrative upholding the social
distinction of white men in the South. Blacks who engage
in what would otherwise be honorable activity--learning to
read, following Christian morals, pursuing human dignity--
can be labeled as buffoons through mock heroic
designations. At the same time, a closer look at the

81
Greenburg, Kenneth. “Name Face, Body” in Nat Turner: A
Slave Rebellion in History and Memory. Kenneth Greenburg
ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. pp. 6-7.;
Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries
of Slavery in North America. Cambridge, Harvard UP, 1998.
p. 95.
106
circumstances under which the white press labels Turner a
preacher and prophet uncover another dimension of Turner’s
political threat, one with which the southern code of honor
cannot easily dispense. In particular, the designation of
Turner as a Christian authority figure, though initially
designed to mock Turner, unavoidably calls attention to the
epistemologies of Christianity that affirm Turner’s moral
and prophetic validity. This is a fact not lost upon the
white press and gatekeepers of the southern code of honor.
The fact that the press associates Turner with Christianity
at all suggests that they are calling attention to
something that is already common knowledge. The press
associates Turner with Christianity because of overwhelming
accounts of his Christian devotion from both blacks and
whites familiar with Turner. There are clearly other ways
to mock Turner without giving him Christian mock-heroic
titles. As Greensburg notes, designations from Greek and
Roman antiquity debase Turner just as well. Additionally,
the white press is extremely invested in making allegations
that Turner’s motives are apolitical and disassociated from
larger ideological aims. As explored in the paternalism
section, the first week of reporting of the rebellion has
the revolt hinging on petty theft and drunkenness.
Labeling Turner as a preacher does not help this cause: The
107
epistemology of Christianity and the association of this
epistemology with revolting blacks lends ideological
potency to black subversive activity. Moreover, the Turner
rebellion transpires in a political atmosphere that is
already seeping with incessant legislative action designed
to curb potential subversive activity championed directly
or indirectly by black Christian religious practices.
82

Though whites play down Turner’s threat in many public
instances, gatekeepers of white southern civility are very
aware of the links between black Christian religious
practices and the propensity of these practices to foster
black literacy, black re-interpretation of the Bible and
other things that feed into black revolt efforts. Needless
to say, the subject of Turner’s Christian devotion, let
alone his Christian leadership is a controversial issue
that must be treated delicately in order to affirm white
notions of black complacency in slavery. Many white
authority figures are happy to avoid the public discussion
of Turner’s religious devotion altogether. However,
Turner’s prophetic status is so pronounced amongst those
familiar with him directly and amongst those who have
second hand knowledge of him through gossip that the press

82
Apetheker, Herbert. Nat Turner’s Slave Rebellion
Including the 1831 “Confessions”. Mineola:Dover, 2006. pp.
27 – 32.
108
must at least acknowledge that he is a Christian leader.
The consistency with which Turner is designated as a
Christian authority figure across various sources and
throughout the length of the investigation of his rebellion
suggests that his designation as preacher and prophet has
merit. Based upon the testimony from witnesses and captured
coconspirators, Turner’s Christian devotion is strong
enough for other blacks to consider him to be a preacher
and prophet. There are even reports that some whites
openly acknowledge Turner’s spiritual authority, for,
according to The Confession of Nat Turner, Turner baptizes
a white man.
83

Granted, the press is in the business of selling
papers. The printing of anything controversial, such as
the details of Turner’s Christian ties, serves this end.
Regardless of the influence of political elites and
cultural gatekeepers, the press pursues ways to make their
product more marketable. This fact certainly plays a role
in the way that the press communicates the narrative of
Turner’s rebellion. At the same time, the panic invoked by
Turner’s rebellion tempers some of the market bias of the
press. Though both ideological and market values are at

83
Turner, Nat. The Confessions of Nat Turner. The
Confessions of Nat Turner and Related Documents. Ed.
Kenneth Greenburg. New York: Bedford Books, 1996. P. 47.
109
stake, the crisis-bent scenario that Turner’s rebellion
creates still fosters some interest in objectivity. Matters
of safety and civic stability are foremost in the minds of
many whites. The pragmatism of responding to the rebellion
on these terms makes the communication of the details of
Turner’s Christian affiliations as much a matter of
practicality as it is a matter of ideology and economics.
Any basic information about Turner is helpful because, on
the level of basic security, whites want to understand the
forces motivating Turner’s revolt, even if it contradicts
the ideologies to which they adhere.
However, the pragmatism of securing and communicating
as much basic information about Turner as possible is
itself reflective of the forcefulness of Turner’s
subjectivity and mythical presence. The fact that the
press is forced to address Turner’s notoriety as a preacher
testifies to the fact that Turner’s status as a spiritual
leader cuts across the manipulative powers of white
hegemonic discourse. While white journalists and white
authority figures describe Turner’s Christian leadership
with a condescending slant, this bias does not erode the
forcefulness of Turner’s subjectivity and mythical
resonance. This becomes clearer after the second week of
reporting on Turner’s rebellion. This second week of
110
reporting shows a marked difference in the treatment of
Turner’s affiliations with Christianity. Within the first
week, the press’s designation of Turner as a preacher,
though slanted, is basically descriptive. It conveys a
tenor of condescension, but it more or less communicates
the objective fact of Turner’s role as a Christian leader.
However, the second week of reporting on Turner’s rebellion
advances very deliberate ideological contestations of
Turner’s spiritual authority. It is reflective of the fact
that white journalists and white authority figures are
aware of the mythical forcefulness of Turner’s role as a
Christian preacher-prophet. After a week of stumbling
through the shock and anxiety of the Turner rebellion, they
realize that they have to communicate a much more direct
attack on Turner’s spiritual authority. The prophetic
overtones of Turner’s actions combined with the material
devastation of the rebellion lend to Turner a remarkable
credibility in terms of his claims as a prophetic voice and
messianic hero. Gatekeepers of the white southern status
quo understand this and are compelled to challenge Turner
more assertively. As a case in point, the Richmond
Enquirer labels Turner as a “fanatic preacher.”
84
Not
taking for granted that readers will read the mock heroic

84
The Richmond Enquirer 30 Aug. 1831.
111
tone of “preacher” by default, the writer qualifies the
term preacher with “fanatic.” The fear is that readers
will actually take Turner’s label as preacher seriously, so
the writer has to ensure that readers dismiss Turner’s
spiritual legitimacy. The article continues further to make
an even more deliberate attack on Turner’s spiritual
legitimacy:
Nat, the ringleader, who calls himself General,
pretends to be a Baptist-preacher—a great enthusiast—
declares to his comrades that he is commissioned by
Jesus Christ, and proceeds under his inspired
directions--that late singular appearance of the sun
was the sign for him.
85

In this statement, the writer blatantly accuses Turner of
pretending to be a Christian minister. He then takes the
accusation one step further by suggesting that Turner is
led to do this by mental delusion. In declaring that Turner
is “a great enthusiast” and by stating that Turner receives
his inspiration by the “appearance of the sun,”—alluding to
a solar eclipse transpiring shortly before the rebellion—
the writer makes the claim that Turner is mentally
unstable, a condition that the writer alleges leads Turner
to feign spiritual legitimacy and incite a rebellion in the
name of Jesus Christ. Several other Virginia newspapers
thereafter make similar claims: The Richmond Compiler

85
The Richmond Enquirer 30 Aug. 1831.
112
prints a letter from an anonymous writer, which calls
Turner “superstitious.”
86
The Constitutional Whig calls him
a “pretended prophet.”
87
The Richmond Enquirer calls Turner
a “dreamer of dreams and a would-be prophet.”
88
As the
above statements indicate, statements that accuse Turner of
fanaticism and mental delusion parallel comments that
directly attack the legitimacy of Turner’s spiritual
authority. Beyond the first week of reporting on Turner’s
rebellion, Turner’s prophetic claims and the allegations
that he is mentally deluded are increasingly correlated.
As a case in point, The Constitutional Whig makes this
statement:
Being a fanatic, he possibly persuaded himself that
Heaven would interfere; and that he may have convinced
himself, as he certainly did his deluded followers to
some extent, that the appearance of the sun some weeks
ago, prognosticated something favorable to their
cause. We are inclined to think that the solar
phenomenon exercised considerable influence in
promoting the insurrection; calculated as it was to
impress the imaginations of the ignorant.
89

In this instance, the writer of the article contends that
Turner is bold enough to incite the rebellion because of
the combination of his inherent fanaticism and the
occurrence of a rare celestial phenomenon. The writer

86
The Richmond Compiler 3 Sep. 1831.
87
The Constitutional Whig [Richmond] 3 Sep. 1831.
88
The Richmond Enquirer 27 Sep. 1831.
89
The Constitutional Whig [Richmond] 3 Sep. 1831.
113
considers this to be a unique dynamic that in turn leads to
what the writer considers to be an absurdity: Turner
“convincing himself” that his revolt is a divine mandate.
In depicting Turner as “convincing himself,” the writer
further depicts Turner as a madman, linking Turner’s
inspiration to the elusiveness of self-delusion. Alleging
that the heaven-correlated solar eclipse is the event that
pushes an already fantasy-inclined Turner over the edge,
the writer links Turner’s madness and prophetic claims. In
this, the writer’s intent is to shroud the compelling and
remarkably convincing stories of Turner’s Christian
leadership and prophetic significance with the tenor of
mental derangement. However, as in other reactionary
responses by the white journalists and white authority
figures, this strategy also betrays the vulnerability of
whites to the forcefulness of Turner’s mythic presence.
Whites are successful in linking madness to Turner’s
prophetic status, but in the process they also reinforce
the biblical basis of Turner’s prophetic claims,
inadvertently underscoring his validity. The following
passage from the Norfolk Herald printed shortly after
Turner’s capture illustrates this point. It comments on
Turner’s disposition at the point of capture:
He is said to be very free in his confessions which,
114
however, are of no further important [sic] than
showing that he was instigated by the wildest
superstition and fanaticism, and was not connected
with any organized plan of conspiracy beyond the
circle of the few ignorant wretches whom he had
seduced by his artifices to join him. He still
pretends that he is a prophet, and relates a number of
revelations which he said he had, from which he was
induced to believe that he could succeed in conquering
the county of Southampton (what miserable ignorance!)
as the white people did in the revolution.

He says the idea of an insurrection never crossed his
mind until a few months before he started with it; and
he considered the dark appearance of the sun as a
signal for him to commence! His profanity in comparing
his pretended prophecies with passages in the Holy
Scriptures should not be mentioned, if it did not
afford proof of his insanity. Yet it was by that
means he obtained the complete control of his
followers, which led them to the penetration of the
horrible deeds on the 22d of August.
90

The first line of this excerpt drives home the basic
message that white propagandists want to communicate:
Turner is motivated by “wild superstition and fanaticism,”
far contrary to the notion that Turner leads an intelligent
and well-thought conspiracy that infects slaves throughout
the region. However, the second line reiterates Turner’s
basic claim to fame: Turner is a prophet who through a
series of revelations from God is inspired to lead a slave
rebellion in Southampton County with an impact commensurate
with what “the white people did in the [American]
revolution.” Granted, the writer makes this statement with

90
The Norfolk Herald 4 Nov. 1831.
115
cynicism, but the statement still perpetuates the
circulating stories of Turner’s prophetic legitimacy.
Additionally, Turner is noted for linking his prophecies
with biblical text. The writer tempers this remark by
noting that Turner makes mention of his scriptural
legitimacy with the use of heavy profanity. This may lower
Turner’s stock to some extent amongst Christian doctrinal
purists, but given the enormity of Turner’s status as a
growing prophetic legend, the fact that Turner can tie his
prophecies to the scripture weighs heavier than any of his
alleged indiscretions. The writer regards Turner’s use of
profanity with biblical hermeneutics as strong proof of
Turner’s insanity. However, given the cultural atmosphere
stirred by the Second Great Awakening, one must take the
notion of insanity with a grain of salt.
Within the context of the Second Great Awakening,
Turner’s zeal is not an aberration. Rather, it is
consistent with the socio-religious traditions of America
at large. Turner’s spiritual zeal is in harmony with the
larger culture. As opposed to being a mentally deranged
cultural eccentricity, his spiritual monomania is a sign of
the times. After all, the Second Great Awakening marks a
whole epoch of Christian fanaticism. As Nathan Hatch in
The Democratization of American Christianity attests, some
116
of the qualities that distinguish this evangelical
Protestant explosion are “stark emotionalism, disorder,
extremism, and crudeness.” The broad reach of the charisma
of religious revival during the Awakening makes religious
fanaticism an esteemed value as opposed to a shunned
eccentricity. Granted, conservative authority figures
frown upon the erratic shows of emotionalism by zealous
converts, but the broad appeal of Christian revival to the
nineteenth century American masses makes the strong
expression of spiritual zeal an accepted part of the
culture. Hence, Turner’s prophetic vision, extreme
religious devotion, and revolutionary spiritual agenda are
conducive to the spiritual and social climate that is
already established. The white press derides Turner’s
fanaticism as if Turner’s religious zeal exists in a
vacuum. However, the reality is that Turner’s
revolutionary actions are a sign of the times. Despite the
attempt to delegitimize the links that Turner draws between
biblical scripture and his prophetic utterances, the
pervasive presence of America’s mytho-religious language
and tradition makes available to Turner discursive tools
that white authority figures cannot challenge without
simultaneously affirming.
117
The power of this dynamic comes across distinctly in
The Confessions of Nat Turner. Calling to mind the
contamination of white editorial scrutiny in Turner’s
Confessions, isolating specific statements as illuminations
of Turner’s intentions can be very arbitrary. However,
given the fact that the discourse of Christianity allows
for blacks and whites to draw and produce meaning from the
same mytho-religious vocabulary for opposing purposes, the
references to prophecy and scripture in the Confessions is
available for Turner’s manipulation, despite white
editorial influence. Moreover, given external accounts of
Turner’s ability to read, his extensive time in prayer, and
singular focus on scriptural meditation, some passages in
The Confessions that allude to the Bible are likely to have
connections to Turner’s original thoughts. With the
thorough knowledge of the Bible that his monastic spiritual
devotion would have given him, Turner has a limited degree
of leverage in the cultural power struggle over his
recorded testimony. Through direct and indirect references
to the Bible, Turner taps into a cultural language equipped
with dualities that undergirds his attempts to camouflage
his message and protect his agency in the text. For
example, Turner’s discussion of his encounters with God
appears to align him with the sanctity of iconic biblical
118
figures. This in turn bolsters the credibility of his
claims to be a prophet and of his visions for a socio-
spiritual revolution. In response to Gray's inquiry as to
whether Turner thinks he made a mistake, Turner clarifies
the signs that resolved him to his decision to rebel.
Though Turner mentions none of them by name, his testimony
appears to make implicit reference to the prophets Daniel
and Isaiah and to the apostle John:
Was not Christ crucified [?] And by signs in the
heavens that it would make known to me when I should
commence this great work—and until the first sign
appeared, I should conceal it from the knowledge of
men—And on the appearance of the sign, (the eclipse of
the sun last February) I should arise and prepare
myself, and slay my enemies with their own weapons.
And immediately on the sign appearing in the heavens,
the seal was removed from my lips, and I communicated
the great work laid out for me to do.
91

Carrying some of the archaic tenor and syntax of
seventeenth century Bible English, Turner's explanation
takes on the form of an identifiable set of scriptural
references. To begin with, his mention that he must
"conceal" his revelation "from the knowledge of men" points
to the Old Testament book of Daniel. Specifically, it
resembles the passage that reads "But thou, O Daniel, shut
up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the

91
Turner, Nat. The Confessions of Nat Turner. William L.
Andrews and Henry Louis Gates Jr., eds. New York: The
Library of America, 2000. p. 253.
119
end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be
increased.”
92
The allusion to this passage not only connects
Turner to Daniel, but to Daniel's prophetic visions of the
"time of the end," which lends prophetic credence to
Turner's visions.
Daniel lives during a period when the Israelites live
in Babylon exiled from the Promised Land. He makes
passionate appeals to God so that the Israelites can return
to their homeland. Not only do they return in the year
that he prays to God for deliverance, but he receives what
can be interpreted as apocalyptic visions of a glorious re-
construction of the Israelite capital."
93
Hence, the
implication is that Turner is a contemporary Daniel who,
living in the "time of the end," can now "remove" the seal
"from his lips," and "communicate the great work laid out
for" him "to do." This "increase" in "knowledge" signifies
the imminence of the escape he and his fellow slaves are
destined to make from a white American Babylon to a black
Jerusalem. Moreover, it is important to note that this
reference to Jerusalem is not just metaphoric. Jerusalem
is an actual city in Virginia in Turner's day. It is the

92
Dan. 12.24. Holy Bible: King James Version. Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 1999.
93
Alexander, David., and Pat Alexander eds. Eerdmans
Handbook to the Bible. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983. pp.
430-437.
120
heart of Southampton County, the place from which Turner
intends but fails to rally his fellow rebels. Ironically,
it also becomes the site of the trials and executions of
those participating in the slave rebellion. Nonetheless,
with this kind of scriptural symbolism at his fingertips,
Turner has increased facility in drawing the connection
between a biblical-historical Israel and a contemporary
black Israel, his trek to the Promised Land almost becoming
literal.
These correlations between a literal and figurative
Israel are even more pronounced in reference to the prophet
Isaiah, who alludes to both in his prophetic proclamations.
Isaiah emerges in Turner’s statement, “the seal was removed
from my lips.” This alludes to a vision Isaiah has early
in his book in which he encounters God with a group of
seraphim enthralled in worship. Isaiah responds to the
scene with
Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of
unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of
unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the
Lord of hosts. Then flew one of the seraphims unto
me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken
with tongs from off the alter: And he laid it upon my
mouth and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; thine
iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged. Also I
heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I
121
send, and who will go for Us? Then said I, Here am I;
send me.
94

Turner’s allusion to unsealed lips not only deals with the
cleansing of Isaiah’s lips, but with the enabling of Isaiah
to proclaim God’s prophecies concerning Israel and its
homeland. Moreover, Isaiah’s prophecies grant Turner
interpretive leverage because throughout the book of
Isaiah, the prophet jumps back and forth between messages
directed toward an Israel of the then present-moment and
toward and an Israel of a future millennial rein.
Figuratively, Turner can align himself and those who follow
him with this future Israel. He can exploit the
hopefulness of being amongst a contemporary Israel that
reconciles the injustices of the past and he can also draw
upon the biblical prophecies of apocalyptic occurrences
that precede the millennial rein. Turner’s omens and acts
of violence against white slaveholders resonate with this
apocalyptic tenor.
Turner further validates the notion that he is part of
a contemporary apocalyptic Israel by making allusions to
the apostle John, who writes the book of Revelation.
Turner's references to violence, signs, wonders, and seals

94
Isa. 6.5–8. Holy Bible: King James Version. Grand Rapids:
Zondervan,
1999.

122
not only associate Turner's visions with Daniel's "end
time" prophecies, but it extends the apocalyptic tenor of
the book of Revelation into Turner's visions. As the
quintessential biblical apocalyptic book, Revelation
articulates the Christian scriptures' final and most
decorative prophecies. Turner draws from this to solidify
his contemporary legitimacy. Drawing from John's status as
the closing prophetic voice of the New Testament, Turner
forms the basis of applying biblical history and authority
to his then-present circumstances. The book of Revelation
is the culmination of scriptural time. It conflates past
present and future into a perpetual “now“ that not only
links biblical time with secular history, but grants Turner
the hermeneutical license to pick and choose from the
biblical typology that best endorses his nineteenth century
trek to the Promised Land.
With regards to the Promised Land, the most important
biblical figure to which Turner alludes is the very signet
of Exodus typology, Moses. Like Turner’s allusions to the
other prophets, his references to Moses are not direct, but
nonetheless resonate in Turner’s testimony. Elaborating on
the moment when the Spirit first speaks to him, Turner
draws clear parallels between Moses and himself.
123
As I was praying one day at my plough, the spirit
spoke to me, saying ‘Seek ye the kingdom of Heaven and
all things shall be added unto you.’. . . .The Spirit
that spoke to the prophets in former days--and I was
greatly astonished, and for two years prayed
continually, whenever my duty would permit--and then
again I had the same revelation, which fully confirmed
me in the impression that I was ordained for some
great purpose in the hands of the Almighty. Several
events rolled around, in which many events occurred to
strengthen me in this my belief. At this time I
reverted my mind to the remarks made of me in my
childhood, and the things that had been shown me--and
as it had been said of me in childhood by those by
whom I had been taught to pray, both white and black,
and in whom I had the greatest confidence, that I had
too much sense to be raised, and if I was, I would
never be of any use to any one as a slave. . .
.Knowing the influence I had obtained over the minds
of my fellow servants. . .I often communicated with
them, and they believed and said my wisdom came from
God I now began to prepare them for my purpose, by
telling them something was about to happen that would
terminate in fulfilling the great promise that had
been made to me.
95

The parallels that this passage draws between Turner and
Moses are striking. To begin with, Turner’s encounter with
the “Spirit that spoke to the prophets in the former days”
is analogous to Moses’ encounter with God through a burning
bush. In both instances, God is introducing himself to
these men for the first time. For both Turner and Moses,
the voices they hear are authenticated by the fact the
author of the voice has a history with other esteemed holy
men. Like Moses, Turner is aware of God, but up to a

95
Turner, Nat. The Confessions of Nat Turner. William L.
Andrews and Henry Louis Gates Jr., eds. New York: The
Library of America, 2000. pp. 250 - 251.
124
certain stage in his life, does not know God personally.
Turner understands the voice to be “the Spirit” of “the
prophets of former days.” In Moses’ encounter, God
introduces himself as “the God of Abraham, the God of
Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”
Furthermore, Turner’s extended times of prayer
parallel Moses’ extended times of solitude with God on
mountaintops. Just as Moses receives revelation from God
on the mountain, Turner receives revelation from God during
his times of fasting and prayer. The singular sense of
purpose from which Turner derives his inspiration is also a
quality of Moses. Both men are distinguished as children:
in their early years, they do not think or act in ways that
suggest that they are slaves. For Turner, it is because of
his intellectual and spiritual acumen. Indeed, The
Confessions remarks on the “singularity of [his] manners,”
his “uncommon intelligence for a child,” and his constant
attention to “fasting and prayer.”
96
For Moses, his
singularity is a by-product of the fact that he spends the
first forty years of his life in the luxury and cultural
milieu of the Egyptian palace. Eventually both men win the
confidence of their fellow slaves.

96
Ibid.
125
The most remarkable part of these parallels between
Turner and all of these biblically prophetic figures is
that, even if Gray completely censors Turner and creates
all of these connections on his own, the end result still
reflects the forcefulness of Turner’s acclaim as a preacher
and prophet. Even in a manipulative editorial process,
Gray still must affirm Turner’s mythic power. The shared
mytho-religious vocabulary between blacks and whites,
combined with the charismatic explosiveness of the Second
Great Awakening, makes Turner’s fame as a prophetic leader
impossible to erase. Ironically, Turner’s infamy
underscores the spiritual overtones of his revolt, which in
turn validate his prophetic claims.

126
Chapter 2: Nat Turner As Signifying Monkey

This chapter argues that Nat Turner is central to an
articulation of multi-voiced political agendas advanced by
the black abolitionists Fredrick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs,
and David Walker. This vocal multiplicity emerges out of
displacements in the mythical lexicons of America’s
spiritual and patriotic heritage. Specifically, Nat Turner
reassigns the vocabularies latent in America’s Christian
and Revolutionary past in service of radical political
measures advancing slavery’s abolition. Turner’s
invocation of both Christian language and American
revolutionary symbolism aligns America’s most sacred
cultural narratives with black America’s explosive
contestations of slavery and the institution’s discursive
hegemony. The rendering of American myth and symbol to
contextualize such subversive political ends creates
inversions in meaning that extend Turner’s revolution
beyond its physical immediacy. In fact, to think of
Turner’s rebellion only in terms of an objective to end
slavery by violent force is to limit the scope of Turner’s
political cause. The broader impact of Turner’s revolt is
the codification of a black revolutionary undercurrent in
the language of myth and symbol, hence extending the
127
political utility of the revolt beyond the revolt itself.
As a result, Turner opens up a whole universe of discursive
options, which equips Walker, Jacobs and Douglass to
challenge slavery much more forcefully.
Turner’s un-working of the mythological pillars of
American national identity opens up an expanse of
connotative possibility, a discursive playing field that
enables Walker, Jacobs and Douglass to voice their
challenges to slavery in a multi-optioned matrix of
meaning, roots of which lie in the tradition of the
“signifying monkey.” The signifying monkey, as theorized
and articulated by Henry Louis Gates, is both a mythical
figure as well as a mode of linguistic interpretation and
discursive revision common to blacks since slavery. The
premise of its power is in its critique and therefore
displacement of meaning on a denotative level to open up
discursive possibilities on a connotative level. Its power
emerges from its fundamentalist narrative and rhetorical
form; it encompasses a range of “black rhetorical tropes”
that communicate meaning through indirection or
subterfuge.
97
This technique emerges from a mythical story
in black culture of a cunning monkey. This monkey

97
Gates, Henry Louis. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of
Afro-American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1988. p.129.
128
temporarily evades a lion’s attempts to kill it by
convincing the lion that the lion is the subject of a
series of derogatory statements from an elephant. However,
every time the lion confronts the elephant on this matter,
the lion discovers—in serious thrashings from the elephant-
-that the monkey’s allegations are false. When the lion
returns to punish the monkey for its lies, the monkey tells
the lion new stories about the elephant’s alleged
derogatory remarks. Consequently, the monkey is able to
defer its punishment, for the lion again believes the
monkey, setting off the whole chain of events once again.
This cycle continues until the lion grows wise about the
monkey’s cunningness and is finally successful in thrashing
the monkey to death.
With the monkey metaphorically representing American
blacks, this story serves as an analogy of the black
experience in America. Though the monkey eventually meets
his demise, the bulk of the story consists of the monkey’s
evasion of impending doom through savvy word mastery.
Though the lion is physically stronger than the monkey,
possessing the ability to pummel the monkey at will, the
monkey changes the terms of this inevitability. With shrewd
word choices, the monkey subjects the lion to thrashings
that the monkey could never employ with his own physical
129
power. Though the lion eventually kills the monkey, this
is less of the point than the monkey’s verbal cunningness.
Hence, the monkey’s rhetorical artistry works on two
levels: It distracts the lion from his intention to kill
the monkey and it distracts human listeners of the story
from the story’s end. Though the monkey dies at the end of
the story, the forcefulness of the end pales in comparison
to the power of the story’s beginning and middle. Most of
the story is about how the monkey extends his physical life
through the wise use of speech.
This exploration of the Signifying Monkey’s rhetorical
potency has particular resonance in the study of Nat Turner
because Turner’s story has uncanny parallels to the
Signifying Monkey’s narrative power. Just as the
Signifying Monkey’s rhetorical banter with the lion carries
greater narrative weight than the monkey’s death, the story
of Turner’s rebellion carries greater political weight than
Turner’s death by hanging. Like the monkey’s death in
relationship to the monkey’s story, Turner’s death does not
suppress his political attack on slavery. Whether
communicated through gossip, witness testimony, slave
autobiographies or newspaper articles, the repeated
narration of Turner’s leadership in violent slave rebellion
extends the life of Turner’s revolutionary cause. Turner
130
certainly does not evade death in the telling his story,
but the telling of his story by others enlarges his
historical impact beyond the realm of the political and
into the realm of the mythological. This adjustment still
affects the political world, but in a way that forges
Turner as a lingering emblem of black revolution within
America’s matrix of myth and symbol. In the incessant re-
telling of Turner’s story of rebellion, irrespective of the
political slant in which it is told, Turner becomes a
taboo, a symbol, a myth, a cultural figure, one so deeply
correlated with black revolutionary themes that the very
mention of Turner’s name calls upon an epistemology of
black political subversion.
Turner’s revolutionary actions make Turner an
embodiment of the signifying monkey trope, for in his
revolt, he challenges the preeminence of meaning codified
by the plantation order’s system of signs, signifiers and
symbols. Henry Louis Gates describes this dynamic as a
“critique [of] the nature of (white) meaning itself,” a
“challenge through a literal critique of the sign of the
meaning of meaning.”
98
The essence of this dynamic comes
across in the very use of the term “signifying” to critique

98
Ibid. p.47.

131
signifying. To signify in a denotative sense is “to mean”
or to make the meaning of something known. To signify in
terms of the connotations of black vernacular is to
critique this very system of denotation, to challenge the
one to one correlation between sign and meaning. Gates
notes the distinction between the definitions by using the
terms “Signification” and “signifyin(g)” to indicate the
connotative definition and the terms “signification” and
“signifying” to indicate the denotative definition. The
connotative definition, signifyin(g), exposes the inherent
instability of hegemony’s sign system. It challenges the
predisposition of certain words to particular meanings
within the dynamic of slavery in American culture.
Dislodging sign from signified, the signifyin(g) monkey
expands the pallet of meaning and forges new combinations
of signs with signifiers, words with meanings and terms
with connotations. The result is a cultural lexicon
affording multi-optioned definitions, many of which work in
opposition to the cultural order of slavery and white
supremacy.
The subject of literacy becomes a key code topic
signaling the interrelated and yet oppositional
relationship between the vocabularies of white hegemony and
the vocabularies of black revolution. For Walker, Douglass
132
and Jacobs, literacy is both a matter of practicality and a
matter of political practice. Their engagement with
literacy as a topic contextualizes their allusions and
references to Nat Turner and helps to solidify and express
the revolutionary implications encoded in Turner’s name.
As a subject, literacy is amenable to this because, in
essence, it facilitates a denotative/connotative split
similar to the one engendered by the subject of
signification. Denotatively, signification and literacy
have closely related meanings: signification is the
representation of meaning. Literacy is the ability to
detect and discern this representation. Both terms are
generally concerned with the matter of meaning and the
signs that represent it. The connotative definitions of
signification and literacy are also closely related.
Connotatively, Signification is the revision of
conventional meaning to open up secondary meanings. The
connotative definition of literacy within the context of
the political causes of Walker, Jacobs and Douglass is very
similar and stems from the catalytic function of Christian
institutions with regards to black literacy.
The very dependence of Christianity upon the Bible as
text is one crucial avenue through which many blacks learn
to read and also the means by which they challenge and
133
overturn the physical, philosophical and moral basis of
their bondage. More specifically, the black Christian
tradition and its relationship to black civic and socio-
economic advancement help to establish literacy’s
metaphorical elasticity. Walker, Jacobs and Douglass
leverage this elasticity in close readings of Christian
scripture and hermeneutically-driven critiques of the
hegemony of slavery in the South. By citing Christian
scripture and making allusions to Christian principles in
their causes, Walker, Jacobs and Douglass isolate white
Christian hypocrisy. In turn, this proficient use of
literary analysis calls attention to the fact that they are
great readers. However, their readings of Christian
scripture render their possession of literacy as a powerful
pun, one which garners for them political leverage.
Specifically, their ability to read at all is itself a
political statement given the legal prohibition of teaching
slaves to read and the general controversy among whites
over the prospect of literate blacks. Black engagement of
Christian scripture to call attention to the hypocrisy of
Christian whites compounds the taboo of black literacy.
It puns the concept of literacy to mean not only the
reading of natural signs, but of spiritual ones. The
implication of this is that Christian slaveholders are the
134
true illiterates. Unable to understand and implement
spiritual truths, they misinterpret the handwriting on the
wall, completely missing the prophetic implications of
Turner in a Christian typological context.
The semantic positioning and allusion to Turner in the
writings of Walker, Douglass and Jacobs signal this
politically poignant connotation of literacy. In essence,
Turner represents a two-pronged commentary that positions
literacy and language in a denotative framework and
discourse and cultural symbolism in a connotative
framework. As a citation and allusion, Turner unveils the
interplay and competition between language and discourse as
it relates to slavery and the cultural epistemologies that
undergird it. Unlike most other commentary on Turner by
blacks of Turner’s period, the commentary of this trio of
black abolitionists is relatively unmediated by white
editors. Walker’s writings are not mediated at all. As
such, the writings of Douglass, Jacobs and Walker represent
the most significant political commentary on Turner by
blacks of Turner’s era. Douglass and Jacobs comment on
Turner directly. Walker’s commentary implies Turner. In
either case, their writings situate them in the seismic
activity of a political earthquake that places Turner, his
rebellion and his iconography at its epicenter. Marking
135
both aftershocks and pre-quake build-ups relative to
Turner’s infamy, the writings of Douglass, Jacobs and
Walker catalogue the mythical epistemology of Turner’s name
and the subtle political dualities that this epistemology
allows the three abolitionists to exploit. As a result,
Turner’s name becomes a metonymic substitute for black
revolution. Because of the strong revolutionary
connotations latent in Turner’s name, the references,
implications, and allusions to it in the writings of
Douglass, Jacobs and Walker serve as a kind of political
shorthand whereby they link the significance of their own
abolitionist causes with the revolutionary potency of
Turner’s.
Walker, Jacobs and Douglass are each unique in his or
her relationship with Turner as icon and trope, but
examining Turner across a combined analysis of the three
writers delineates the discursive patterns that make Turner
a mythic and political force. Walker’s allusion to Turner
is both implicit and anachronistic, but nonetheless
poignant. The power of Walker’s relationship with Turner
comes across in the uncanny serendipity of his published
Appeal and Turner’s rebellion. Douglass’s strategic use of
Turner to signify on the politics of American slavery
surfaces within the context of a very public split between
136
Douglass and his white political benefactor, William Lloyd
Garrison. Douglass publishes a different version of his
autobiography before and after the split, the difference
between the two marking the significance of Turner as a
trope. Jacobs’s use of Turner comes across in a single
version of her autobiography, reflecting her construction
of a heroic womanhood. By inserting Turner into her
narrative, she underscores discourses of courage, valor,
and honor, which are generally relegated to the world of
men. In citing Turner and in combination of a strategic
characterization of other black men and women, she re-
configures the scope of classic heroism in service of her
own political cause.

137
David Walker

David Walker, the first to publish of the trio and
whose writings precede Turner’s rebellion, is a free black
journalist and clothing storeowner who creates and
circulates a pamphlet titled Walker’s Appeal, In Four
Articles, Together With a Preamble, To the Colored Citizens
of the World, But in Particular and Very Expressly to Those
of the United States of America. Written in the vein of
the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution and
Christian scripture, the document is a passionately written
address charging enslaved blacks to resist the authority of
their masters and soliciting the support of free blacks in
the fight to help those enslaved. Though formally written
to blacks, Walker’s Appeal also addresses whites directly,
warning that consequences of apocalyptic proportions await
those who stubbornly resist the political changes he
advocates. Writing in an era already plagued by
occurrences and reports of slave insurrections on both the
national and global scale, questions about the political
and moral basis of slave emancipation are already at the
forefront. These questions unavoidably draw upon America’s
rich revolutionary history and Christian tradition, the
ideological basis of America’s freedom from the slavery of
British colonialism. Walker speaks to these issues
138
directly in his Appeal, making black ties to the spiritual
and revolutionary tradition of America clear in the
structure of the document. Fashioning the Appeal with a
structural design comparable to both the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution, Walker insinuates
legitimacy to Nat Turner’s rebellion long before Turner
emerges as a political rebel. Putting black violent
revolution in terms of three of America’s most sacred
documents formalizes Turner’s political legitimacy, a
matter that looms large over Turner’s rebellion, even in
the midst of Turner’s controversy and taboo.
The parallels between the opening lines of the Appeal
and the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence
are striking. They show that Walker’s linking of the
documents is not only conceptual, but also strategic at the
level of word choice, syntax and paragraph order. In the
opening lines of the Appeal, Walker signifies on both the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. In so
doing, he offers a case study of signifyin(g) itself. To
use Gates’s words: “We see here the most subtle and perhaps
the most profound trace of an extended engagement between
two separate and distinct yet profoundly—even inextricably—
related orders of meaning dependent precisely as much for
139
their confrontation on relations of identity.”
99
In
signifyin(g) on the Declaration of Independence and
Constitution Walker draws upon the revered premises of
these documents. At the same time, he applies these
principles in an irreverent manner, irreverent with
reference to the ideological normative of white American
students of the Enlightenment. The rhetorical and
syntactical techniques that Walker employs to accomplish
this speaks to a deeper discursive revision enacted by the
serendipity of Walker’s Appeal and Turner’s rebellion.
Proving whether or not the Appeal influences the rebellion
directly is less important than calling attention to the
way their combined effects pose a convincing challenge to
the discourses upholding American slavery. A side-by-side
comparison of the opening lines of the Appeal and the
Declaration of Independence shows how Walker signifies on
America’s most sacred political documents. This in turn
helps to position Turner as a kind of signifying monkey
with reference to the lion of American slavery. Walker’s
Appeal begins as follows:
My dearly beloved Brethren and Fellow Citizens: Having
traveled over a considerable portion of these United
States, and having, in the course of my travels taken
the most accurate observations of things as they
exist—the result of my observations has warranted the

99
Ibid. p. 45.
140
full and unshakened conviction, that we, (colored
people of these United States) are the most degraded,
wreteched, and abject set of beings that ever lived
since the world began, and I pray God, that none like
us ever may live again until time shall be no more.
They tell us of the Israelites in Egypt, the Helots in
Sparta, and of the Roman Slaves, which last, were made
up from almost every nation under heaven, whose
sufferings under those ancient and heathen nations
were, in comparison with ours, under this enlightened
and christian nation, no more than a cypher—or in
other words, those heathen nations of antiquity, had
but little more among them than the name and form of
slavery, while wretchedness and endless miseries were
reserves, apparently in a phial, to be poured out upon
our fathers, ourselves and our children by christian
americans.

These positions, I shall endeavor, by the help of the
Lord, to demonstrate in the course of this appeal, to
the satisfaction of the most incredulous mind—and my
God Almighty who is the father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, open your hearts to understand and believe the
truth.

The causes, my brethren which produce our wretchedness
and miseries, are so very numerous and aggravating,
that I believe the pen only of a Josephus or a
Plutarch, can well enumerate and explain them. Upon
subjects, then, of such incomprehensible magnitude, so
impenetrable, and so notorious, I shall be obliged to
omit a large class of, and content myself with giving
you an exposition of a few of those, which do indeed
rage to such an alarming pitch, that they cannot by be
perpetual source of terror and dismay to every
reflecting mind.”
100

The Declaration of Independence begins as follows:

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united
States of America, When in the Course of human events,

100
Walker, David. Walker’s Appeal, In Four Articles
Together with a Preamble to the Colored Citizens of the
World, But in Particular, and very Expressly to Those of
the United States of America in Walker’s Appeal and
Garnet’s Address. Nashville: Winston, 1994. pp. 12 – 13.
141
it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the
political bands which have connected them with
another, and to assume among the powers of the earth,
the separate and equal station to which the Laws of
Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent
respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they
should declare the causes which impel them to the
separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal, that they are endowed
by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that
among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments
are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any
Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends,
it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish
it, and to institute new Government, laying its
foundation on such principles and organizing its
powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely
to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence,
indeed, will dictate that Governments long established
should not be changed for light and transient causes;
and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that
mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are
sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the
forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long
train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably
the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under
absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their
duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new
Guards for their future security.—Such has been the
patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now
the necessity which constrains them to alter their
former Systems of Government. The history of the
present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated
injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object
the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these
States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a
candid world.

Immediately, one notices that, in a single syntactical
stroke, Walker’s document takes on the structural vestiges
of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
The reference to the Constitution comes across in the
142
subtitle: “Preamble,” a pattern that is followed up by
subsequent subtitles of the remaining four sections of the
Appeal later in the document. Subdividing the rest of the
Appeal in terms of “articles” (“Article I,” “Article II,”
etc.), Walker embellishes the Appeal with even more of a
Constitution-like ornamentation. One other reference to the
Constitution rests in the middle of the opening line: “we,
(colored people of these United States).” Walker cleverly
plays upon the Constitution’s clichéd “we the people of the
United States.” The sense of “we” underscored in this
phrase is a signature moment of signifyin(g). Walker
invokes the parallel of American blacks to American
colonists constitutionally even while he illustrates the
alienation of blacks from the Constitution’s promises.
Putting “colored people of the United States” in
parenthesis underscores the parenthetical nature of black
existence in the American civic community. This dynamic
feeds upon the rhetorical synergy of the first grouping of
words following “preamble.” “My dearly beloved Brethren
and Fellow Citizens” follows “preamble” and is comparable
to the opening line of The Declaration of Independence,
which reads “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen
united States of America.” Putting “My dearly beloved
Brethren” in a comparable place as “The unanimous
143
Declaration” makes a direct comparison of the two
statements. In essence, Walker compares the cause of the
thirteen colonies with the political cause of black
Americans. Again, the signifyin(g) principle is at work
here. Walker compares black America to the thirteen
colonies, but in a context highlighting major differences
between the two collective entities.
The same dynamic occurs in the second sentence of his
preamble, which is strikingly similar to the second
sentence of the Declaration of Independence. Signifying
upon the proverbial “when in the course of human events,”
he uses the phrase, “in the course of my travels.” Both of
these phrases are part of long, periodic sentences that
frame their messages in epic terms. Both Walker and
Jefferson make the claim that their advocacy of freedom and
independence is based upon a comprehensive and totalizing
analysis of the human condition, one that can only lead to
a declaration of independence composed in the direct and
forceful terms in which Walker and Jefferson communicate.
Walker is deliberate in invoking this parallel and even
more deliberate in invoking the dissonance between his and
Jefferson’s Declarations. Not only does Walker’s
parenthetical commentary on the iconic “we” underscore the
radically different application of this term to the black
144
community in comparison to the white community, but also
the very composition of a “black” declaration of
independence speaks to the marginalization of blacks from
the political spoils of the American Revolutionary War.
Walker’s rhetorical strategy illustrates that the
constitutional “we” is a contested “we.” Signifyin(g) upon
the Declaration’s and Constitution’s proposed concept of
shared identity, Walker outlines the discursive space from
which Turner exploits America’s ideologically constructed
sense of sameness. As Eric Sundquist remarks with regards
to the Haitian Revolution, the same is true of Turner’s
rebellion: it “offer[s]. . .a distilled symbolic
representation of the doubleness of the democratic ideal
born in the” American Revolution.
101
This doubleness
implies both the similarities of the revolutionary causes
of white American colonists and black slaves and the double
standards that white Americans apply to the two groups.
Shortly after Walker draws attention to America’s double
standard, he arrives at the most pivotal part in his
introductory comments. The next several lines have strong
implications for Turner with respect to Turner as a
prophetic entity, spiritual authority and historical

101
Sundquist, Eric. To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making
of American Literature. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1993. p. 31.
145
figure. Specifically, they create a context for viewing
Turner as a prophetic expression of God’s intervention on
behalf of America’s slaves. Walker’s next several
statements place American slavery in a historical context
that distinguishes America’s abuses from all other slave
societies in both biblical and secular history. Framing
America’s sins in an epic context, Walker lays out the
premise for an epic punishment for America—one that
Turner’s rebellion easily comes to represent only two years
after Walker publishes the Appeal.
At the crux of Walker’s defense of this political and
spiritual position is an acerbic critique of Thomas
Jefferson, one that is implied in Walker’s comparisons to
the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, but one
that is much more direct when, later in the Appeal, Walker
challenges the condescending remarks that Jefferson makes
about blacks in Notes on The State of Virginia. Walker’s
criticism of Jefferson is even more cutting because the
Appeal is published barely more than three years after
Jefferson’s death, a date that not only falls on the fourth
of July and the nation’s 50
th
birthday, but a date that also
marks the death of the nation’s second president, John
Adams. The significance of this is far beyond a personal
rant on Walker’s part against Jefferson, but on the
146
symbolism and iconography that Jefferson represents. In
taking on Jefferson and Jefferson’s symbolic associations
in such an overtly diplomatic and jurisprudent fashion,
Walker is deliberately opening up the conversation about
black liberty far beyond the minutia of the political
lobbying of the day. Rather, he wants to elevate the
status of his rhetoric to enlist the Appeal in a much
grander context and cause. To be so deeply engaged with
Jefferson on both a political and symbolic level, Walker
situates the Appeal as an epic and symbolic document in its
own right.
Essentially, Walker’s Signification of the nation’s
symbolism situates both Walker and the Appeal within
America’s iconographic fabric, elevating a long-held
undertone of slave discontent from its place among informal
communication networks amongst slaves to a formal treatise,
one that takes its place among the ranks of the nation’s
most sacred documents. Certainly, Walker’s Appeal is not
the first anti-slavery document written by a slave. Slaves
had been challenging the morality of their enslavement in
written form since just before the middle of the eighteenth
century. However, Walker’s Appeal is distinct in its
advocacy for the slave’s resistance to slavery because of
the symbolic and monumental terms in which it is written
147
and because of the historical context against which it
receives meaning. To follow Jefferson and Adam’s deaths by
roughly three years and to precede Turner’s rebellion by
two, the Appeal carries a level of historical, political
and cultural cache that is unprecedented by any preceding
slave-authored document. When Turner’s rebellion occurs,
The Appeal, which is still being disseminated through an
informal circulation network at the time Turner’s rebellion
commences, takes on heightened significance. Essentially,
Nat Turner materializes the implications of Walker’s
Appeal, turning the Appeal into a kind of prophecy. Given
the complex relationship between patriotism, revolution,
and biblical typology in American history and symbolism,
the combination of the Appeal’s language and message with
Turner’s rebellion gives the Appeal a kind of sanctity and
prophetic credence. Elevated to such a sacred, symbolic
and monumental place, Walker’s political argument comes
across much more credibly and forcefully. Hence, a close
reading of the Appeal must take into account the enlarged
significance that Walker’s words receive by virtue of the
historical moment in which they are published and read.
In light of this enlarged significance, the subtle
messaging that comes across in Walker’s comparisons of
Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence and the
148
Constitution in the beginning of the Appeal draw out
implications that are not so subtle. To begin with,
Walker’s characterization of the divine signals a key
distinction between Walker and Jefferson with reference to
their views on God, God’s role in human affairs and the
implications of both for black slaves. These nuanced
distinctions in theology become monumental rallying points
from which Walker makes his case for blacks to resist
slavery and by which Turner’s reputation as a legitimate
prophetic entity is strengthened. Simple word choices make
this clear. For example, Walker’s statement “my God
Almighty who is the father of our Lord Jesus Christ” is an
endearing statement with reference to a God who
participates in human-like relational experiences (i.e.
fatherhood) and with whom Walker can speak of in possessive
terms (“my,” “our”). Moreover, the reference to “Christ”
here and in any instance is an allusion to an incarnate
God, one who fuses the material with the immaterial, the
secular with the sacred and the human with the divine.
This is very different from how Jefferson characterizes God
in the Declaration of Independence. In the Declaration,
Jefferson refers to God as “Creator.” To refer to God
merely as “Creator” is to conceptualize God only in terms
of God’s utility as the producer of matter. It is an
149
implicit acknowledgement of God’s sovereignty insofar as
God originates all life, but it makes no specific claims to
God’s role in human affairs beyond God’s creation of the
universe.
This subtle distinction between Walker and Jefferson’s
characterizations of God in this passage is the beginning
of Walker’s emphasis on the broad differences between an
interventionist theology and a deist theology. The
difference between the two theologies not only establishes
the premise of Walker’s moral indictment of America, but
also situates Turner as an important iconic manifestation
of Walker’s interventionist doctrine. Walker’s focus on
Jefferson and his association with the nation’s founding
documents draw out this distinction handily. Not only does
this come across in Jefferson’s words, but also in the fact
that Jefferson, like many of the Founding Fathers is a
deist. As deists, the Founding Fathers believe that God
creates the world, but then leaves the world to run itself
after creating it. Consequently, they do not believe that
God intervenes in human affairs directly. In essence, they
believe that “the laws of Nature and Nature’s God” operate
within two mutually exclusive realms of existence. This is
a claim that they have to make because of the fact that
they are at once students of the Enlightenment and
150
participants in the legacy of the Christian tradition in
America. On the face of it, an Enlightenment concept of
the world is in diametric opposition to Christianity. It
is rooted in the idea that “beliefs are to be accepted only
on the basis of reason [and] not on the authority of
priests, sacred texts, or tradition.”
102
It distinguishes
itself from what it considers to be the “darkness of
irrationality and superstition,”
103
a category in which the
metaphysical notions of Christianity would be included.
However, Jefferson and other students of the Enlightenment
can make claims to the existence of God through deism,
which separates the realms of faith and reason in mutually
exclusive and non-overlapping dimensions. Deism allows one
to relegate God to a pre-temporal existence to which one
only has indirect access by processing morality through the
faculty of reason.
This magnification of reason in turn underscores an
emphasis on gradualism. That is, since God does not impose
upon or respond to human affairs, there is no consequence
of immorality or reward for morality enacted directly from
God. There is neither metaphysical punishment for sin nor
metaphysical benefit for virtuous living. Rather, the

102
Honderich, Ted, ed. The Oxford Guide To Philosophy.
Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. p. 252.
103
Ibid. p. 253.
151
rewards and consequences of morality are functions of the
principles of nature discerned through rational thought,
and, of necessity, enacted with a pragmatism that belies
immediacy. This allows the Founding Fathers to uphold the
immorality of slavery in the abstract, but the
impracticality of abolishing slavery on the ground,
pointing to the fact that the rational and practical
approach to slavery is gradual and measured.
104
This
produces a contrariety between the immediacy of
revolutionary change and the measured dynamic that the
Founding Fathers introduce to a functional national
government.

104
This dichotomy between theory and practice is one of the
central conundrums of the Constitutional Convention, which
in a vigorous debate over whether the Constitution should
abolish or sustain slavery, settles on a compromise of
gradualism. The Founding Fathers view slavery not as a
disease calling for emergency treatment, but as an
unfortunate, yet manageable, wound that heals on its own in
the natural process of time. In The Suppression of the
African Slave Trade to the United States of America, W.E.B.
Du Bois comments: “Few of the delegates thought it
expedient to touch a delicate subject, which if left alone,
bade fare to settle itself in a manner satisfactory to all”
(53). For the Constitution writers, slavery is an
important moral issue, but not easily resolvable because of
the practical and economic questions revolving around the
South. Southern states build their economies and cultures
on slave labor, which makes an attack on slavery an attack
on the South, and by extension, an attack on the Union.
Southern states threaten to leave the Union if other states
do not guarantee their right to slave labor. Hence, the
compromise to extend the legalization of the slave trade
until 1808.
152
It also becomes the central irony that Walker exploits
in his critique of Jefferson and his deistic underpinnings.
Walker is keen to the fact that the revolutionary tradition
from which Jefferson draws his iconic distinction and moral
grounding is two-pronged: One aspect of it draws upon an
organic, grass roots, and politically subversive
contestation of the British empire based upon a principled
stand against dictatorship, colonialism and metaphorical
enslavement by the British government. The other aspect of
the American Revolution is elitist. The icons of the
Revolution are not members of the common classes, but men
of social distinction and wealth. They are members of
professions that are highly esteemed, such as law, science
and art. The most notable mark of their elitism is in the
need for the Bill of Rights—a reluctant concession by
members of this elite class to the non-landowning, non-
slaveholding, non-voting demographic of the then American
population. Walker and Turner clearly draw upon the first
dimension of this Revolutionary tradition, which is the
part of the tradition holding up its moral authority. In
re-living this tradition in the Appeal and the rebellion,
Walker and Turner not only revive it, but also critique the
1776 revolution as an incomplete and ultimately inauthentic
one.
153
This critique of America’s tradition of revolution
also extends to Walker’s and Turner’s white contemporaries.
With regards to Walker, his Appeal is partly a rallying cry
to blacks to actively resist slavery, but the Appeal also
serves as an indictment of white post-revolutionary
leaders, the political sons of Jefferson and his Founding
Father cohort. Though drawing striking parallels between
the Appeal and the nation’s founding documents, Walker’s
ultimate purpose is to change the discourse of God and
nation to illustrate that the Appeal is a purer form of
what the Founding Fathers attempt to do, but fail. He
wants to illustrate that the liberation cause of American
blacks is a truer, more valiant and morally centered
revolutionary cause than the one adopted by the Founding
Fathers and embraced by their post-revolutionary sons.
Just as the deaths of Jefferson and Adams signal the need
for second-generation political inheritors of the
revolutionary period to continue the legacy of revolution,
Walker introduces a blatant revision of the concept of
American Revolution and freedom. Using the tone and format
of the nation’s founding documents, Walker upstages the
symbolic baton passing of the Founding Fathers to their
political successors. He introduces the glaring
contradictions within the revolutionary generation’s appeal
154
for liberty and uses this very critique to showcase a much
more organic and truly revolutionary constitution and
declaration of independence in the form of his Appeal.
Combined with Turner’s material showcase of this more
organic revolutionary principle, the Appeal expresses the
slippages in the Founding Fathers’ discourse. The
combination of Walker’s Appeal with Turner’s rebellion
synergistically accentuate the distinctions between freedom
defined by the Enlightenment-minded Founding Fathers and
freedom defined by a biblically symbolic black liberation
movement. Hence, for Walker’s purposes, Jefferson serves
as a metonymic representation of this whole revolutionary
tradition, which encompasses the Founding Fathers’ beliefs
about God, nation and one’s responsibilities to both.
Walker’s critique of deism is at the center of the
symbolic dynamic that Walker underscores. Though Walker
does not mention deism specifically in his introductory
words, Walker’s critique of deism here is implied both in
the juxtaposition between Walker and Jefferson’s
characterization of the divine and through a very specific
critique of deism that Walker makes later in the Appeal.
Within the second article of the Appeal, Walker compares
deists to infidels:
155
I have known pretended preachers of the gospel of my
Master, who not only held us as their natural
inheritance, but treated us with as much rigor as any
Infidel or Deist in the world—just as though they were
intent only on taking our blood and groans to glorify
the Lord Jesus Christ.
105

In this passage, Walker comments specifically about white
Christian hypocrites—preachers in particular—who own
slaves. Walker compares their actions with infidels who he
in turn compares with deists. To equate deists with
infidels is to associate deists with one of the most
reproachable categories of anti-Christian thought and
behavior recognizable at the time. Walker’s equivocation
of deists with infidels takes what would normally be viewed
as a simple distinction in denomination or hermeneutical
practice and translates it into a radical difference in
ideology, moral centeredness, and national symbolic
interpretation.
Walker accomplishes such discursive revisions of
America’s most pristine national conceptualizations with
the use of the signifyin(g) monkey trope. Walker’s use of
the signifyin(g) monkey displaces the meaning of God and
nation within American nationalist symbolism to underscore

105
Walker, David. Walker’s Appeal, In Four Articles
Together With A Preamble, To The Colored Citizens of The
World, But In Particular, And Very Expressly To Those Of
The United States of America in Walker’s Appeal and
Garnet’s Address To the Slaves of The United States of
America. Nashville: Winston, 1994. p. 50.
156
a counter-mythology charged with vocabularies of black
liberation. Refreshing the meaning of freedom in American
culture, Walker draws upon connotations of liberty latent
in the black experience in America, but suppressed by the
slave system’s need to frame black liberty within a
discursive parenthetical. On the surface, the parallels
between Jefferson’s attack on George III’s “despotism” and
“tyranny” and Walker’s attack on white enslavement of
blacks cannot be disavowed. If Jefferson makes the case
that George III is guilty of the oppression of American
colonists in a figurative slavery, how much more is the
American government guilty of the oppression of blacks
under a literal slavery? However, with an Enlightenment
deistic ideological framework, the categorical distinction
between white freedom and black freedom is a logical
necessity. If the key idea of the Enlightenment is its
“contrast with the darkness of irrationality,” then blacks
(upon whom the racial punning of darkness serves as a
convenient metaphor for white deists), in their presumed
ignorance and susceptibility to enslavement are key
signifiers of this darkness. In essence, their presumed
predisposition to savagery, superstition and ignorance make
them unfit for freedom. Because nature presumably
relegates them to such a physically and intellectually
157
darkened condition, the attempt to enlighten them is
considered to be generally unfruitful and, at best, gradual
and under the paternalistic and slavery-enforced
guardianship of whites.
Walker turns this argument upside down with the
signifyin(g) monkey trope because he calls upon meanings
latent in American culture, but disassociated from the
black liberation movement by white students of the
Enlightenment. Gates calls this the reconstitution of an
“absent presence,” characteristic of all formal languages
and systems of discourse.
106
In distinguishing signification
from Signification, Gates discusses the possibility of the
invention of new cultural lexicons when the signifyin(g)
monkey trope activates the otherwise camouflaged and
subdued connotations of words and signs:
Whereas signification depends for order and coherence
on the exclusion of unconscious associations which any
given word yields at any given time, Signification
luxuriates in the inclusion of free play of these
associative rhetorical and semantic relations. . .
.[an investment in] all the associations that a
signifier carries from other contexts, which must be
deleted, ignored or censored. . . .Everything that
must be excluded for meaning to remain coherent and
linear comes to bear in the process of Signifyin(g).
107

106
Gates, Henry Louis Jr., The Signifying Monkey: A Theory
of Afro-American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1988. p.48.
107
Ibid. pp.49-50.
158
For Walker, these deleted meanings are tied to the American
Christian revivalist movement and to the theo-cultural
framework emerging out of American Puritan history, both of
which purport to an interventionist theology, which in turn
contextualizes the prospect and validity of Nat Turner.
Nineteenth Century Christian revivalism has strong
ties to an interventionist theology and the advent of a Nat
Turner by its investment in eschatology, apocalyptic signs,
and Old Testament themes of wrath, judgment, and
restitution. The movement is popularly known as the Second
Great Awakening, a multi-ethnic and multi-racial religious
phenomenon, distinguished from a comparable movement in the
late Eighteenth Century that is much more racially
homogenous, consisting almost exclusively of white
participants. The popular acceptance of the tenants of the
Second Great Awakening give Walker’s basic argument
validity, particularly in light of the revivalist idea of
God’s sovereignty. For revivalists, God’s sovereignty is
not abstract and generic, as it is for deists, but active,
intervening, and comprehensive. For revivalists, the
lordship and kingship of Christ is literal. Both Walker
and the revivalists movement underscore Christ’ role as not
only redeemer, but as the spiritually governing entity
under whose rule America and the rest of the world falls by
159
divine order. Walker appeals to a higher basis for the
equality of humankind than Jefferson. For Walker, the
self-evidence of humanity’s equality and by, extension, the
injustice of human oppression and slavery, does not
ultimately rest in the human condition, but rather in the
sovereignty of God and humankind’s submission to this
sovereignty. Later in the Appeal, Walker makes this clear
by implying that the sovereignty of God is self-evident and
very clear to
All persons who are acquainted with history,
particularly with the Bible, who are not blinded by
the God of this world, and are not actuated solely by
avarice—who are able to lay aside prejudice long
enough to view candidly and impartially, things as
they were, are and probably will be, who are willing
to admit that God made man to serve him alone, and
that man should have no other Lord or Lords but
himself—that God Almighty is the sole proprietor or
master of the WHOLE human family, and will not on any
consideration admit of a colleague, being unwilling to
divide his glory with another.
108

The first thing to note from this excerpt is that Walker
draws from “history” and the “Bible” as points of
reference. As far as he is concerned, history (presumably
secular) and biblical narrative (implicitly sacred) are
equally reliable and equally spheres of divine influence.
Unlike deists, Walker freely associates biblical history
with secular history. In fact, to return again to his

108
Ibid. p. 15.
160
introductory lines, he deduces America’s susceptibility to
God’s wrath by comparing America to a famed enslaver nation
of secular history (Sparta) and a famed enslaver nation
that for his purposes is a feature of sacred history
(Egypt). In this comparison, Walker accuses America of
being hypocritical, given its self- proclaimed label as an
“enlightened and christian nation.” For Walker the
association of enlightenment with Christianity and secular
history with sacred history is not contradictory, but
consistent with the totality of God’s rule. Reason is not
an enemy to faith, but is rather empowered by faith. For
Walker, reason is a function of the self-evidence of God’s
order and God’s truth, which mandates humanity’s submission
to God and not humanity’s enslavement to itself. In fact,
for Walker, slavery is a form of blasphemy, for it renders
to humanity the power over other human beings that should
only be exercised by God.
For Walker, slavery speaks to humanity’s arrogance.
Walker underscores this point further in a statement he
makes later in the Appeal when he hypothesizes the
blasphemous intentions of slaveholding whites: “Now suppose
God were to give them more sense, what would they do. If
it were possible, would they not dethrone Jehovah and seat
161
themselves upon his throne?”
109
This accusation against
slaveholders is particularly cutting because it implicitly
compares slaveholders to Lucifer, the archangel who makes
an attempt to dethrone God, but in his failure to do so
becomes God’s famed archrival, the devil. Just as Walker’s
comparison of deists to infidels is designed to raise the
stakes of America’s collective sin, this comparison of
slaveholders to Lucifer is similarly structured for the
same purpose. These comparisons represent more attacks on
Jefferson and his symbolic representation of a
deistic/enlightenment approach to American revolution.
Rooting his central criticism of the Founding Fathers in
the idea that they partition the rule of God from the rule
humanity, Walker spares no slander in calling attention to
Jefferson’s and other deists’ dismissals of the authority
of God as it relates to slavery.
Walker’s emphatic condemnation of his white
counterparts is less a representation of a personal grudge
against them and more a reflection of his rhetorical
strategy. Essentially, Walker wants to restage the debate
over the terms of black freedom, shifting it from the court
of human reason to the court of divine judgment. Walker’s

109
Ibid. p. 28.

162
condemning comments about Jefferson, about the Founding
Fathers and about other slaveholders fitting in their mold
are based upon sins against God, not against human dignity.
To return again to the comparison of the introductory
comments of the Appeal and the introductory comments of the
Declaration of Independence, the distinction between the
two excerpts falls along this very divide. Jefferson calls
attention to the “right of the people” when referring to
the basis of “abolishing destructive forms of government.”
Walker, on the other hand, draws upon biblical language,
biblical law and the principle of God’s sovereignty as the
points of reference for justice. He also accuses Christian
whites of hypocrisy based upon these same points of
reference. This change in the point of reference for
justice puts Walker on the moral high ground and calls upon
America to account for its indiscretions on the terms of
biblical law.
This rhetorical move by Walker carries weight because
it resonates with the prevailing spiritual mood of the
period: Though most of the Founding Fathers are deists, the
Second Great Awakening enlists a critical mass of the
American populace into a belief in an interventionist God.
The Second Great Awakening accentuates the immediacy of
God’s large-scale responses to human evil and virtue,
163
elevating biblical eschatology, typology and morality as
the tools by which to determine the measure of either
virtue or evil in the human world. Walker taps into the
premises of this religious movement to trump the gradualist
and pragmatist philosophy of the Declaration signers. One
of the central premises of the Second Great Awakening is
the sovereignty of God and the preeminence of the rule of
God over the rule of humanity. Walker speaks to this issue
more specifically later in the Appeal. In a statement
about the presumptuousness of slaveholding whites in their
lack of consideration of their subjection to God’s rule, he
makes this statement: “Have they not to make their
appearance before the tribunal of heaven, to answer for the
deeds done in the body, as well as we?”
110
The use of the
word “tribunal” is important here because it is a
jurisprudent term casting God’s rule in terms of a court of
law. Framing God’s rule in this context makes explicit the
basis of Walker’s authority and the clear shift of
authority from the legal and logistical minutia of the
Founding Documents to the authority of biblical law.

110
Walker, David. Walker’s Appeal, In Four Articles
Together with a Preamble to the Colored Citizens of the
World, But in Particular, and very Expressly to Those of
the United States of America in Walker’s Appeal and
Garnet’s Address. Nashville: Winston, 1994. p. 27.
164
In another place in the Appeal, Walker elaborates on
the implications of a world subject to the rule of God. For
Walker, God’s rule is not partitioned from human affairs as
it is for the deists. Rather, the rule of God implies God’s
intervention, one that for Walker, is distinctly invoked on
behalf of those who are experiencing oppression. By
invoking this dimension of God’s intervention, Walker also
lays the groundwork for the reception of Nat Turner a few
years later. Walker explains:
they forget that God rules in the armies of heaven and
among the inhabitants of the earth, having his ears
continually open to their cries, tears and groans of
his oppressed people; and being a just and holy Being
will at one day appear fully in behalf of the
oppressed.
111

In this excerpt, Walker calls attention to the force
backing up God’s rule. By making mention of the “armies of
heaven,” Walker underscores the idea that God’s power is
not idle, but charged to respond to real human dilemmas.
This ties directly into a set-up for Nat Turner because
Walker describes God’s responsiveness to human need in
terms of a very classic Old Testament characterization of
God popularly remembered in reference to the biblical

111
Ibid. p. 13.
165
figure of Moses, a figure typologically associated with Nat
Turner after the occurrence of Turner’s rebellion.
112

Walker is clearly not aware of Nat Turner at the time
that he makes this allusion to Moses, but Walker is
familiar with biblical typology enough to know that while
the Bible enlists God as the ultimate avenger of the
oppressed, it also isolates human agents as the tangible
expression of God’s intervention. Walker draws upon this
idea to render God’s divine intervention much more
immediate and much more practical. Walker is convinced that
blacks need to take personal responsibility for their
freedom from bondage. Hence, he introduces the idea that
one dimension of God’s salvation from slavery will be
enacted through human hands. However, in this explanation,
he lays the groundwork for the reception of Nat Turner.
Specifically, Walker gives a prophecy of a messianic
avenger through whom God will use to deliver the black
slaves of America. Calling upon both the biblical and

112
The biblical book of Exodus records this account in
depiction of a conversation that God has with Moses about
leading the Israelites out of Egypt: “Now therefore,
behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come unto me:
and I have also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians
oppress them. Come now therefore, and I will send thee
unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people the
children of Israel out of Egypt.” (Exo. 3,9-10 Holy Bible:
King James Version. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999.)

166
secular past, he lays the groundwork for the reception of a
Nat Turner two years later:
Beloved bretheren--here let me tell you, and believe
it, that the Lord our God, as true as he sits on his
throne in heaven, and as true as our Savior died to
redeem the world, will give you a Hannibal, and when
the Lord shall have raised him up, and given him to
you for your possession, O my suffering bretheren!
remember the divisions and consequent sufferings of
Carthage and of Hayti. Read the history particularly
of Hayti, and see how they were butchered by the
whites, and do you take warning. The person whom God
shall give you, give him your support and let him go
his length, and behold in him the salvation of your
God. God will indeed, deliver you though him from
yo[u]r deplorable and wretched condition under the
christians of America. I charge you this day before
my God to lay no obstacle in his way, but let him go
113
.
(His Emphasis)

The import of this passage has a number of implications,
not the least of which stems from the fact that Walker’s
statement is a prophecy. From a biblical standpoint, this
links the God of the Bible to the contemporary black
plight. This is because prophecies express the active
voice of God. As a compliment to written scripture, which
expresses God’s will as general principle, prophecies
articulate God’s will as the express intent of the moment.
They refresh scripture by translating God’s general will

113
Walker, David. Walker’s Appeal, In Four Articles
Together with a Preamble to the Colored Citizens of the
World, But in Particular, and very Expressly to Those of
the United States of America in Walker’s Appeal and
Garnet’s Address. Nashville: Winston, 1994. p. 30.

167
for all into particular messages for specific people at
specific times. They re-invoke the presence of God within
a biblical “now,” collapsing scriptural history into a
secular present. In this context, Walker makes God
personal to the moment, making the endearment of God to
blacks as part of the same circle of intimacy in which God
is endeared to the Israelites. To be sure, Walker does not
merely say that God delivers, but he tells the black people
of America that “God will indeed, deliver you. . .from
yo[u]r deplorable and wretched condition under the
christians of America.” He translates the promise of
deliverance into a personal guarantee from God, one that
speaks directly to the circumstances blacks face at the
moment. The prophecy is even more relatable in its
reference to a specific human agent through whom God will
use to accomplish this. However, the agent is not specific
in terms of the way Walker identifies him, for Walker
provides only general details about the deliverer, ones
that do not separate the deliver much from a mythical hero.
Rather, the specificity comes from the ways that Walker
asks blacks to respond to the forthcoming black Messiah.
The phrases “give him your support,” “let him go his
length,” and “lay no obstacle in his way” are commands that
invoke specific responses from the deliverees. They ensure
168
that the reception of Walker’s prophecy is not a passive
one and are the basis for which blacks can act out the
prophetic import of scripture in real time. Granted, the
fulfillment of the prophecy depends upon the emergence of a
deliverer comparable to Carthage’s black hero Hannibal and
Haiti’s rebel leader Toussaint L'Ouverture. Nonetheless,
the description of the deliverer is general enough that
someone like Nat Turner easily fits the description. All
the prophecy needs is a charismatic black male leader and,
with so many black men accepting the call to ministry over
the course of the Second Great Awakening, this is not a
hard sell. Hence, Walker’s prophecy about the appearance
of a deliverer is destined for fulfillment, even without a
Nat Turner. At the same time, Turner’s rebellion raises the
stakes of Walker’s prophecy and the Appeal as a whole
because Turner believes that he is a prophet.
The construction of Turner as a black Christian
deliverer carries even more weight in light of the
structure of Walker's prophecy. This is because Walker's
prophecy is structurally similar to a prophecy in the Old
Testament book of Deuteronomy. The Deuteronomy prophecy is
one that God gives directly to Moses, but that also
implications for the rest of the Israelites. The
Deuteronomy prophecy tells of another prophet that God will
169
raise up who is like Moses and whom God requires the
Israelites to obey:

I will raise them up a Prophet from among their
brethren, like unto thee, and will put My words in his
mouth; and he will speak unto them all that I shall
command him. And it shall come to pass that whosoever
will not hearken unto My words which he shall speak in
My name, I will require it of him.
114

The similitude between this prophecy and Walker’s is
striking. Both prophecies announce the imminence of a
deliverer who has typological similarities to a preceding
deliver. In Moses’ prophecy, he is the typological
referent. In Walker’s prophecy, Hannibal and (implicitly)
Toussaint L'Ouverture are the typological referents. Also,
both prophecies emphatically insist that the deliverees
adhere to and support the future deliverer. Moses’
prophecy insists on this by issuing a warning to those who
do not. Walker’s prophecy emphasizes it by repeating
phrases that command people to give unconditional support
to the deliverer. Given the thorough knowledge of history
and scripture that Walker demonstrates throughout the
Appeal and given the strategic ways he uses biblical
typology to advance his cause in other sections of the
Appeal, the structural similarities between Moses’ prophecy

114
Deu. 18.18-19. Holy Bible: King James Version. Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 1999.

170
and his own are not a coincidence. Walker wants to suggest
that the import of his prophecy carries no less weight than
Moses’ prophecy. Moses' prophecy is particularly weighty
because, from a New Testament perspective, Moses' prophecy
is an oracle forecasting the earthly ministry of Jesus
Christ. Hence, Walker makes the allegorical claim that as
Jesus is to Moses, some forthcoming black deliverer is to
Hannibal and Toussaint L'Ouverture.
In a political environment pregnant with anxiety,
speculation, allegation, and occurrence of and about slave
revolt, the timing of Walker’s Appeal with respect to
Turner’s revolt circumscribes Turner’s rebellion with
prophetic overtones, elements that help to establish Turner
iconically into the realm of the mythic. With the biblical
and American revolutionary typology that Walker weaves into
the Appeal, he helps Turner’s rebellion come across as a
fulfillment of prophecy. The prophetic overtones are
significant both in terms of giving credibility to Turner
as a revolt leader and in terms of giving credibility to
Walker as a prophetic voice. Prophetic in this instance
refers to biblical notions of prophets and prophecy, but
also to a more general concept of prophecy. This more
general concept encompasses the broader principle of words
that shape, alter, and forecast events and phenomena in the
171
material world. This more general concept of prophecy is
significant in light of an important subtext within
Walker’s Appeal: black literacy. In advocating for black
slaves to resist their bondage physically and politically,
he dedicates several paragraphs to the practical and
political importance of black literacy. Composing the
Appeal so that it structurally and syntactically resembles
the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the
Bible, Walker situates his own words amongst America’s most
reverenced texts, documents popularly celebrated as on-
going interventions into American life. With the
occurrence of Turner’s rebellion, Walker’s Appeal proves
the worthiness of its association with America’s founding
documents, making the Appeal an example of the
revolutionary potential of literate blacks. Given the
widespread knowledge of Turner’s ability to read, the role
it plays in Turner’s decision and ability to rebel, and the
speculation that the Appeal plays some direct or
inadvertent role in Turner’s political agenda, Walker links
Turner politically and mythically to literacy’s forceful
role in black empowerment. Of course, in light of the way
that Walker (in his manifesto) and Turner (in his
rebellion) reassign the language of Christianity and
revolution to serve black political ends, the discussion
172
about black literacy is not just about the mechanics of
reading and writing. Black literacy is also about a
dramatic intervention into discourse itself. It consists of
a subversive interruption in the whole system of
sign/signifier, referrer/referent, and symbol/idea that
regulates the production of meaning in American slave
culture. Black literacy is not merely about a utilitarian
function, but about the signifying monkey, the rhetorical
principle in black culture that reassigns and introduces
meaning otherwise unavailable in terms of a language’s
formal sign codes. Appropriating histories, typologies,
and cultural narratives from Christian and American
traditions to situate black freedom fighters among the
ranks of American patriots and prophetic leaders, Walker’s
Appeal becomes a case-in-point with regards to the
expansive discursive applications of black literacy. The
Appeal, in combination with Turner’s rebellion and the
rebellion’s prophetic connection to the Appeal, is
instrumental in translating Turner discursively and
mythically from recalcitrant slave to noble revolutionary
hero. The language that in other contexts criminalizes
Turner is, in Walker’s use of it, a political asset to
Turner.

173
Fredrick Douglass

Turner becomes a political asset to Fredrick Douglass
as Douglass redefines himself in the wake of an important
turning point in his political career. Douglass’s
strategic use of Turner to signify on the politics of
American slavery surfaces in the aftermath of a very public
split between Douglass and his white political benefactor,
William Lloyd Garrison. As a very influential
abolitionist, Garrison helps Douglass establish a following
in the abolitionist movement shortly after Douglass’s
escape from slavery. Inviting Douglass into his political
circle, establishing Douglass on the abolitionist speaking
circuit and writing the preface to the first version of
Douglass’s autobiography, Garrison is a key political and
financial support for Douglass in the early stages of
Douglass’s political career. The bone of contention that
eventually develops between the two hinges on a matter of
language and discourse, an overtone that looms heavyly over
Douglass’s use of Turner in My Bondage and My Freedom,
Douglass’s second autobiography. Quite literally, Garrison
and Douglass split over an issue of semantics that rests
within the US Constitution. Garrison believes that, as a
document written by slaveholders, as a document that does
not contest slavery directly, and as a document that in its
174
original version implies the inhumanity of blacks, the
Constitution is a pro-slavery document. As such, he argues
that the abolition of slavery cannot happen under the
auspices of the Union, making the Union’s dissolution the
only viable hope for the dissolution of slavery in North
America. Douglass eventually argues the opposite. Citing
that the Constitution makes no direct endorsement of
slavery, he makes the case that one must separate the
“administration” of the Constitution from the Constitution
itself:
115

Neither in the preamble nor in the body of the
Constitution is there a single mention of the term
slave or slave holder, slave master, or slave state,
neither is there any reference to color, or physical
peculiarities of any part of the people of the United
States. Neither is there anything in the Constitution
standing alone, which would imply the existence of
slavery in this country.
116

The semantic precision with which Douglass defends the
Constitution speaks to the level of conviction that
Douglass has of the Constitution’s validity. It also speaks
to a much more ardent cause than Douglass’s spat with

115
Douglass, Fredrick. “The Dred Scott Decision.” American
Abolition Society. New York. 11 May 1857. Two Speeches by
Fredrick Douglass; one on West India Emancipation Delivered
at Canandaigua, Aug. 4
th
, and the Other on the Dred Scott
Decision, Delivered in New York on the Occasion of
Anniversary of the American Abolition Society, Amy 1857.
Rochester: Dewey.
116
Ibid.

175
Garrison. For Douglass, the integrity of the Constitution
is not just about the Constitution, but also about the
constitution of all documents. This is because, as Gates
notes, “black people . . .bec[o]me speaking subjects. . .by
inscribing their voices in the written word.”
117
This does
not only refer to the words that they write themselves, but
words by others that they read or re-read. The
pervasiveness of the Constitution and the Bible as legal-
cultural authorities and the rendering of the slave “pass”
and “free paper” to facilitate physical and legal freedom
for blacks make written documents junctures of political
possibility. Viewing their world of social alienation as
one circumscribed by literacy and literalism, blacks
consider document integrity paramount. The verity of the
written word is critical to the way that blacks in slavery
validate, confirm and advocate for their freedom from
slavery and their civic participation in the larger human
community.
As nineteenth century history vividly illustrates, the
Constitution, the Bible, the “pass” and the “free paper”
are all documents that must be taken literally for black
slaves to advance their abolitionist causes. In the case

117
Gates, Henry Louis. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of
Afro-American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford UP,
1988, p. 130.
176
of the Constitution and the Bible in particular, blacks are
able to do this because of the language of spiritual, legal
and civic liberty native to these texts. Ironically, in
laying hold of the literalism of these written texts,
blacks contest the literalism of the cultural texts that
sanction their bondage. In their focus on the integrity of
the written text, blacks draw attention to slippages in the
written text that inscribe narratives of racial oppression
upon the culture. In essence, the defense of the written
word allows blacks to contest the faulty premises encoded
in the cultural practices of paternalism, Christian
charity, economic necessity, southern cultural purity,
white superiority, historical linearity, racial
essentialism and other ideologies endorsing African
slavery. In this instance, matters of literalism quickly
transition into matters of interpretation and discursive
revision.
To the extent that Turner’s name evolves into a sign
of this transition, that references to Turner distinguish
Douglass’s second autobiography from his first, and that
Douglass’s split with Garrison sits between the publication
of Douglass’s first two autobiographies, Nat Turner plays a
critical role in how Douglass represents his political
evolution and in how Douglass interprets his political
177
identity. The significance of Turner in representing
Douglass’s political trajectory comes across emphatically
in the distinctions between Douglass’s first autobiography,
Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, and his second
autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom. While the two
versions of Douglass’s life and escape from slavery are
very similar in terms of the basic plot points of
Douglass’s story, they differ in terms of points of
emphasis and elaboration. There are several to mark, but
in terms of Turner’s significance, two are most important.
The more distinguished of the two rests in an appendix
added to Narrative that is not in Bondage. The appendix is
distinctive because it appears to be oddly misplaced in
terms of its content and emphasis relative to the rest of
Douglass’s story. In fact, it leaves the narrative
structure of Douglass’s story altogether, as would an aside
from an actor in a live stage play. Its very existence as
an appendix calls even more attention to its non-narrative,
plain-speaking tone. Its startling contrast to the rest of
Douglass’s first autobiography is enough to justify quoting
the first portion of it at length:
I find, since reading over the foregoing Narrative,
that I have, in several instances, spoken in such a
tone and manner, respecting religion, as may possibly
lead those unacquainted with my religious views to
suppose me an opponent of all religion. To remove the
178
liability of such misapprehension, I deem it proper to
append the following brief explanation. What I have
said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly
to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land,
and with no possible reference to Christianity proper;
for, between the Christianity of this land, and the
Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest
possible difference—so wide, that to receive the one
as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the
other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend
of one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other.
I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity
of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding,
women-whipping, cradle–plundering, partial and
hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can
see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling
the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it
as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all
frauds, and the grossest of all libels.
118

Douglass continues in this vein for several paragraphs, at
points citing Bible passages to mark white Christians’
hypocritical position with reference to scriptural law.
Going to such great lengths to defend the purity of
Christianity, Douglass exercises the same meticulous
textual defense of the Bible as he does of the
Constitution. Distinguishing the “administration” of the
Bible from the textual intent of the Bible, Douglass
salvages the political leverage available to him in the
Bible’s language of spiritual liberty and social
responsibility. That Douglass presents his clarifications

118
Douglass, Fredrick. Narrative of the Life of Fredrick
Douglass. Slave Narratives. Eds. William L. Andrews and
Henry Louis Gates Jr.. New York: Library of America, 2000.
p. 363.
179
about Christianity as a corrective to the rest of his
narrative suggests that he is barred from doing this in the
main body. This suggests that, under the auspicies of
Garrison, the original editorial process of the narrative
filters out more explicit distinctions between the
“Christianity of Christ” and the Christianity of the white
South. Douglass’s emphasis on this distinction belies a
much more important reason for the appendix: a substitute
for allusions to Nat Turner. Douglass’s second
autobiography contains no appendix, but in a discussion of
a sequence of events present in the first autobiography
without allusions Turner, Douglass presents this same
sequence of events with allusions to Turner. The
references to Turner in the second autobiography are
accompanied with detailed descriptions of Douglass’s
personal Christian practices and spiritual epiphanies, all
of which are absent in the first autobiography. In
Douglass’s second autobiography, Turner comes to represent
Christianity’s purity and its role as a corrective to the
white South’s racist religious order. Hence, for Douglass
to disavow Christianity is to disavow the validity of
Turner’s prophetic authority and the Christian revivalist
context lending credence to Turner’s political and
spiritual vision. To disavow the Christian traditions
180
legitimizing Turner is to disavow the mythical and
political leverage gained from appropriating Turner’s
revolutionary cause.
The appendix of the first autobiography stands proxy
for a Turner Douglass is unable to discuss until his second
autobiography, after Douglass’s political separation from
Garrison. Douglass clearly cannot discuss Turner in his
first autobiography, for Garrison, though on the far left
wing of the abolitionist cause, is not willing to promote
Turner as a political hero. In the days following Turner’s
revolt, Garrison is sympathetic to Turner, but explains
Turner’s actions as the consequence of white moral
failings, not as a mandate from God. Garrison explains the
rationale behind black violence, but stops short of
advocating for it. For him, black violence generated by
white evil is one thing, but black violence sanction by
scriptural authority is another. Garrison is much more
comfortable when abolitionism is situated within the
context of white agency rather than in terms of black self-
determination.
The reclamation of Christianity by blacks as an
impetus for revolutionary change on the scale of Turner’s
rebellion is much too radical for the white liberal
politics of Douglass’s and Turner’s day. This is why the
181
references to Turner in Douglass’s second autobiography are
so significant. Over the course of a five chapters in
Douglass’s second autobiography, allusions to Turner become
points of reference from which to embellish parallels
between the spiritual and political journey of Douglass
with the spiritual and political journey of Turner. The
sequence of events chronicled in these five chapters is
also chronicled in Douglass’s first autobiography, but
obviously without references to Turner. A comparison
between the two autobiographies shows how Turner opens up
the second autobiography for expanded critiques on the
discursive system producing meaning for the American slave
South. These critiques exist in the first autobiography,
but are far more pronounced in the second. Many of these
critiques are situated within extended commentary upon
events that are also described in the first autobiography.
Douglass discloses in the second autobiography political
nuances of events that he must suppress in the first.
Douglass’s references to Turner stretch Douglass’s
critiques beyond their basic attack on slavery. The
historical fact of Turner’s rebellion, the very way in
which it revises value within Christian discourse, and, by
extension, contests the proposed inevitability and
182
perpetuity of enslaved Africans makes the name “Nat Turner”
a metonym for black revolution.
A comparison between a five-chapter sequence in
Bondage and its four-chapter counterpart in Narrative draws
out the ways in which Nat Turner comes to represent black
revolution in Douglass’s autobiography. This sequence in
Douglass’s narration of his life accounts for a period of
time extending over seven years. It describes Douglass’s
experience from when he first begins to live in Baltimore
with his master’s son-in-law’s brother to just before the
time he is sent to be “broken in” by the famed “negro
breaker” Edward Covey. During this period of time,
Douglass learns how to read and forges his sense of
political identity and spiritual consciousness. Narrative
and Bondage are similar to each other for the first several
paragraphs of this sequence. They both explain the way
that Douglass’s new mistress in Baltimore slowly changes
from a benevolent encourager of Douglass’s literacy
aspirations into a cruel opponent of his education, seizing
any materials she catches him reading. Gradually convinced
by her husband that literate blacks are a danger to the
South, she abruptly ends the reading lessons that she
begins giving Douglass when he first arrives in Baltimore.
Douglass explains for several lines how he learns how to
183
read without the knowledge of his master or mistress. As
he explains this, he elaborates on the political usefulness
of literacy to blacks and confirms his master’s fear that
literacy awakens a subversive political consciousness in
them. This moment in which Douglass lists his thoughts on
the political usefulness of slavery is the turn in this
sequence in which Bondage begins to distinguish itself from
Narrative. A few key passages in this sequence within
Bondage begin to mark the differences between it and
Narrative, setting up the way that Douglass refers to
Turner later in Bondage. Three key passages are crucial
parts of this set up. Being either new commentary not
present in Narrative or expanded commentary from material
in Narrative, these passages begin to set up how Douglass
relates the plight between Turner and himself. The first of
these passages is a very direct comment from Douglass that
negates the idea that Christianity justifies slavery. The
manner in which Douglass makes this point draws parallels
between the political philosophy of Douglass and that of
Turner:
I have met many religious colored people, at the
south, who are under the delusion that God requires
them to submit to slavery, and to wear their chains
with meekness and humility, I could entertain no such
nonsense as this; and I almost lost my patience when I
found any colored man weak enough to believe such
stuff. Nevertheless, [my] increase of knowledge was
184
attended with bitter, as well as sweet results. The
more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest
slavery, and my enslavers.
119

One reason that this comment is so important is that it is
so direct about the nature of Christianity and its
relationship to slavery. Douglass comments on white
Christian hypocrisy in Narrative, but relegates his most
direct and poignant comments about Christianity to
Narrative’s appendix. As the above passage illustrates,
Douglass changes this pattern in Bondage. He lays bare
what might otherwise pose a conflict of interest: the
duality of Christianity’s role as a spiritual and political
tool of advancement for Turner and other blacks as well as
its role as a discursive reinforcement for white hegemony.
Douglass does not mention Turner or Christianity by name in
this passage, but the implication of both is apparent. Any
reference to “religious colored people” in nineteenth
century America would almost certainly be referring to
black Christians. Moreover, Douglass’s expositions on
Christianity in other parts of his autobiography suggest
that his reference to religion here is an allusion to
Christianity. Douglass’s reference to Turner is implied
for a couple of reasons, one of which is that Douglass

119
Douglass, Fredrick. My Bondage and My Freedom. New York:
Penguin, 2003. p. 118.
185
mentions Turner by name a few paragraphs later. The second
reason that this passage relates to Turner has to do with
what is intrinsic to the passage itself. Douglass’s
critique of the faulty thinking of “religious colored
people” is the beginning of Douglass’s identification with
Turner within Bondage. This is because of the subtle, yet
poignant treatment of Christianity within this passage.
Given the fact that Douglass later speaks of his own
Christian conversion at length, his criticism of his fellow
black Christians is clearly not because he believes that
they subscribe to a faulty religion. Rather, Douglass
suggests that these “religious colored people” are “weak
enough to believe such stuff” because of a lack of both
natural and spiritual literacy. Douglass asserts that the
strength of his own ideological position against slavery is
a direct result of his reading habits. In essence, the more
he reads the more he is “led to abhor and detest slavery,
and [his] enslavers.” This not only speaks to his ability
to read in terms of the utilitarian function of literacy,
but to read in terms of the discursive function of
interpretation. In this case, his critique of the thinking
of “religious colored people” implies a true and false
reading of the Bible, one rendering God as an advocate for
the oppressor and another rendering God as an advocate for
186
the oppressed. Hence, Douglass is not just reading, but
re-reading, an act that takes the Bible--a key textual
foundation of slavery apologetics--and re-presents it as a
rhetorical affront to the South’s institutionalized racial
order. Turner clearly interprets the Bible in the same
way, drawing from it to profess the moral superiority and
divine sanction of his violent revolutionary ideas.
The next passage providing rhetorical preparation for
Douglass’s open allusions to Turner deals directly with
this matter of biblical reinterpretation. In the middle of
an elaborate description of his Baltimore mistress’s cruel
attempts to end his aspirations to literacy, Douglass makes
reference to an Old Testament passage that makes a clever
play on biblical typology in order to adjust the black
relationship to this typology. Noticeably absent from
Narrative, it recounts the story of the prophet Balaam from
the Book of Numbers. Because the Moabites, Balaam’s
enemies, know that he has the ability to pronounce curses
and blessings with simple utterances, the Moabites call
upon Balaam to curse his own people, the Israelites.
Balaam is given explicit instructions from God not to heed
the request of his enemies. Resolved at first to obey God,
Balaam is seduced by financial rewards from the Moabites
and eventually agrees to their demands. Balaam sets out on
187
a donkey to follow the Moabites to the place from which he
will pronounce the curse. However, God sends an angel to
block Balaam in the middle of the road. Initially, the
angel is only visible to the donkey. Upon the angel’s
appearance, the donkey prohibits any further forward
progression, crushing Balaam’s foot against a wall.
Outraged at the donkey’s stubbornness, Balaam beats the
donkey in anger. This abuse continues until God gives the
donkey the ability to speak. The donkey protests her
punishment and dialogues with Balaam about why she is
undeserving of Balaam’s physical assault. Balaam engages
with the donkey in conversation as if the oddity of a
talking donkey were no cause for alarm. Within a few lines
of this dialogue, God grants Balaam the ability to see the
angel, which provokes Balaam’s repentance.
The details of this Old Testament story are important
with regards to where and how Douglass alludes to it in his
narrative. Being placed a few pages before a direct
allusion to Turner, its symbolism speaks to the importance
of Turner both spiritually and politically. Moreover,
Douglass also situates the allusion to the biblical story
in the middle of his explanation about the obstacles his
mistress forges against his acquisition of literacy. As an
allusion absent from Narrative, but present in Bondage,
188
this reference to the Balaam-donkey story is a strategic
rhetorical move on Douglass’s part. The wording of this
biblical allusion in Douglass’s story makes this clear.
Douglass weaves the allusion into a comment about the
virtual impossibility of conveying the true nature of his
dilemma to his mistress:
She did not know my trouble, and I dared not tell her.
Could I have freely made her acquainted with the real
state of my mind, and given her the reasons therefor,
it might have been well for both of us. Her abuse of
me fell upon me like the blows of the false prophet
upon his ass; she did not know that an angel stood in
the way; and—such is the relation of master and slave—
I could not tell her.
120

To begin with, Douglass’s use of the biblical passage as a
way of critiquing American slavery is itself a rhetorical
nod to Turner. This re-interpretation of the biblical text
to challenge the legitimacy of white hegemony is exactly
the kind of discursive revision of Christian theology
shrouding Turner’s revolt and lending to Turner a kind of
prophetic authority, which, by extension lends to his
revolt a kind of divine sanction. Secondly, Douglass
reduces this conflict with his mistress to a matter of
communication, a matter that plays directly into the
Signifying Monkey trope. Essentially, Douglass deals with
this story on two levels of meaning. The first level of

120
Ibid. p. 119.

189
meaning addresses the Bible as a reverenced text, one
generally accepted as spiritually definitive by a critical
mass of whites and blacks in the US. Providing no general
context for his biblical allusion, Douglass alludes to the
Balaam-donkey story in a way that only people familiar with
the Old Testament would appreciate. Knowing his audience
well enough to be assured that the Balaam-donkey reference
would be comprehended without much explanation, Douglass
cleverly taps into this shared cultural understanding.
Having settled at this denotative level of understanding,
he puts forward a locus of secondary meanings meant to be
read at the connotative level. In particular, Douglass’s
allusion to the Balaam-donkey story is his way of re-
formulating the relationship between slave, slaveholder and
God. He invokes interpretive nuances of the biblical
passage that revise his subject-position in relationship to
southern slavery.
While the biblical passage enlists Balaam as a true,
though temporarily misguided, prophet, Douglass demotes
Balaam formally to “false prophet.” This is significant
because this rhetorical move underscores the role-reversal
between Balaam and the donkey. In essence, the true
prophet is the ass, who, according to Douglass, is
metaphorically the slave. The specific abuse of Douglass’s
190
mistress towards him is analogous to Balaam’s abuse toward
his donkey and a case study in the relationship of all
slaves with their masters. The first part of Douglass’s
reference to the Balaam-donkey story emphasizes the
exploitive nature of the master-slave relationship. In the
phrase “her abuse of me fell upon me like the blows of the
false prophet upon his ass,” Douglass calls to mind the
physical dimension of this exploitive relationship in
particular. The second portion of Douglass’s allusion to
the Balaam-donkey invokes the interpretive loophole that
revises the presumed inevitability of the binary between
master and slave. In writing “she did not know that an
angel stood in her way,” Douglass draws attention to the
tertiary figure in the Balaam-donkey story that disrupts
the binary. Similar to the role of the elephant in the
signifying monkey story, the angel serves as a symbol of
the realm of alternate meanings that critique the
denotative meaning of the Balaam-donkey story. The angel
is the critical element in the story translating the donkey
from beast of burden to prophet. The donkey becomes a
prophet when it calls attention to the angel.
The translation of the donkey into prophet is a subtle
reference to Turner, whose status as prophet becomes
apparent in a similar way. Turner’s calling as a prophetic
191
leader is activated at the appearance of supernatural
signs. He is converted from the proverbial beast of burden
into a spiritual authority. As Douglass explains with
regards to the donkey and implies with regards to Turner,
the nature of this conversion is that it is not a
conversion at all—merely an exposure of the fact that the
relegation of the exploiter and exploited to a binary
opposition was never completely settled in the first place.
The donkey is aware of the angel’s presence before it
expresses this fact in words. Likewise, Turner is
spiritually aware long before he executes his revolt. The
point that Douglass makes is that the slave’s rebellion—
whether on the scale of Turner’s or in a more subtle form—
is not a function of some sudden act of madness, but rather
a function of a basic state of enlightenment, one that
renders acts of resistance to oppression as an expression
of common sense. Hence, the determination not to resist, as
Douglass explains is the case with “many religious colored
people” in the South, represents the abnormal, a darkened
state of understanding inscribed by the pervasiveness of
the discourses validating slavery.
The final part of Douglass’s reference to the Balaam-
donkey story represents the crux of Douglass’s interpretive
revision. To write “and—such is the relation of master and
192
slave—I could not tell her,” Douglass underscores the
communication issue that makes the signifying monkey so
significant and Turner so infamous. The silence between
Douglass and his mistress, between Balaam and the donkey
and between Turner and his master is one filled by an open
charade. Douglass, Turner and the donkey each play the part
of one more ignorant than any of them actually are. To
convey their true plights, they have to tap into secondary
meanings and communication systems that circumvent the ones
subscribed by their oppressors. The existence of these
secondary modes of communication is the threat that
Douglass poses when he writes “she did not know that an
angel stood in her way. . .and I could not tell her.” In
essence, Douglass writes of an impending threat to the
southern social order—one metaphorically annunciated in
scripture and preempted by Turner. This impending threat
is one necessarily masked. The southern slave order
requires a euphemistic camouflage of its evil in order to
blend it into its cultish paternalistic ideology of honor
and civility. Douglass’s biblical allusion brings this
home. Moreover, Sundquist provides further clarity on how
this relates to Turner. Commenting on how charges of
Turner’s madness and fanaticism mask the calculated, though
organic development of Turner’s revolt, Sundquist calls
193
attention to the vulnerability of the discourses that
Douglass’s Balaam-donkey allusion contests:
The charge of fanaticism against Turner. . . .masked
the fear that. . .“a Nat Turner might be in every
family,” a view frequently attested to in the
aftermath of the revolt by slaveholding families who
said they could never again trust their slaves. . .
.Turner’s subversion of that trust demonstrated that
the familial, domestic rhetoric of slaveholding, its
appeal to paternalism, was coded with a gothic
structure that concealed. . .the ideological
underpinnings of black slave revolution and its
potential for bloodshed. . . .What is more, the myth
of slave docility was created by mutual effort—by
masquerade on the part of slaves combined with a
pathological need to justify their regime by
slaveholders or, for that matter, by antislavery
advocates unwilling to grant slaves the capacity or
the right to resist.
121

Sundquist delineates the contours of the cultural charade
in which Turner participates, but in which ultimately all
slaves participate at one level or another. Both Douglass
and Turner leverage the “myth of slave docility” in order
to position themselves ultimately to dismantle it. Though
subscription to this myth is partly out of necessity, the
myth often serving as a basic survival strategy, the myth
still constitutes a useful screen that undetected slave
rebels can play up or down depending on the requirements of
their subversive strategies. At the same time, white
slaveholders are not necessarily ignorant of the theatrical

121
Sundquist, Eric. To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making
of American Literature. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1993. pp. 54-55.
194
relationship that they have with slaves. The allegations
of fanaticism by whites toward Turner or any slave bold
enough to lead a violent revolt is, as Sundquist
underscores, a theatrical move on the part of whites. At
times conscious and at other times subconscious, whites are
aware of the uncanny fragility of the hegemonic discourses
to which they subscribe. Their potency and virtual
pervasiveness notwithstanding, these discourses expose
their limitations at moments of profound self-
consciousness. These moments are sharpened when the
oppressed subject decides to call attention to the very
charade of the charade. As illustrated by Turner when his
revolt exposes the extent of repressed slave anger, as
illustrated by Douglass in exposing the obvious though
unspoken injustice of his hindered education, as
illustrated by the donkey in defying the natural order to
speak plainly, oppressed subjects, at very calculated and
strategic moments, pull off their masks and attack the
discourses of their oppression precisely when these
discourses are most vulnerable. Orlando Patterns writes
further to this point:
All slaves, like oppressed peoples everywhere, wore
masks in their relations with those who parasitized
them. . . .Occasionally a slave, feeling he had
nothing to lose, would remove the mask and make it
195
clear to the slaveholder that he understood perfectly
the parasitic nature of their interaction.
122

This mask-pulling creates moments of self-consciousness for
both the slave and the master. To recall the exchange
between Balaam and the donkey, this concept of self-
consciousness is profoundly clear as the donkey converses
with Balaam in human language. Neither Balaam nor the
donkey calls attention to the paranormality of the donkey’s
speech.
123
They converse with each other as if both of them
had always been aware of the donkey’s human-like
consciousness and ability, rendering the donkey’s demotion
to beast of burden as a kind of charade and its human
language protest as a way of calling foul. Of course the
slight difference for both Douglass and Turner is that the

122
Patterson, Orlando. Slavery and Social Death: A
Comparative Study. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1982. p. 338.
123
The Balaam-donkey exchange and its relationship to this
concept of self-consciousness also reminds me of the Ralph
Wolf and Sam Sheepdog Warner brother cartoon in which Ralph
(a.k.a Wile E. Coyote when paired with the Road Runner) and
Sam, the sheep protector, are in violent struggle with each
other over the sheep. Neither of them speak to each other
while engaged in this hostility, but, just as when the
Coyote and Road Runner are paired, Ralph and Sam engage in
slapstick-like, over-the-top violent engagement, conveying
the narrative of the story through silent action and Warner
Brother sound effects. However, at the end of the day,
Ralph and Sam punch cards and expose the fact that their
violent antics are simply their day jobs. Upon clocking
out, they are engaged in jovial co-worker camaraderie.

196
mutuality of the participation in the charade is not based
on mutual agreement of the charade in principle, but in the
mutual need to exploit the charade and deviate from it when
it serves as an advantage to either the oppressed or the
oppressor.
With regards to Douglass and his mistress, Douglass
does not unmask the charade for her in real time, but he
does use his white reading audience as a proxy for his
mistress and unmasks the charade for them. With Douglass’s
target audience being white Northerners, there are many
ways in which they would identify with Douglass’s mistress.
Like many white Northerners, Douglass’s mistress presumes
that she has no racial prejudice. However, this is only
because she initially has very little personal contact with
blacks and is initially not in situations that challenge
the institutional practices that privilege her whiteness.
Hence, she initially assists Douglass in his pursuit of
literacy, giving him a sense of personal satisfaction.
Unfortunately, she gradually retracts from this position
when presented with her husband’s argument that educated
negroes make dangerous negroes. Hence, like many white
Northerners whose opinion of blacks is eventually tested by
some challenge to their own white privilege, Douglass’s
mistress becomes just as cruel, if not crueler, than those
197
southern whites who always wear their prejudice openly.
With an implicit substitution of the Northern white reader
with Douglass’s mistress, Douglass cleverly unmasks himself
in front of his oppressors. While he cannot tell his
mistress about this reality, he lets his white reading
audience in on his secret, making them the Balaams of his
autobiography.
Douglass continues to extend this unmasking with
another level of exposure of the charade. Within a couple
of sentences of his Balaam-donkey allusion, Douglass
clarifies the fact that he is not merely contesting the
oppressive behavior of whites, but its institutionalization
of systemic practices clothed in the discourses of
paternalism and Christian charity:
My feelings were not the result of any marked cruelty
in the treatment I received; they sprung from the
consideration of my being a slave at all. It was
slavery—not its mere incidents—that I hated. I had
been cheated. I saw through the attempt to keep me in
ignorance; I saw that slaveholders would have gladly
made me believe that they were merely acting under the
authority of God, in making a slave of me, and in
making slaves of others; and I treated them as robbers
and deceivers. The feeding and clothing me well,
could not atone for taking my liberty from me.
124

This is the third passage in this series of rhetorical
characteristics distinguishing Bondage from Narrative. It

124
Douglass, Fredrick. My Bondage and My Freedom. New York:
Penguin, 2003. p. 119.
198
pinpoints a basic controversy that for Douglass is
ideological and that for Turner generates the greater part
of the controversy of Turner’s rebellion. It rests on the
question of why Turner or any other salve would ever pursue
freedom. On the surface, this question is absurd. Why
would anyone question a slave’s desire to be free?
However, given the discourse of paternalism in the South,
particularly among the southern elite, a slave’s resistance
to slavery is considered by many slaveholders to be absurd.
The paternalistic ideal of the slaveholder compels him to
view the enslavement of the slave as an expression of
parental care, Christian charity, and human civility.
Hence, to the slaveholder, the only cause for a slave’s
rebellion would be the abusive practices of the slave’s
master. Given that most slaveholders, their abusive
practices notwithstanding, consider themselves to be both
benevolent and kind-hearted, the accusation of slave abuse
is often levied at some hypothetical slaveholder. In other
cases, the accusation is levied at an actual slaveholder
whose slaves participate in some overt and highly
pronounced act of rebellion. However, even more common
than accusations against the slaveholder are accusations
against the slave. Slaveholders often rationalize slave
rebellion, particularly of the violent sort, by
199
characterizing the slave rebellion as an act of madness, an
act of ingratitude, a result of too much education--a slave
knowing too much for his or her good--or a result of
insufficient education--a slave not christianized enough to
know better. Douglass challenges all of these premises by
distinguishing acts of relative goodness in the slavery
universe from the oppressive universe itself. Feeding and
clothing a slave is an act of benevolence only when
rationalized in the abstract, but in the world of slavery,
provisions made for the welfare of the slave are simply an
extension of the slave master’s domination. As historian
Peter Kolchin remarks:
Even under the best circumstances, paternalism was
often indistinguishable from petty tyranny; the same
master who nursed the sick, read the Bible to his
“people,” and expressed real affection for a childhood
chum or a beloved “nanny” could also drive, whip, and
sell with steely determination. . . .Absolute power
proved essential to the paternalist’s sense of duty
[and] the loss of the power threatened to turn
benevolent paternalists into domineering bullies.
125

This dynamic is one that whites attempt to hide when
referring to Turner’s rebellion. Shocked at one level and
ashamed at another, whites wrestle mentally and
ideologically with the reality of a major slave uprising
that their discourse claims is virtually impossible.

125
Kolchin, Peter. American Slavery 1619 – 1877. New York:
Hill and Wang, 1995. p. 126.
200
Douglass’s comment calls them on this matter emphatically.
He asserts that the existence of slavery at all is enough
to enlist the retaliation of one like Turner, or, for that
matter, one like Douglass. Though Douglass’s rebellion
does not take on the form of Turner’s, Douglass is Turner-
esqe in his thinking and rationalization. Drawing
attention to the deeper ideological and philosophical
underpinnings of both Tuner’s rebellion and his own
political expressions of political resistance, Douglass
continues to press the envelope with reference to an
alignment with Turner’s philosophy and methodology.
Continuing to take political risks in Bondage that are
absent in Narrative, Douglass finally mentions Turner’s
name. The paragraph in which this reference is contained is
crucial because it is almost identical to the same passage
in Narrative with the exception to this reference to Nat
Turner. The inclusion of Turner’s name in this passage is
suggestive of Douglass having a liberty in Bondage that he
does not have in Narrative. Clearly, Douglass is
deliberate about clarifying a political agenda that
embraces the revolutionary implications of Turner’s
rebellion. The particular place in which Turner’s name is
first mentioned in Bondage speaks volumes about how
Douglass thinks about Turner politically. A few
201
paragraphs removed from Douglass’s comparison between the
institution of slavery and the incidents of slavery, this
excerpt continues to build upon the idea that violent slave
rebellion is the natural order rather than an aberration.
Exploring the conceptual, rhetorical and discursive
complication of the terms “slavery” and “abolition” in the
southern slave world, Douglass cleverly draws a link
between a refreshed reading of the term “abolition” and
Turner’s place in the abolitionist political struggle:
I was all ears, all eyes, whenever the words slave,
slavery, dropped from the lips of any white person,
and the occasions were not unfrequent when these words
became leading ones, in high, social debate, at our
house. Every little while, I could overhear Master
Hugh, or some of his company, speaking with much
warmth and excitement about “abolitionists.” Of who or
what they were, I was totally ignorant. I found,
however, that whatever they might be, they were most
cordially hated and soundly abused by slaveholders, of
every grade. I soon discovered too, that slavery was,
in some sort, under consideration, whenever the
abolitionists were alluded to. This made the term a
very interesting one to me. If a slave, for instance,
had made good his escape from slavery, it was
generally alleged, that he had been persuaded and
assisted by the abolitionists. If, also, a slave
killed his master—as was sometimes the case—or struck
down his overseer, or set fire to his master’s
dwelling, or committed any violence or crime, out of
the common way, it was certain to be said, that such a
crime was the legitimate fruits of the abolition
movement. Hearing such charges often repeated, I
naturally enough received the impression that
abolition—whatever else it might be—could not be
unfriendly to the slave, nor very friendly to the
slaveholder. I therefore set about finding out, if
possible, who and what the abolitionists were, and why
they were so obnoxious to the slaveholders. The
202
dictionary afforded me very little help. It taught me
that abolition was the “act of abolishing;” but it
left me in ignorance at the very point where I most
wanted information—and that was, as to the thing to be
abolished. A city newspaper, “Baltimore American,”
gave me the incendiary information denied me by the
dictionary. In its columns I found, that, on a
certain day, a vast number of petitions and memorials
had been presented to congress, praying for the
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and
for the abolition of the slave trade between the
States of the Union. This was enough. The vindictive
bitterness, the marked caution, the studied reserve,
and the cumbrous ambiguity, practiced by our white
folks, when alluding to this subject, was now fully
explained. . . .When I met with a slave to whom I
deemed it safe to talk on the subject [of abolition],
I would impart to him so much of the mystery as I had
been able to penetrate. Thus, the light of this grand
movement broke in upon my mind, by degrees; and I must
say, that, ignorant as I then was of the philosophy of
that movement, I believed in it from the first—and I
believed in it, partly because I saw that it alarmed
the consciences of slaveholders. The insurrection of
Nathanial Turner had been quelled, but the alarm and
terror had not subsided. The cholera was on its way,
and the thought was present, that God was angry with
the white people because of their slaveholding
wickedness, and, therefore, his judgments were abroad
in the land. It was impossible for me not to hope
much from the abolition movement, when I saw it
supported by the Almighty, and armed with DEATH!
126

Douglass is quite the rhetorical technician in composing
this passage. He cleverly signifies on the term “abolition”
by comparing the dictionary definition of the term with his
own close reading of white print materials and social
norms. Reading between the lines literally and culturally,

126
Douglass, Fredrick. My Bondage and My Freedom. New York:
Penguin, 2003. pp. 120-122.

203
Douglass distinguishes between language and discourse. He
delineates the ideological parameters confining him to the
role of silent and ignorantly passive donkey with reference
to the South’s versions of Balaam. Douglass illustrates in
this passage, as he does in the ones preceding it, that the
silent donkey is not necessarily the unenlightened donkey,
but the voiceless donkey. As in Douglass’s explanation of
his silence toward his mistress, he does not communicate
the truth of his plight to his oppressor because his
communication would be rendered as “donkey-speak.” To
communicate, he has to change the rules that position
Balaam and the donkey on different planes. Douglass
accomplishes this within this passage in the way that he
analyzes the term “abolition,” but also in how he calls
attention to the normality of violent slave rebellion. As
Douglass elaborates on the term “abolition,” he lays out
the various ways that slaves retaliate against their
masters—all of them violent. He is subtle in this move
because he does this within the context of highlighting
rationalizations of slavery apologists. In an act of
denial of the subjectivity and political will of the slave,
defenders of slavery blame physically blatant slave
rebellion on the instigation of abolitionists. Douglass
allows his audience to read this passage on this level, but
204
he also provides a secondary level of meaning, underscored
by a direct reference to the icon of slave rebellion.
Distinguishing himself from the more repressed political
version of himself in Narrative, Douglass adds another
layer of subtext in Bondage that is absent in Narrative.
Douglass’s allusion to Turner is clearly a reinforcement of
the subtext rendering violent slave rebellion as organic to
slavery. This is even highlighted at the level of syntax,
for Douglass’s reference to Turner is presented without a
transition sentence. Though the relationship between
abolition and Nat Turner is connected in a general way,
Douglass’s switch to a discussion of Nat Turner in the
middle of his paragraph on abolition is abrupt. This
abrupt change in the basic subject matter and tenor
underscores an amplification of Douglass’s political
tenacity. Being similar to the same passage in Narrative in
almost every other way, this passage illustrates one of the
rhetorical and syntactical indications that Douglass’s
political philosophy and consciousness is shaped by Nat
Turner. In fact, the final lines of the paragraph, which
elaborate on Douglass’s reference to Nat Turner, take on
the tone of the appendix in Narrative. The bold,
deliberate and direct mode of communication about the
distinction between the Christianity of Christ and the
205
Christianity of the South comes across distinctly in the
last few lines of this passage. In referring to Nat Turner,
Douglass revises the white southern Christian theological
tenant that the slavery of Africans is by divine sanction.
On the contrary, Douglass remarks how God’s will is just
the opposite, that African slavery is not a reflection of
God’s anger at blacks, but that African slavery is the
cause for His anger at whites. In the context of this
discursive revision, Douglass holds up Turner as a sign and
validation of this refreshed theological understanding.
Consequently, this allows Douglass to redirect readers to
his references to slave violence earlier in the paragraph.
Rather than view these occurrences as the result of
instigating abolitionists, readers, moved by this abrupt
reference to Turner, can read slave violence as not only a
natural order, but also a divine order.
This rhetorical move not only magnifies Turner as a
political hero, but also brings into focus Douglass’s own
political awakening. Immediately following this reference
to Turner, Douglass elaborates extensively on the settling
of his political convictions, ones he implies are
intricately and intimately correlated with his Christian
conversion experience. Not only does this extended detail
of Douglass’s spiritual life reflect further on the tenets
206
of the appendix from Narrative, but it also further links
Douglass’s political trajectory with Turner’s. Douglass
does not incite a physical rebellion, but the way that he
arrives at his political clarity strongly resembles the
sequence of events contextualizing the clarifying of
Turner’s political and spiritual call. This next passage
details Turner’s Christian conversion experience, but in
light of Douglass’s reference to Turner, this call to
follow Christ has profound political implications. In the
very next line after Douglass’s reference to Turner, the
next paragraph begins as follows:
Previous to my contemplation of the anti-slavery
movement, and its probable results, my mind had been
seriously awakened to the subject of religion. I was
not more than thirteen years old, when, I felt the
need of God, as a father and protector. My religious
nature was awakened by the preaching of a white
Methodist minister, named Hanson. He thought that all
men, great and small, bond and free, were sinners in
the sight of God; that they were, by nature, rebels
against His government; and that they must repent of
their sins, and be reconciled to God, through Christ.
I cannot say that I had a very distinct notion of what
was required of me; but one thing I knew very well—I
was wretched, and had no means of making myself
otherwise. Moreover, I knew that I could pray for
light. I consulted a good colored man, named Charles
Johnson; and, in tones of holy affection, he told me
to pray, and what to pray for. I was, for weeks, a
poor, broken-hearted mourner, traveling through the
darkness and misery of doubts and fears. I finally
found that change of heart which comes by “casting all
one’s care” upon God, and by having faith in Jesus
Christ, as the Redeemer, Friend, and Savior of those
who diligently seek Him. After this, I saw the world
in a new light, I seemed to live in a new world,
207
surrounded by new objects, and to be animated by new
hopes and desires. I loved all mankind—slaveholders
not excepted; though I abhorred slavery more than
ever. My great concern was, now to have the world
converted. The desire for knowledge increased, and
especially did I want a thorough acquaintance with the
contents of the bible. . . .While thus religiously
seeking knowledge, I became acquainted with a good old
colored man, named Lawson. A more devout man than he,
I never saw. . . .I went often with him to prayer-
meeting, and spent much of my leisure time with him on
Sunday. The old man could read a little, and I was a
great help to him, in making out hard words, for I was
a better reader than he. I could teach him “the
letter,” but he could teach me “the spirit;” and high,
refreshing times we had together, in singing, praying
and glorifying God. These meetings with Uncle Lawson
went on for a long time, without the knowledge of
Master Hugh or my mistress. Both knew, however, that
I had become religious, and they seemed to respect my
conscientious piety. . . .I am careful to state these
facts, that the reader may be able to form an idea of
the precise influences which had to do with shaping
and directing my mind.

In view of the cares and anxieties incident to the
life she was then leading, and especially, in view of
the separation from religious associations to which
she was subjected, my mistress had, as I have before
stated, become lukewarm, and needed to be looked up by
her leader. This brought Mr. Waugh to our house, and
gave me an opportunity to hear him exhort and pray.
But my chief instructor, in matters of religion, was
Uncle Lawson. He was my spiritual father; and I loved
him intensely, and was at his house every chance I
got.

This pleasure was not long allowed me. Master Hugh
became averse to my going to Father Lawson’s, and
threatened to whip me if I ever went there again. I
now felt myself persecuted by a wicked man; and I
would go to Father Lawson’s, notwithstanding the
threat. The good old man had told me, that the “Lord
had a great work for me to do;” and I must prepare to
do it; and that he had shown that I must preach the
gospel. His words made a deep impression on my mind,
and I verily felt that some such work was before me,
208
though I could not see how I should ever engage in its
performance. “The good Lord,” he said, “would bring
it to pass in his own good time,” and I must go on
reading and studying the scriptures. The advice and
the suggestions of Uncle Lawson, were not without
their influence upon my character and destiny. He
threw my thoughts into a channel from which they have
never entirely diverged. He fanned my already intense
love of knowledge into a flame, by assuring me that I
as to be a useful man in the world. When I would say
to him, “How can these things be—and what can I do?”
his simple reply was, “Trust in the Lord,” When I told
him that “I was a slave, and a slave FOR LIFE,” he
said, “the Lord can make you free, my dear. All
things are possible with him, only have faith in God.”
“Ask, and it shall be given.” “If you want liberty,”
said the good old man, “ask the Lord for it, in faith,
AND HE WILL GIVE IT TO YOU.”
127

The fact that this passage on Douglass’s Christian
conversion follows Douglass’s first direct reference to Nat
Turner is very telling. Both the Turner reference and the
description of Douglass’s conversion experience are absent
from Narrative. Their presence in Bondage reflects upon a
subtle, though very pointed effort by Douglass to raise the
stakes of Douglass’s political vocality. By detailing his
conversion experience, Douglass draws upon an important
dimension of Christian culture and discourse that, in turn,
validates and contextualizes the presence of Turner in
Bondage and clarifies the absence of Turner in Narrative.
This comes across in the way that the description of

127
Ibid. pp. 122-124.

209
Douglass’s conversion experience embeds him in the cultural
world of the Second Great Awakening. This Christian
revival, extending from the late eighteenth to the mid
nineteenth centuries, is marked by the charisma of its
adherents and an investment in the egalitarian notion of
salvation for all. Challenging the Calvinistic idea that
salvation is for the chosen few, the Christianity of the
Second Great Awakening enlists everyone who can sense the
call and conviction of the Spirit to follow Christ. This
message resonates particularly with slaves and the white
poor. Excluded from other forms of social dignity and
acceptance, this more inclusive brand of Christian theology
touted by revivalist enthusiasts leads to several converts
amongst the ranks of slaves. Clearly, one nuance of some
invitations into Christian discipleship is the idea that
Christian blacks are to be subservient blacks, especially
to their white masters. At the same time, the basic spirit
of the Great Awakening is the extension of Christ’s
redemptive power to all, irrespective of racial or class
standing. Both Turner and Douglass are products of this
historical moment. Douglass explains his connection to it
in detail, but by doing this, Douglass implies Turner’s
connection to it. The reference to Turner, just a few
lines before the beginning of this passage, leaves Turner
210
lingering in the minds of readers as they move into
Douglass’s conversion experience. Hence, in reading
Douglass’s conversion experience, they are also reading
Turner’s. Douglass essentially refreshes the potent
spiritual associations of Turner’s legacy while also
aligning himself more firmly with Turner’s political cause.
The cleverness of this move is in the way that this whole
dynamic lands on the spiritually equalizing powers of faith
in Christ. For Douglass, the implication of this
equalization is not only spiritual, but also social and
political. Though Douglass does not re-engage in an
explicit discussion of politics for the duration of his
description of his conversion, given what he mentions about
Turner just a few lines earlier, the secondary meaning that
he wants readers to discern is that, as with Turner in his
revolt, Christian-based spiritual renewal is strongly
associated with progressive change in the social and
political world. This radically revises what the majority
of slaveholders draw from Christian theology, but Douglass
is able to drive this home by collapsing this whole
argument on his Christian testimony. By opening up a very
personal dimension of his Christian commitment, he turns
the attention of his readers to the very basic Christian
evangelical belief that a simple faith in Christ as both
211
savior and ruler is the crux of all Christian commitment.
As Douglass implies, in this faith, all other social and
political ranks dissolve. Though on one level utopian,
this message also serves a very important political
purpose: Christ becomes the great equalizer. Douglass
compels his readers to read this equalization in terms of
the whole scope of human experience, not just in terms of
spiritual metaphors. Douglass accentuates this message in
the carefulness with which he relates his conversion to the
revivalist notion of conversion. For evangelical
revivalists, conversion is achieved through a precise
sequence of events signaling one’s progression from a state
of spiritual depravity to a state of spiritual renewal.
Douglass follows this sequence, one that historian Ian
Frederick Finseth describes very succinctly:
Over time, the Evangelicals developed a clearly
defined sequence of steps toward spiritual
transformation, or a “morphology of conversion,” in
which the three stages were conviction of sin,
conversion, and assurance of salvation.
128
. . . The
first goal was to have the individual become aware,
agonizingly aware, of the depth of his or her sin. D.
Dickson Bruce described this awareness as “the point
at which the tension between the worldly life and the
religious became unbearable, the religious life being
recognized as immensely desirable.
129
Only in this
state of conviction could the individual achieve the

128
A comprehensive description of the morphology of
conversion appears in chapter three of D. Dickson Bruce’s
And They All Sang Hallelujah.
129
Ibid. p. 62.
212
abject humility which turning away from sin required,
and became open to conversion. Conversion depended on
the active intervention of the divine spirit in the
form of Christ, but this interposition would only take
place if the self had become sufficiently alienated,
through conviction of sin, from the material world.
In the moment of conversion, one felt that the heart
had been touched by the hand of God. Following
conversion, the third stage was that of assurance of
salvation, or belief that one’s sins were forgiven and
that one could, after death, enter the realm of heaven
and be reunited with God and with other saved souls.
130

Finseth outlines three steps in the conversion process. The
first of these is the conviction of sin. The second is the
conversion itself. The third is the assurance that one has
been converted. Douglass subscribes to all three. He
signals his participation in the first step in a grouping
of four sentences, which begin with the phrase “I was
wretched, and had no means of making myself otherwise.”
The three sentences immediately following this first group
of sentences indicates Douglass’s participation in the
second step. The first sentence of this second group of
sentences captures the whole sentiment of conversion in a
nut shell: “I finally found that change of heart which
comes by “casting all one’s care” upon God, and by having
faith in Jesus Christ, as the Redeemer, Friend, and Savior

130
Finseth, Ian Frederick. “The Experience of Conversion.”
Liquid Fire Within Me: Language, Self, and Society in
Transcendentalism and Early Evengelicalism, 1820 – 1860.
Masters Thesis University of Virginia, 1995.

213
of those who diligently seek Him.” Douglass indicates his
participation in the final step of the conversion process,
the assurance of salvation, when he writes, “My great
concern was, now to have the world converted.” Having a
preoccupation with the conversion of the world, Douglass is
clearly already assured of his own salvation.
Having settled his established place in the
evangelical revivalist tradition, Douglass continues to
nuance his version of conversion by highlighting the
influence of black spiritual guides as opposed to white
ones. This is significant because this move subtly recasts
the tenor of Douglass’s conversion from one that
underscores a taming of Douglass’s political agitation to
one that enlarges it. Douglass mentions a white Methodist
minister as the initial impetus for his interest in
religion. To Douglass’s white readership, this represents a
safe introduction to the faith. By safe, the presumption
is that Douglass’s Christian conversion is one underscoring
a Christian quality of meekness and an honorable deference
to his white master. Douglass conveys this when he
explains how his master and mistress “respect [his]
conscientious piety.” Though viewing Douglass’s literacy
as a threat, they view Douglass’s newfound religious
devotion as something that makes him more agreeable to
214
their interests. Illustrating his subscription to the
accepted mode of conversion under the evangelical
revivalist tradition, Douglass links his spiritual renewal
to Christian conventions accepted by a critical mass of
whites. Hence, as do his master and mistress, Douglass’s
white readership grants him a pass on his Christian
commitment. However, with Douglass’s references to the
black figures facilitating his spiritual development,
Douglass presents a secondary a layer of meaning, which
contests the assumptions of his master, his mistress, and
his white readership. Essentially, the reference to these
black figures allows Douglass to utilize the signifying
monkey trope, performing meaning at one level while
creating a secondary meaning at another level. The black
spiritual figures represent subtleties that undermine the
idea that a Christian Douglass is a politically meek
Douglass.
In particular, Douglass highlights two black spiritual
figures as the catalysts fostering his conversion and
discipleship. The first is Charles Johnson, who assists
Douglass in prayer causing him to see “the world in a new
light.” The second figure is one Douglass refers to as
Uncle Lawson. This figure plays a more extensive role in
Douglass’s life with regards to Douglass’s investment in
215
spiritual disciplines and Douglass’s on-going commitment as
a disciple of Christ. One very important dimension of
Father Lawson’s influence on Douglass is the lesson on the
distinction between the “spirit” and the “letter.” This
reference to this distinction functions on two levels. On
the first level, this spirit/letter contrast refers to
specific passages in New Testament scripture that
distinguish a legalistic application of God’s law from an
organic expression of God’s will facilitated by a perpetual
Spirit-led inward transformation. Again, Douglass invokes
the trope of the signifying monkey by presenting meaning
simultaneously on two different levels. At one level,
Douglass is referring to the scripture directly,
emphasizing the difference between a mode of Christian
devotion based upon legalistic compulsion and a mode of
Christian discipleship driven by personal conviction and
inward illumination. On another level, Douglass is making
a distinction between the Christianity of white slavery
apologists and the Christianity of black revolutionaries.
He makes these distinctions in the way he emphasizes
certain qualities of Father Lawson, which are then
implicitly contrasted with the spiritual qualifications of
Hanson.
216
In emphasizing the poor quality of Father Lawson’s
reading abilities, but highlighting Father Lawson’s
understanding of Scriptural intent, Douglass makes
distinctions between Hanson’s natural literacy and Father
Lawson’s spiritual literacy. This implicitly contrasts the
superior spiritual understanding of the almost illiterate
Father Lawson with the inferior spiritual understanding of
the literate Hanson. Though Hanson initially stirs
Douglass’s spiritual appetite, a considerably lesser-
educated Father Lawson facilitates Douglass’s spiritual
conversion and discipleship. Hanson’s spiritual role is
one graced with an official ministry title, but Douglass
reduces Hanson to a simple first name designation. The
spiritual role of Father Lawson is informal, but Douglass
eventually refers to him with the reverential designation
of “Father.” Hanson’s spiritual authority is ceremonial
while Father Lawson’s is organic. Hanson’s spiritual
convictions are expressed in a formal sermon, while Father
Lawson’s are in the form of practiced spiritual
disciplines. All of these distinctions make more concrete
Douglass’s associative forging of the Christianity of the
white South with the “letter” and the Christianity of
Christ with the “spirit.”
217
For Douglass, spirit-led Christianity is also the
Christianity of the enlightened black slave. This claim
refers to Douglass’s concept of black Christianity in
general, but it also underscores Turner’s spiritual
authority in particular, for Turner is the premier example
of this purer form of Christianity. The correlation of
Turner with this purer form of Christianity comes into
specific focus as Douglass elaborates on a conversation he
has with Father Lawson in which Father Lawson provokes
Douglass to accept a higher spiritual call, one compelling
Douglass to perpetuate God’s work on a grander scale.
Though written as a conversation, Douglass’s engagement
with Father Lawson takes on sacred overtones. Father
Lawson’s responses to Turner’s questions are in the form of
Christian aphorisms that read very mystically. Douglass
highlights this by putting some of Father’s Lawson’s
phrases in italics and capital letters. Consequently, the
conversation comes across as if Douglass is not merely
speaking to Father Lawson, but to God. This places Father
Lawson in the role of a prophet, becoming a human
mouthpiece for the utterance of God’s will. Prophetic-like
proclamations fall in line with the spirit-led Christianity
that Father Lawson teaches and that Douglass underscores in
this passage. They also underscore the spirit-led call of
218
Turner, whose call by the Spirit is captured in The
Confessions and reads in a similar way. Characterizing the
moments of pristine clarity from the Spirit, Nat Turner
remarks:
As I was praying one day at my plough, the spirit
spoke to me, saying “Seek ye the Kingdom of heaven and
all these things will be added to you.”. . .Knowing
the influence I had obtained over the minds of my
fellow servants (not by means of conjuring and such
like tricks—for to them I always spoke of such things
with contempt) but by the communion of the Spirit
whose revelations I often communicated to them, and
they believed and said my wisdom came from God. I now
began to prepare them for my purpose, by telling them
something was about to happen that would terminate in
fulfilling the great promise that had been made to me.
. . .I now withdrew myself as much as my situation
would permit, from the intercourse of my fellow
servants, for the avowed purpose of serving the Spirit
more fully—and it appeared to me, and reminded me of
the things it had already shown me, and that it would
then reveal to me. . . .After this revelation in the
year 1825. . .I sought more than ever to obtain true
holiness. . .and the Holy Ghost was with me, and said,
“Behold me as I stand in the Heavens”—and I looked and
saw the forms of men in different attitudes—and there
were lights in the sky to which the children of
darkness gave other names than what they really were—
for they were the lights of the Savior’s hands,
stretched forth from east to west, even as they were
extended on the cross on Calvary for the redemption of
sinners. And I wondered greatly at these miracles,
and prayed to be informed of a certainty of the
meaning thereof. . . .as the leaves on the trees bore
the impression of the figures I had seen in the
heavens; it was plain to me that the Savior was about
to lay down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men,
and the great day of judgment was at hand.
131

131
Turner, Nat. The Confessions of Nat Turner in The
Confessions of Nat Turner and Related Documents, Kenneth
Greenburg ed. New York: Bedford, 1996. pp. 46 – 47.
219
This representation of Nat Turner’s spiritual call within
The Confessions has telling parallels to the description of
Douglass’s spiritual call within Bondage. Both Tuner and
Douglass are depicted with having mystic-like encounters
with the Spirit of God. In Douglas’s case, Father Lawson
stands proxy for the Holy Spirit, but given Douglass’s
characterization of Father Lawson, Douglass and Turner have
similar experiences in effect. Additionally, both Turner
and Douglass acknowledge their spiritual calls as being
ones that not only encompass their individual spiritual
awakenings, but ones that implicate them in the spiritual,
and by extension, political deliverance of their peers.
For Turner, the correlation between his relationship with
God and leadership role in the black community is more
dramatic. With his spiritual call being accented by
apocalyptic-like signs, the tie between Turner’s spiritual
devotion and his leadership in a violent revolt come across
very clearly. Douglass’s spiritual epiphany is not
accompanied by paranormal activity, but the tenor of his
epiphany is similar to Turner’s. Both men clarify their
sense of spiritual and political purpose in terms of a deep
awareness of God’s presence. They draw upon a sixth-sense
cognition that forges their secular aims with spiritual
potency. While Douglass is not explicit about the link
220
between his spiritual epiphany and his political work, he
implies their connection by commenting on the significance
of his spiritual awakening to his life as a whole. For
example, at one point, he makes clear that the purpose of
describing his personal spiritual background is to
illustrate to the reader how the motivational force of
religion affects his thinking in general: “I am careful to
state these facts, that the reader may be able to form an
idea of the precise influences which had to do with shaping
and directing my mind.” In the next paragraph, commenting
on Father Lawson’s influences, he remarks, “He threw my
thoughts into a channel form which they have never entirely
diverged.” While not linking his spiritual epiphany to any
particular political activity, Douglass does make the case
that his spiritual devotion is an implicit influence on his
political activity. Hence, “the great work” that the Lord
has for Douglass to do cannot be referring only to
evangelical activity. It must also involve political
activity. This relationship between the spiritual and the
political only further ties Douglass with Turner. To make
this implicit link after having cited Turner’s name only a
couple of paragraphs prior ties Douglass to the
revolutionary motifs of Nat Turner’s rebellion. Like
Turner, Douglass is called to God and to community. His
221
obligation to God and the socio-political issues of the
larger society are inextricably linked.
Douglass further underscores this relationship between
the spiritual and the political in another passage of
extended commentary in Bondage that is not in Narrative.
This commentary is about the morality of slave stealing.
Touching briefly on the subject over the course of three
sentences in Narrative, Douglass devotes five full
paragraphs to the subject in Bondage. Moreover, the
discussion in Bondage is much more nuanced. Having made
such strong gestures toward a political link with Turner
earlier within Bondage, Douglass’s elaborate
rationalization of slave thieves later in the text comes
across as a stern defense of Turner’s revolt. Without
mentioning Turner’s name at all, Douglass justifies
Turner’s slave rebellion. Initially coming across as
almost casually descriptive, Douglass’s expository
treatment of slave robbery evolves into a very potent
vindication of Turner’s otherwise criminal act:
We were compelled either to beg, or to steal, and we
did both. I frankly confess, that while I hated
everything like stealing, as such, I nevertheless did
not hesitate to take food, when I was hungry, wherever
I could find it. Nor was this practice the mere
result of an unreasoning instinct; it was, in my case,
the result of a clear apprehension of the claims of
morality. I weighed and considered the matter
closely, before I ventured to satisfy my hunger by
222
such means. Considering that my labor and person were
the property of Master Thomas, and that I was by him
deprived of the necessaries of life—necessaries
obtained by my own labor—it was easy to deduce the
right to supply myself with what was my own. It was
simply appropriating what was my own to the use of my
master, since the health and strength derived from
such food were exerted in his service. To be sure,
this was stealing, according to the law and gospel I
heard from St. Michael’s pulpit; but I had already
begun to attach less importance to what dropped from
that quarter, on that point, while, as yet, I retained
my reverence for religion.
132

In this first paragraph in a sequence of four rationalizing
slave thievery, Douglass again becomes the signifying
monkey. He taps into a universe of secondary meaning as he
moves beyond the simple practicality of a stealing slave to
the philosophical basis of slave thievery. He does this by
setting up two distinct rationalizations for slave
thievery. One is a soft sell, appealing directly to whites
sympathetic to the cause of abolitionism. He sets this up
in the first sentence of this passage. In it he explains
that while he objects to stealing on moral grounds, he is
compelled to steal anyway. This explanation rests on the
premise that slave thievery is a survival practice of
slaves who are almost always under fed and overworked. In
this situation, one must steal to live. Under this premise,

132
Douglass, Fredrick. My Bondage and My Freedom. New York:
Penguin, 2003. pp. 138 - 139.

223
whites can safely view blacks as human victims reduced to
barbaric and immoral behavior as a result of slavery’s
oppressive practices. Hence, slave thievery comes across
as the inevitable consequence of mistreated slaves, the
aggressor being slavery, not the slave. However, Douglass
revises this assumption in the very next sentence. He
clarifies that the practice of stealing is not “the mere
result of an unreasoning instinct.” In other words, slave
stealing, at least for him, is not merely a function of
slavery’s barbaric conditioning upon the psyche, but of a
sober rationalization of “the claims of morality.” More
than a survival strategy to defend against hunger, slave
theft is an assertion of a moral principle. Under this
premise, the slave is an aggressor and not merely a victim.
Hence, in addition to becoming a speaking subject a la
Balaam’s speaking donkey, Douglass also becomes thinking
subject, one with the consciousness to revise the moral
implications of robbery in the slavery universe. He
rewrites slavery in terms of a law of reciprocity that he
deduces from slavery’s own rules. In asserting this,
Douglass sets up a stern defense of Turner’s revolt, for
the violent expression of Turner’s discontent with slavery
achieves moral justification only with this kind of
philosophical revision. Douglass is more specific to this
224
particular point in the very next paragraph. In it he
comments:
It was necessary that the right to steal from others
should be established; and this could only rest upon a
wider range of generalization than that which supposed
the right to steal from my master.
133

Douglass’s comment in this next paragraph, which consists
entirely of these two clauses, is a succinct way of
isolating the proposition that the re-appropriation of
goods from slave masters to slave is a civil right.
Douglass grounds this proposition in a moral universe with
greater authority and scope than the one granting
Douglass’s master the legal right to own slaves. Douglass
expounds upon this in the very next paragraph:
It was sometime before I arrived at this clear right.
The reader will get some idea of my train of
reasoning, by a brief statement of the case. “I am,”
thought I, “not only the slave of Master Thomas, but I
am the slave of society at large. Society at large
has bound itself, in form and in fact, to assist
Master Thomas in robbing me of my rightful liberty,
and of the just reward of my labor; therefore,
whatever rights I have against Master Thomas, I have
equally, against those confederated in robbing me of
liberty. As society has marked me out as privileged
plunder, on the principle of self-preservation I am
justified in plundering in turn. Since each slave
belongs to all; all must, therefore belong to each.
134

133
Ibid.

134
Ibid. pp. 139 - 140.
225
In this paragraph, Douglass expounds upon his basic right
to steal. Upon the premise that society and not just his
master are responsible for his enslavement, Douglass
expands the scope of his basic right to steal. Essentially,
he asserts that not only is he justified in stealing from
his master, but in stealing from any white person or
institution that contributes directly or indirectly to the
practice of slavery in America. Expanding and revising the
notion of slave thievery so that it comes across as a
general principle of reciprocity and reparation, Douglass
extends his moral justification of Turner’s volatile
political acts. One particular Turner-related matter with
which this paragraph relates is the role Turner’s
relationship with his master plays in Turner’s decision to
rebel. One of several reactionary responses to Turner’s
revolt raises the question of whether Turner’s master
mistreats him and/or whether Turner is unreasonably
ungrateful for his master’s kindness. Because Turner’s
master does not have a reputation of being cruel and
because Turner, outside of his revolt, is not known to be
particularly troublesome, many whites are left befuddled on
the question. Consequently many of them conclude that
Turner is simply mad. Douglass’s treatise on slave
thievery puts this whole matter in a different light.
226
According to Douglass, the relative kindness or cruelty of
any particular master is less the agitation than the very
system of slavery itself. Essentially, Turner does not
need a cruel master to have a motivation to lead a slave
revolt. The general moral injustice of slavery is enough
to provoke revolutionary action.
In the fourth paragraph in this series of comments on
slave thievery, Douglass continues in this vein. He
becomes much more poignant in his underscoring of slave
thievery as a moral principle and the spiritual, political,
and economic leverage that it grants slaves as a result:
I shall here make a profession of faith which may
shock some, offend others, and be dissented from all.
It is this: Within the bounds of his just earnings, I
hold that the slave is fully justified in helping
himself to the gold and silver and the best apparel of
his master, or that of any other slaveholder; and that
such taking is not stealing in any just sense of that
word.
135

Douglass minces no words here as he elevates his statements
from arguing for a moral principle to uttering a
“profession of faith.” Articulating his argument in terms
of a profession of faith is alone enough to invoke Turner.
This rhetorical move transitions Douglass’s rationalization
from matters of philosophy to matters of spirituality, and

135
Ibid. p. 140.

227
in Douglass’s case, presumably Christian spirituality.
Accounting for the reactionary thinking he presumes he
invokes from making statements so audacious, Douglass is
not only aware of the gravity of his statements, but
underscores his willingness to elevate the tenor of his
argument without fear. He further asserts his nerve by
stating specifically that slave thievery is not thievery at
all. In making such bold statements about his right to
secure his own reparations, Douglass tampers with one of
the most pronounced taboos embraced by white slaveholders:
The sober-minded slave recalcitrant. Though privately
paranoid about the propensity of black slaves to resist
slavery’s controls or engage in criminal acts, many whites
publicly dismiss the possibility of any meaningful form of
slave sabotage. Moreover, in the occasions in which slave
disobedience happens, whites dismiss the idea that this
could stem from the intelligent thought process of any
slave. Framing slave disobedience or rebelliousness as a
product of child-like naiveté, master cruelty, moral
ignorance, barbaric incivility, madness, or abolitionist
instigation, many slavery apologists repudiate any notion
of slaves forging a moral basis for usurping white
authority or challenging white institutions. The Turner
revolt contests this rationalization in the most brazen
228
terms imaginable. Douglass raises the stakes of his
argument to match the implications of Turner’s
revolutionary actions.
In the fifth and final paragraph on his treatise on
slave thievery, Douglass makes plain the revolutionary
inevitabilities of his discussion of slave thievery. He
falls short of mentioning Turner’s name directly, but
extends his discussion of slave criminality beyond thievery
and into the kind of political activity in which Turner
engages specifically. In essence, Douglass calls attention
to the fact that slave thievery is just a euphemism for
more blatant revolutionary actions that carry no less moral
justification than the revolutionary actions of America’s
founding fathers:
The morality of a free society can have no application
to slave society. Slaveholders have made it almost
impossible for the slave to commit any crime, known
either to the laws of God or the laws of man. If he
steals, he takes his own; if he kills his master, he
imitates only the heroes of the revolution.
Slaveholders I hold to be individually and
collectively responsible for all the evils which grow
out of the horrid relation, and I believe they will be
so held at the judgment, in the sight of a just God.
Make man a slave, and you rob him of moral
responsibility.
136

In this passage, Douglass aligns his claims with the claims
of Thomas Jefferson in the writing of the Declaration of

136
Ibid.
229
Independence: When “the laws of man” revoke the natural
rights awarded by “the laws of God,” one’s reclamation of
these rights can only conclude in revolution, revolution
being one’s natural and rational response to a suppression
of one’s civil rights. Taking slave criminality out of
“the court of man” and into “the court of God,” Douglass
places an exclamation point on Turner’s revolutionary
actions and his own revolutionary words.
Later in this same chapter, Douglass mentions Turner’s
name again. Having explored extensively the philosophical
and spiritual premise of Turner’s revolt in his treatise on
slave thievery, citing Turner directly once more makes the
correlations that Douglass draws between he and Turner’s
political aims ever more clearer. In fact, this next
citation of Turner is the most direct correlation Douglass
makes with Turner in his whole autobiography. Douglass
makes this citation of Turner within the context of
conducting what he calls a Sabbath school. The purpose of
this school is to teach blacks to read. Using spelling
books and Bibles, he gives them weekly lessons, drawing
from his quest for literacy to empower others.
Unfortunately, his efforts to teach slaves to read are
thwarted by his master and other agitated white men.
Douglass notes how his political association with Nat
230
Turner comes to the forefront in his heated exchange with
them. This notation is important because Douglass
describes the same incident in Narrative, but does not
mention Turner’s name in that version of his autobiography.
The mention of Turner’s name in Bondage speaks even more
poignantly to the deliberateness with which Douglass makes
his political association with Turner:
At our second meeting, I learned that there was some
objection to the existence of the Sabbath school; and,
sure enough, we had scarcely got at work—good work,
simply teaching a few colored children how to read the
gospel of the Son of God—when in rushed a mob, headed
by Mr. Wright Fairbanks and Mr. Garrison West—two
class leaders—and Master Thomas; who armed with sticks
and other missiles, drove us off, and commanded us
never to meet for such a purpose again. One of this
pious crew told me, that as for my part, I wanted to
be another Nat Turner; and if I did not look out, I
should get as many balls into me, as Nat did into him.
Thus ended my infant Sabbath school, in the town of
St. Michael’s. The reader will not be surprised when
I say, that the breaking up of my Sabbath school, by
these class-leaders, and professedly holy men, did not
serve to strengthen my religious convictions. The
cloud over my St. Michael’s home grew heavier and
blacker than ever.
137

The citation of Nat Turner in this passage ties Douglass’s
quest for and advancement of black literacy to Nat Turner’s
revolt. The fact that the relationship between these two
forms of political action are not lost upon white Master
Thomas and his affiliates underscores how available this

137
Ibid. pp. 146-147.

231
association is to those who work diligently to protect and
defend slavery. Douglass is clearly not making an
associative leap by linking his cause with Turner’s.
Douglass makes known that the revolutionary potential of
his work and its association with Turner is known to his
white antagonists and that Douglass is comfortable in
annunciating this relationship in the open. This is one
other instance of Douglass “removing the mask” and calling
attention to the self-consciousness on both his part and
the part of his Master that a Nat Turner “is in every
family.” Because the system of slavery subscribes to myths
of slave ignorance that reject the prospect of a slave’s
intelligent consideration of life outside of slavery, the
acquisition of literacy and other basic forms and
expressions of civility in a free society are in and of
themselves revolutionary. The violent response by Master
Thomas and his comrades to Douglass’s Sabbath school draws
attention to the political volatility of something so basic
as literacy. Beyond its practical function as an expanded
means of communication and organization between and amongst
slaves, its conceptual acceptance threatens the ideological
justification for slavery. As far as Master Thomas and his
comrades are concerned, Douglass might as well have
232
commenced in a violent attack against whites. For them, the
implications are ideologically the same.
The very next paragraph brings Douglass’s treatment of
Turner in Bondage full circle. It draws attention to the
way in which Douglass’s direct treatment of Turner in
Bondage is an expression of a much more coded and repressed
allusion to Turner in Narrative. To be clear, Douglass
does not cite Turner at all in Narrative, but this next
passage is suggestive of how the appendix in Narrative
substitutes for an explicit treatment of Turner in
Narrative:
It was not merely the agency of Master Thomas, in
breaking, up and destroying my Sabbath school, that
shook my confidence in the power of southern religion
to make men wiser or better; but I saw in him all the
cruelty and meanness, after his conversion, which he
had exhibited before he made a profession of
religion.
138

Having just described the violence of his Sabbath school
shutdown and its political correlation with Nat Turner,
Douglass relates the incident to his very pronounced
distinction between a version of Christianity that endorses
slavery and a version of Christianity that condemns
slavery. The key way that Douglass triggers this
association is in his return to the term “southern

138
Ibid. p. 147.

233
religion.” This term not only correlates with his reference
to “religious colored people” to whom he refers earlier in
his autobiography, but also to “the slaveholding religion,”
to which he refers to in the appendix of Narrative. All of
these phrases are references to the false Christianity that
he vehemently condemns. Whether in reference to blacks who
subscribe to “the delusion that God requires them to submit
to slavery” or to whites who subscribe to “the corrupt,
slaveholding, women whipping, cradle plundering, partial
and hypocritical Christianity of the South,” Douglass calls
attention to the fact that the Christianity of Master
Thomas and others like him rests in a corrupt moral
inversion. In essence, Douglass calls attention to the
fact that his rhetorical work over the course of five
chapters in Bondage is a careful, but poignant unpacking of
the Christian discourse of the white south. This
deconstruction of the white South’s version of Christianity
and its moral imperatives serves to simultaneously
contextualize the moral basis and spiritual sanction of
Turner’s rebellion. In fact, these five chapters in
Bondage illustrate the ways in which the deconstruction of
white southern Christianity and the political validation of
Nat Turner are inextricably linked. Moreover, Douglass
ties his own political significance to this very dynamic.
234
Literally rewriting himself after the publication of
Narrative and his split with Garrison, Douglass draws upon
the political and mythical synergy of a defense of Nat
Turner to validate his own renewed political career and
sense of purpose.

235
Harriet Jacobs

Harriet Jacobs does the same thing, but her allusions
are much more subtle and unsuspecting. Specifically, with
respect to the overt subject matter of Harriet Jacobs’s
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, very little in the
narrative bears relation to the political controversy of
Nat Turner and his 1831 rebellion. Jacobs cites Turner’s
name a total of five times in a 51-chapter narrative. This
kind of word economy certainly suggests that Turner is more
of a footnote for Jacobs than a strategic part of her
narrative and political mission. Most of the scholarship on
Jacobs implicitly confirms this. Though analyzed and
critiqued through a variety of historical and literary
lenses, the vast majority of contemporary criticism on
Jacobs and Incidents makes very little of the handful of
references Jacobs makes to Turner. Rather, among the
several critical vantage points from which scholars
evaluate the narrative, three key areas of focus commonly
serve as thematic points of reference: the intersection of
race, gender and sexuality upon black women in slavery; the
dynamic this creates for black women in slavery as distinct
from black men in slavery; and the moral imperatives of
Christianity and Southern rituals of honor bearing upon
matters of choice, dignity and political will for black
236
women generally and Jacobs particularly. With the rarity
that Jacobs creates in her first-hand account of the
experience of black women in slavery and the unique
obstacles they face in their attempts to escape slavery,
Turner’s model for escape from and upheaval of slavery
appears on the surface to be outside the scope of Jacob’s
literary and political mission.
At the same time, the way that Jacobs characterizes
men in Incidents points to a more strategic role that
Turner eventually plays in her narrative and in her
political strategy. A close reading of Incidents exposes
many instances in which Jacobs not only highlights the
unique experiences of black women in slavery, but calls
attention to the qualities native to constructions of black
masculinity in the nineteenth century. In particular, all
of Jacobs’s characterizations of the men in her family
highlight a brand of resistance exclusive to black men in
slavery. Her father, uncles, brother and son each have
moments in Jacob’s story in which they openly and
abrasively resist the slave order without regard to the
potential physical and social consequence of this
resistance. Moreover, in the particular instance of
Jacobs’s brother William, his aversion to slavery not only
237
leads to a physical brawl with his master, but to his
eventual escape from slavery altogether.
At one level, this characterization of her brother and
comparable characterizations of the other men in her family
can come across simply as descriptive parts of a true
story. At another level, Jacobs’s characterizations of the
men in her family serve a literary function, one which
ultimately contextualizes her strategic allusion to Turner,
both as a literary and a political trope. After all, for
her own protection and the protection of her loved ones,
she characterizes everyone in the story with pseudonyms.
This technically makes everyone in the story a character,
even herself, whom she gives the alias Linda. Hence, while
the pattern of resistance that she marks amongst the male
members of her family denote true events, her commentary
about them speaks to patterns that she wants to evoke for
political purposes. For example, in a few lines about her
Uncle Benjamin and brother William, she enlists them as
natively bold and resistant to slavery: “Benjamin was now a
tall, handsome lad, strongly and gracefully made, and with
a spirit too bold and daring to be a slave. My brother
William, now twelve years old, had the same aversion to the
word master that he had when he was an urchin of seven
238
years.”
139
Jacobs is careful to note that Benjamin and
William demonstrate an inborn hostility to slavery from the
time that they are children. This is to show that their
aversion to slavery is not a consequence of slavery’s
extremities taking them over the edge, but as a result of
their inherent aversion to slavery in principle. This is a
common argument made by several other opponents of slavery
throughout the course of slavery’s existence in America.
However, in Jacobs’s case, this is a framework that she
applies exclusively to the men. If she does not state this
directly, she implies it. Even Linda’s small son Benny
takes on these qualities in the narrative. In one instance
she characterizes Benny as “threatening the destruction of
a dog” who previously mauls him. In another instance,
Linda notes Benny’s defiant stand against Dr. Flint, the
white sexual predator whose threats eventually compel her
to conceal herself for months in a small closet. The most
telling part of this situation is that Linda juxtaposes
Benny’s response to Dr. Flint with her daughter Ellen’s
response to Dr. Flint: “Dr. Flint and his family repeatedly
tried to coax and bribe my children to tell something they
had heard said about me. One day the doctor took them into

139
Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
Slave Narratives. Eds. William L. Andrews and Henry Louis
Gates Jr.. New York: Library of America, 2000. pp. 863.
239
a shop, and offered them some bright silver pieces and gay
handkerchiefs if they would tell where their mother was.
Ellen shrank away from him, and would not speak; but Benny
spoke up, and said, ‘Dr. Flint, I don’t know where my
mother is. I guess she’s in New York; and when you go
there again, I wish you’d ask her to come home, for I want
to see her; but if you put her in jail, or tell her you’ll
cut her head off, I’ll tell her to go right back.’”
140
At
this point in the story Benny is not only lying that he is
unaware of his mother’s whereabouts, but he leverages this
information to pose a threat to Dr. Flint. Ellen on the
other hand shrinks away from Dr. Flint in fear, opting not
to comment at all. Such a glaring contrast between Linda’s
son and daughter in light of how Linda depicts the other
men of her family suggests that this seemingly inbred
quality of courage shared by the men in the story serves as
a figurative device. One function of this device is to
serve as a comparative point of reference to distinguish
the social construction of the male experience of slavery
from the social construction of the female experience in
slavery. However, the more important reason for Jacobs
distinguishing the men from the women in this way is to
highlight the dynamics of heroic dignity, personal

140
Ibid.
240
strength, and physical mobility relegated to the world of
men, but which Jacobs ultimately appropriates for Linda in
Linda’s eventual escape from slavery.
There are certainly other models of strength and
courage exampled by women in Incidents, the most notable of
which are by Linda’s grandmother and by Betsy, a slave
attendant who helps Linda to conceal herself and escape.
Linda’s grandmother represents strength in terms of her
courageous stances against white sexual predators seeking
to prey upon her daughters and granddaughters, her high
character profile in the community, and her morally
principled life. Betsy’s strength is in her active
engagement in Linda’s escape and her on-going defiant
critique and dismissal of the slave order. Both Betsy and
Linda’s grandmother represent distinct expressions of
heroic personhood and they participate as examples and
contributors to the construction of Linda’s heroism. At
the same time, Linda recognizes the socio-cultural
challenges inherent in the subject-positions of her
grandmother and Betsy, which ultimately compel Linda to
look for additional components to include in her
construction of a heroic womanhood. In particular, Linda’s
grandmother’s heroism is circumscribed within a very
contrived sense of moral perfection, which hinges on a
241
double standard that is ultimately impossible for Linda’s
grandmother to fulfill and which ultimately results in an
uncanny pretentiousness. For Betsy, her expressions of
courage are contained and concealed in the private
communication world of slaves. Betsy is the only character
in Incidents who speaks in dialect, a nineteenth century
version of black slang. This characterization of Betsy
suggests that while she is both savvy and intelligent, she
is illiterate and that even her oral communication does not
come across to whites in the same way that it does to
blacks. While her critiques of the slave order are
vigorous, they are not communicated with the directness
that Linda prefers and that she believes is required to
challenge the slave order forcefully. Additionally, both
Betsy and Linda’s grandmother are tied to the domestic
sphere in ways that prohibit the kind of mobility available
to men, but that Linda needs to complete her escape.
Linda’s grandmother is unable to escape because she vows to
protect her children and grandchildren from the moral and
physical dangers of the world of slavery. Betsy is unable
to escape with Linda because she is married and having yet
failed to have children of her own, remains hopeful of the
possibility.
242
Jacobs is well aware of the socio-cultural framework
limiting the options for political resistance for Betsy,
Linda’s grandmother and other women like them. Jacobs is
also aware and emphatically underscores the fact that the
exact same kinds of limitations do not exist for black men
in slavery. The socio-cultural framework for black men
does not enlist them in the kind of moral obligations to
the domestic sphere that exist for women. Black men in
slavery certainly retain strong feelings of endearment
toward and strong social commitments to their families, but
the social construct of manhood allows them to express
their connection to the family bond in terms of heroic
acts, which are often at the risk of physical harm and
physical separation from their families. Without the moral
burden of the guilt of abandonment of their families, men
can pursue options of escape from slavery much easier than
women. Moreover, their rebellion against slavery’s social
norms offer them a kind of heroic dignity. For example,
Betsy’s husband would be under much less social pressure
than Betsy to remain at home were he offered an opportunity
to escape. In fact, his escape would be understood as a
heroic act that would eventually pave the way for Betsy’s
escape. In light of these sharp distinctions Jacobs makes
between the socio-cultural dynamics of men from women in
243
slavery, Jacobs’s allusions to Nat Turner come across much
more deliberately and strategically. As passages
subsequent to the Turner allusions illustrate, Jacobs
appropriates for Linda the qualities of physical mobility,
bravery and dignity in rebellion. These qualities resonate
in most of the men in the narrative, but culminate in
Turner, a mythic symbol of these qualities and an icon of a
much greater movement for black liberation and revolution.
These allusions to Turner help Jacobs complete her
construction of heroic womanhood, make a valuable
contribution to the larger black liberation movement and
perpetuate Turner as a symbol of black revolution.
Harriet Jacobs’s references to Nat Turner in Incidents
in the Life of a Slave Girl are strategic on her part both
for the way they allow her to re-assign cultural meaning
and for the way that they help to make her communication
with white readers more palatable. Knowing that most of
her readership consists of a white Northern audience from
whom she is enlisting sympathy, Jacobs has to nuance her
rhetoric so that her attack on white morality in reference
to slavery does not stifle her appeal to potential white
abolitionist advocates. Whites living in the North are far
removed from the realities of plantation slavery.
Consequently, they do not have eyewitness perspectives of
244
plantation slave culture from which to contrast the
demonizing mischaracterizations of blacks that stem from
Turner taboo. As a result, name-dropping Turner in the
middle of the narrative has to be a carefully crafted and
strategic move on Jacobs’s part. She is too politically
keen to be ignorant of how inciting the mere mention of
Turner’s name is in documents designed to challenge the
institution of slavery. Ironically, this very taboo allows
Jacobs to leverage Turner’s name to build upon his politics
on one hand and then camouflage her appropriation of him in
another.
The name references to Turner in her narrative are
sparse, providing little more expositional detail than
footnotes. However, while marginal in terms of word
economy, Jacobs’s allusions to Turner are expansive in
terms of ideological scope. Positioned at strategic
moments of political reflection, Jacobs’s references to
Turner have broad implications for Jacob’s empowered
subjectivity and Turners’ political legacy. Because the
mythical and political connotations of Turner as a black
rebel figure are so densely associated with his name,
Jacobs is able to appropriate the politically subversive
epistemologies correlated with Turner without being
explicit about Turner’s particular revolutionary actions.
245
Conveniently, Turner’s infamy as both a literate and
Christian slave nuances his brand of revolution in ways
that empower Jacobs to re-read, re-interpret and re-write
racist moral narratives in the white Christian tradition.
Desiring to revise the social and religious lexicons that
criminalize her as a spiritual and sexual being, Jacobs
wants to appropriate Turner’s bold and heroic defiance of
the conventions and institutions that relegate him to
slavery. At the same time, Jacobs is keenly aware that
Turner’s heroism is honored within the context of a
masculine code and that even though whites work ardently to
dismiss Turner’s significance, Turner’s actions are
affiliated with heroism and revolution. Hence, both whites
and blacks list him among the ranks of other noted slave
rebels—all of them male: Toussaint L'Ouverture, Gabriel
Prosser, Denmark Vessey are a few of the more recognized
ones. Jacobs’s contestation of slavery is not shrouded
with the same kind of dignity. As a black woman, not only
is she excluded from a male-dominated tradition of
revolutionary heroism, but is held to a set of moral and
social double standards that threaten to criminalize her
sexuality and contain her attacks of slavery to the
domestic sphere.
246
Hence, Jacobs leverages the allusion to Turner as a
convenient shorthand, calling upon the heroic and
revolutionary associations connected to Turner and
appropriating them for herself. The Turner allusions also
represent discursive revision. A simple allusion to him
invokes all of the political and spiritual re-definition
that Turner and his rebellion accomplishes. Because of how
Turner’s rebellion challenges the moral imperatives of
slavery, the inclusion of Turner in these strategic moments
helps to reposition Jacobs in relationship to slavery’s
moral and ideological framework. This is important because
Jacobs must battle aspects of her past and identity that
are read as moral stains within the context of white
Christian traditions. In particular, her subject position
as a black slave and as the bastard genetic product of
mixed race sexual violations situates her in a moral
quandary that threatens her credibility. Lodged in an
impossible negotiation between Christian epistemologies of
racial identity, sexual purity, and ethical rectitude,
Jacobs draws from Turner’s ability to revise the
impositions of American slave culture’s discursive
framework. By invoking Turner and his own inversion of the
moral landscape within her narrative, Jacobs re-writes her
247
moral position, enabling her to champion her abolitionist
cause with dignity.
Jacobs lays out the complex cultural and moral dilemma
she faces within the first paragraph of her narrative. Her
explanation of this not only details the socio-cultural
impositions on her as a black female slave, but also the
discursive conundrum of her subject-position. The very
explanation of her predicament is strapped with rhetorical
catch-22s. Later in her narrative, Turner’s political and
figurative affiliations help her to expand her discursive
options, but in her opening lines, she makes plain the
cultural and discursive impossibilities that the nineteenth
century South forces upon her. Specifically, the matter of
rape and miscegenation loom large over her personal history
and family lineage. The culpability of white men in this
dynamic is overwhelmingly apparent, but in the culture of
the American slave order, black women automatically receive
the blame for any sexual misconduct between themselves and
white men. The sexual violation of black women by white
men is so common that there is simply no other way of
thinking about the situation without criminalizing white
men. Ironically, though white male sexual misconduct with
black women is common knowledge to most people at the time,
(evidenced in the large population of mixed race slaves),
248
to speak on this matter openly and directly alienates the
speaker. The following excerpt from Jacobs’s opening lines
conveys her savvy in exploring this very delicate and
tabooed issue:
In complexion my parents were a light shade of
brownish yellow, and were termed mulattoes. . . .I had
also a great treasure in my maternal grandmother, who
was a remarkable woman in many respects. She was the
daughter of a planter in South Carolina, who, at his
death, left her mother and his three children free,
with money to go to St. Augustine, where they had
relatives. It was during the Revolutionary War; and
they were captured on their passage, carried back, and
sold to different purchasers. Such was the story my
grandmother used to tell me; but I do not remember all
the particulars. She was a little girl when she was
captured and sold to the keeper of a large hotel. I
have often heard her tell how hard she fared during
childhood. . . .As [my grandmother] had five
[children], Benjamin, the youngest one was sold. . .
.He was a bright, handsome lad, nearly white; for he
inherited the complexion my grandmother had derived
from Anglo-Saxon ancestors.”
141

Jacobs’s short anecdotal account of her grandmother is
central here because references to her grandmother’s
respectability offset the moral entanglements of Jacob’s
personal life throughout the narrative. Hence, at the
onset, she must characterize her grandmother’s past without
implicating her grandmother in the moral scandal of which
her grandmother is an inevitable victim. Jacobs prefaces
the recounting of her grandmother’s rocky past by remarking
that her grandmother is a remarkable woman. This draws the

141
Ibid. pp. 751-752.
249
reader’s attention away from the rape that most likely
takes place between Jacob’s grandmother’s father and
mother. By limiting the description of her grandfather to
merely convey that he is a South Carolina planter, Jacobs
does not place too much weight on the sexual taboos
implicit in the fact that he is white and his daughter is
black. Furthermore, Jacobs plays ignorant by remarking
that she does not remember “all the particulars” of her
grandmother’s difficult childhood, for it is likely similar
to Jacobs’s, who, as a mulatta, is the constant focus of
white male sexual desire. The chances that Jacobs’s
grandmother is raped by a white man are strong, not only
because of how common the practice is during slavery, but
because Jacobs does not once mention her maternal
grandfather. She alludes to her five aunts and uncles, but
does not discuss their father or fathers at all. However,
one clue that Jacobs leaves in the description of her
family history are the skin complexions of her mother and
her Uncle Benjamin. Because she separates their phenotypic
description by several lines, she minimizes reader reaction
to the significant disparity between the skin tones of her
mother and her uncle. While Jacobs depicts her mother’s
skin tone as a “light shade of yellowish brown,” she
depicts her uncle as being “nearly white.” The gene pool
250
certainly accommodates these kinds of varied biological
outcomes among siblings with the broad range of black
phenotypes available after generations of miscegenation.
However, given the history of slavery, the discrepancy
between the complexions of Jacobs’s mother and uncle is
likely the result of Jacobs’s uncle being fathered by a
white man. Jacobs’s brief explanation of her uncle’s
complexion makes this particularly plausible, for she
delineates his phenotypical origins by making an awkward
passive voice statement on her grandmother’s Anglo
ancestry. To remark that Benjamin “inherited the
complexion my grandmother had derived from Anglo-Saxon
ancestors” is to put emphasis on Jacobs’s grandmother’s
white father and not on the white man who likely raped
Jacobs’s grandmother. Because Jacobs already camouflages
her great grandfather rhetorically by regarding him simply
as a South Carolina planter, he becomes a relatively safe
ancestral referent.
The delicacy with which Jacobs treats the subject of
her family ancestry is a direct reflection of the delicacy
of a moral code that is impossible for Jacobs to rectify
and which stands between her and her escape from slavery.
Specifically, she is the sexual desire of Dr. Flint, the
uncle of Linda’s owner. However because of the age of
251
Linda’s owner, Dr. Flint takes on de facto ownership of
Linda. Dr. Flint leverages this influence to make sexual
advances at Linda. However, he stops short of raping her
because of a very contrived sense of dignity that he
possess. As a doctor and as an active leader in the
Methodist church, he possesses a very misplaced sense of
honor that compels him to try and keep appearances.
Somehow, Linda’s willful submission to him (even in
pretentiousness) would in his mind legitimize his sexual
fantasy, which he inscribes within a discourse of Christian
character and chivalric civility. Alleging that his sexual
advances are indications of his romantic affection and her
elevated social status he tries to persuade Linda that he
never “treated [Linda] like a Negro” and that he intends
to “make a lady of [her].” Dr. Flint wants to circumscribe
his mal-intentioned sexual advances within a bubble of
knightly pageantry.
Linda successfully avoids his advances for months, but
realizes that she cannot keep this up for long. For a
while she has hope in the prospect of escaping her
predicament by marrying a young black carpenter who is born
free. However, Dr. Flint’s legal and physical ability to
constrain such an arrangement takes this option off the
table for Linda. Linda knows that, outside of marrying the
252
carpenter, her options are limited. She desperately wants
to preserve her grandmother’s honor by remaining sexually
pure, but knows that she does not have the physical power
to resist Dr. Flint should he become desperate enough to
rape her. However, she is aware of Dr. Flint’s ironic
investment in the southern code of honor, which in turn
makes him vulnerable to insult. Consequently, she confers
him with the ultimate act of disrespect by having sex with
another white gentleman, Mr. Sands, an act that stings Dr.
Flint even more by the fact that he eventually discovers
that Linda does this for the sole purpose of spiting him.
Linda’s sexual encounter also produces for Linda a
very contrived sense of choice. Knowing the inevitability
of eventually having to succumb to Dr. Flint’s sexual
advances by force, Linda produces a construction of
personal choice by choosing Mr. Sands over Dr. Flint. Of
course this sense of control over her life is very limited
and very temporary. Upon Dr. Flint’s discovery of Linda’s
sexual encounter, he not only unleashes his rage, but also
begins to attack Linda by criticizing her for violating
Christian moral principles. The irony for Linda is that
she begins to feel even more debased. Though Dr. Flint’s
accusations are immensely hypocritical, Linda is unable to
resurrect a sense of personal dignity. Moreover, she
253
becomes doubly smeared when her grandmother learns of
Linda’s sexual encounter with Mr. Sands. Though Linda’s
grandmother likely experiences something comparable to
Linda earlier in her life, she conveys no empathy for Linda
upon hearing news of Linda’s experience. Instead, Linda’s
grandmother conveys her utmost disappointment.
Both Linda’s grandmother and Dr. Flint cast upon Linda
double standards that are impossible for Linda to fulfill.
Based upon the genealogy that Linda details in the
beginning of the narrative, Linda’s grandmother is likely
faced with the same catch-22s and forced choices as Linda
when Linda’s grandmother is younger. However, Linda’s
grandmother does not process her past in a way that serves
as a resource for Linda. Rather, in her fear that her
children and grandchildren will experience the violation
and degradation that she experiences when she is younger,
Linda’s grandmother is extremely stern with Linda regarding
sexual purity. Dr. Flint presents the other side of
Linda’s dilemma because he makes the prospect of Linda
remaining sexually pure virtually impossible. Linda’s
decision to have sex with Mr. Sands initially provides
Linda with a temporary sense of dignity in the fact that
she does not help Dr. Flint fulfill his malicious plans,
but shortly thereafter, she is infused with an even greater
254
sense of despair. Not only is Mr. Sands not the man with
whom she prefers to be romantically connected, but she
spoils her grandmother’s honor and becomes the object of
Dr. Flint’s cutting and defaming comments about Linda’s
sexual impurity and unchristian-like conduct. Linda’s
sense of disempowerment stems from the strong sense of
obligation to the socio-cultural norms to which Dr. Flint
and Linda’s grandmother subscribe. Both of them are
hypocritical in holding Linda to these norms, but because
of Linda’s own sense of obligation to them, she is unable
to derive a sense of dignity in her rejection of these
norms.
In the midst of this entangled complication of sexual
purity, moral integrity and racial identity for Linda,
Jacobs’s allusions to Nat Turner represent the formulation
of a new empowered sense of identity for Linda. Allusions
to Turner are part of the formula that constructs for Linda
a heroic womanhood. Ultimately, this heroic womanhood
defies the social status quo for black women in slavery,
but also leaves Linda with a renewed sense of dignity.
Jacobs draws upon Turner to lend to Linda the empowered
meanings imbued in Turner’s cause and gender. Because the
mere citation of Turner’s name invokes the radical
revisions of politics, religion and morality that Turner’s
255
rebellion invokes, Jacobs is able to reinforce her
contestation of slavery and sexual exploitation with the
revolutionary and heroic overtones normally relegated to
black male challenges of slavery. One of the first
moments in which Linda’s empowerment becomes apparent is in
a passage in which an allusion to Turner frames the
context. The moment framed in this passage rests upon the
subversive political power of black literacy, which is
heavily associated with Turner’s rebellion. The Turner
allusion in this passage amplifies literacy as a theme and
shrouds one of Linda’s signature moments of empowerment in
the text with Turner heroism. Specifically, this passage
begins with a description of the raiding of black homes by
whites who are looking for Nat Turner. Linda explains that
when the raiders arrive at her home, they comb through the
house and find a letter that Linda forgets to conceal.
However, upon its discovery by her intruders, she leverages
this to reinvent herself:
There was a general rush for the supposed letter,
which, upon examination, proved to be some verses
written to me by a friend. In packing away my things,
I had overlooked them. When their captain informed
them of their contents, they seemed disappointed. He
inquired of me who wrote them. I told him it was one
of my friends. ‘Can you read them?’ he asked. When I
told him I could, he swore, and raved, and tore the
paper into bits. ‘Bring me all your letters!’ said
he, in a commanding tone. I told him I had none.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ he continued, in an insinuating
256
way. ‘Bring them all to me. Nobody shall do you any
harm.’ Seeing I did not move to obey him, his
pleasant tone changed to oaths and threats. ‘Who
writes to you? Half free nigger?’ inquired he. I
replied, ‘O, no; most of my letters are from white
people. Some request me to burn them after they are
read and some I destroy without reading.’ An
exclamation of surprise from some of the company put a
stop to our conversation.
142

The anger that the white captain expresses at Linda’s
ability to write and her possession of a letter written to
her is two-fold: On the one hand, Linda’s ability to write
triggers a phobia about black literacy that is renewed with
Turner’s rebellion. Turner’s strong acumen for both reading
and writing is widely believed by whites to be a major
factor in Turner’s desire to rebel and his ability to
organize a rebellion. Linda’s possession of a letter
represents the prospect of the perpetuation of an organized
movement by slaves to incite violent rebellion. On the
other hand, Linda’s possession of a letter represents her
possible correspondence with a love interest. Upon
considering this possibility, the captain is struck with an
uncanny sense of jealousy. Like Dr. Flint and other white
men like Dr. Flint, the prospect of the consummation of
black lovers in marriage, romantic affection, or sexual
intercourse negates the white male fantasy of the unlimited
sexual availability of black women. Furthermore it

142
Ibid. pp. 811-812.
257
threatens the captain’s particular interest in exploring
Linda’s potential sexual availability. When Linda remarks
that the captain communicates with her in an insinuating
way, she is referring to the sexual suggestiveness of the
captain’s tone and demeanor. Linda’s encounter with the
captain is reminiscent of several similar encounters she
has with Dr. Flint. However, instead of cowering in
intimidation to the captain’s physical power and shrinking
in the face of the character defamations the captain
insinuates when he questions Linda about the author of the
letter, Linda revises the discourse that would enlist her
in the captain’s socio-cultural reality. Essentially, she
brings to bear new connotations of the letter that
implicitly enlist the captain as a recipient of shame and
defamation. She alleges that most of the letters she
receives are from white people who write things filthy
enough to burn, but in alluding to white people in general,
she incriminates the captain and his cohorts, for they all
either participate in or accept the normalization of the
sexual harassment and assault of black women by white men.
Linda’s ability to associate new and empowering
connotations to discourse that otherwise incriminates her
is an example of the working of the signifying monkey
trope. Moreover, this particular use of the trope, also
258
illustrates how Turner and other blacks leverage literacy
both as a practical skill and as a metaphor for the mastery
of discourse. In this case, Linda leverages her ability to
read to challenge and revise the discourse inscribing her
as a sexual victim and deviant. She further underscores
this relationship between literacy and discourse in her
description of the black church experience in the aftermath
of the Turner rebellion. Given Turner’s strong affiliation
with Christianity, black religious activity becomes
increasingly suspect after Turner’s rebellion. Not only do
whites fear the practical role black religious activity
potentially plays in the organizing efforts of blacks to
revolt, but they fear the ways in which blacks who are
biblically knowledgeable are able to revise the application
of Christian discourse to support the movement for black
liberation. Hence, whites ultimately fear the connection
forged between natural and spiritual literacy as a result
of the black affiliation with Christianity. Linda’s
depiction of the religious activity of slaves after the
mention of Turner’s rebellion and capture indicates that
these fears whites have of black religious activity are
warranted:
The wrath of the slaveholders was somewhat appeased by
the capture of Nat Turner. The imprisoned were
released. The slaves were sent to their masters, and
259
the free were permitted to return to their ravaged
homes. Visiting was strictly forbidden on the
plantations. The slaves begged the privilege of again
meeting at their little church in the woods, with
their burying ground around it. It was built by the
colored people, and they had no higher happiness than
to meet there and sing hymns together, and pour out
their hearts in spontaneous prayer. Their request was
denied, and the church was demolished. They were
permitted to attend the white churches, a certain
portion of the galleries being appropriated for their
use. . . .They never seem so happy as when shouting
and singing at religious meetings. . . .The slaves
generally compose their own songs and hymns. . . .

‘Old Satan is one busy ole man;
He rolls dem blocks all in my way;
But Jesus is my bosom friend;
He rolls dem blocks away.

‘If I had died when I was young,
Den how my stam’ring tongue would have sung;
But I am ole, and now I stand/
A narrow chance for to tread dat heavenly
land.’. . . .

I will remember one occasion when I attended a
Methodist class meeting. . . .The congregation struck
up a hymn, and sung as though they were as free as the
birds that warbled round us,—

‘Ol Satan thought he had a mighty aim;
He missed my soul, and caught my sins.
Cry Amen, cry Amen, cry Amen to God!

‘He took my sins upon his back;
Went muttering and grumbling down to hell.
Cry Amen, cry Amen, cry Amen to God!

‘Ol Satan’s church is here below.
Up to God’s free church I hope to go.
Cry Amen, cry Amen, cry Amen to God!

260
Precious are such moments to the poor slaves. If you
were to hear them at such times, you might think they
were happy.
143

Linda details how white reaction to Turner’s rebellion
results in the prohibition of religious slave gatherings
that do not happen in the presence of whites. On the one
hand, Linda suggests the innocence of the private religious
gathering of slaves when she remarks that slaves only want
to “sing hymns together” and “pour out their hearts in
spontaneous prayer.” However, only a few lines later, she
indicates the subversive nature of this impression. In her
quotation of a couple of slave hymns, she is suggestive of
their dual meaning and the potential leverage of this
duality for the purpose of slave resistance. Specifically,
the entity of Satan that is referenced a handful of times
in these hymns can be viewed as an allusion to the Satan of
the Bible, which refers specifically to the pre-temporal
nemesis of God and the architect of evil in the grandest
sense. Hence, when one of the hymns indicates that “‘Ole
Satan’s church is here below,’ ” then one can take this to
refer to humanity’s imperfection on earth and to the
eventual finalization of its perfection upon its inclusion
within “God’s free church” in heaven. However, there is a

143
Ibid. pp. 813-814, 816, 817.

261
subversive reading of this hymn that makes Satan a metaphor
for the slave master. Not only does the first hymn’s
reference to Satan as “one busy ole man” suggest this, but
the notion of Satan’s church residing “here below” suggests
that the white churches at which blacks are forced to
commune after Turner’s rebellion are part of Satan’s
congregation. Moreover, the reference to “God’s free
church” not only refers to solace in heaven upon death, but
also functions as a code for an escape up North to Canada
or to slave-free states in America. Essentially, Linda
revises the application of Christian discourse to challenge
the claim of white Christians that blacks must submit to
whites as a Christian duty. She renders the white
oppression of slaves as the Devil’s work, which by
extension, renders the freedom of slaves as God’s work.
This revision of Christian discourse is precisely what
Turner accomplishes with his rebellion. By enacting his
revolt in the name of the God of the Bible, he enlists the
force of Christianity’s symbolism and language into a
revolutionary cause for black freedom. However, Linda is
also able to apply this radical revision of Christian
discourse into something much more deeply personal. Just as
she confronts the captain leading the raid of her home, she
eventually confronts Dr. Flint on the same terms. Drawing
262
from the implications of Turner’s rebellion, she engages
with Dr. Flint directly in a critique of white Christianity
in general and a critique of Dr. Flint’s theology in
particular. In her chapter entitled “The Church and
Slavery,” she draws sharp contrasts between Christian
doctrine and white Christian practice using several
specific examples, but isolating Dr. Flint’s hypocrisy as a
premier example. This chapter is subsequent to the chapter
discussing the dynamic aftermath of Turner’s rebellion, so
it reflects Linda’s subsequent change in self-esteem, which
enables her to challenge the premise of Dr. Flint’s moral
attacks:
There is a great difference between Christianity and
religion at the south. If a man goes to the communion
table, and pays money into the treasury of the church,
no matter if it be the price of blood, he is called
religious. If a pastor has offspring by a woman not
his wife, the church dismiss him, if she is a white
woman; but if she is colored, it does not hinder his
continuing to be their good shepherd.

When I was told that Dr. Flint had joined the
Episcopal church, I was much surprised. I supposed
that religion had a purifying effect on the character
of men; but the worst persecutions I endured from him
were after he was a communicant. The conversation of
the doctor, the day after he had been confirmed,
certainly gave me no indication that he had ‘renounced
the devil and all his works.” In answer to some of
his usual talk, I reminded him that he had just joined
the church. “Yes, Linda,” said he. ‘It was proper
for me to do so. I am getting in years, and my
position in society requires it, and it puts an end to
all the damned slang. You would do well to join the
church, too, Linda.’
263

“There are sinners enough in it already,” rejoined I.
“If I could be allowed to live like a Christian, I
should be glad.”

‘You can do what I require; and if you are faithful to
me, you will be as virtuous as my wife,’ he replied.

“I answered that the Bible didn’t say so.”

His voice became hoarse with rage. “How dare you
preach to me about your infernal Bible!”
144

Linda cites specific characteristics of American slavery
that persistently work against Christian principle,
amassing an extensive indictment of white Christians
with reference to their participation in the
perpetuation of black enslavement. This indictment
frames the biting critique of Dr. Flint in light of his
affiliation with the Episcopal Church. In her dialogue
with Dr. Flint, she brings an irony to the surface that
is reminiscent of the irony of Turner‘s rebellion. Just
as Turner, in his invocation of Haiti, is an unlikely
source for the reinvigoration of Christian tropes,
Linda, soiled by the catch-22 that forces her into
illicit sexual relationships with white men, is an
unlikely source of Christian doctrine. In fact, she
reiterates the reality of her own sin. Not only does she
give a detailed account of Dr. Flint’s double standard,

144
Ibid. p. 821.
264
but she also cites scriptural authority to refute Dr.
Flint’s misguided theology. Dr. Flint’s sharp retort to
Linda’s reference to the Bible suggests that he wants to
quickly reduce Linda back to the social paradigm of
whoredom that keeps the stigma of moral depravity off of
him. He is quick to do this because he knows that he is
ever more of the whoremonger than Linda. Dr. Flint
recognizes that Linda speaks from a position of moral
authority, even though she is caught in her own web of
moral challenges. In the midst of her own social
degradation, Jacobs depicts Linda as a pillar of moral
sanctity.
Linda’s ability to forge a sense of moral dignity
in the face of incriminating socio-cultural norms draw
from another facet of Turner’s discursive revision.
Specifically, Jacobs points to Turner’s fusion of black
Christian theology with a refreshed American
Revolutionary ethic. Linda taps into this construct of
black liberation to draw upon its models of heroic
resolve, which forges her resolve to escape and her
resolve to reject the socio-cultural norms limiting her
physical mobility. Linda introduces her identification
with the American revolutionary overtones of Turner’s
rebellion when she first discusses its aftermath:
265
Nat Turner’s insurrection broke out; and news threw
our town into great commotion. . . .It was always
the custom to have a muster every year. On that
occasion every white man shouldered his musket.
The citizens and the so-called country gentlemen
wore military uniforms. The poor whites took their
places in the ranks in every-day dress, some
without shoes, some without hats. This grand
occasion had already passed; and when the slaves
were told there was to be another muster, they were
surprised and rejoiced. Poor creatures! They
thought it was going to be a holiday. I was
informed of the true state of affairs. . . .Far as
my eye could reach, it rested on a motley crowd of
soldiers. Drums and fifes were discoursing martial
music. The men were divided into companies of
sixteen, each headed by a captain. Orders were
given, and the wild scouts rushed in every
direction, wherever a colored face was to be
found.
145

This passage draws attention to the American
Revolutionary themes of Turners revolt within the
context of a remarkable irony. Linda comments on the
commonality of the celebratory ritual and pageantry of
annual musters, which are clearly in tribute to the
American Revolution. She indicates that the most
marginalized in American society--poor whites and
slaves--participate in this celebration. However, upon
news of Turner’s revolt, white participants in the
muster must transition from the charade of military
engagement to their participation in a real military
engagement. Two important ironies emerge in Linda’s

145
Ibid. p. 809.
266
description of this: The first is that she illustrates
that while whites parade in celebration of the symbol of
the American Revolution, Nat Turner reinvigorates the
real thing in his revolutionary upheaval of the slave
order. The second irony is in the fact that poor whites
and slaves participate in the celebration of the muster.
Their participation only underscores the emptiness of
the white American revolutionary tradition in its
inability to address the most obvious restrictions to
human liberty. Turner’s rebellion fills this void and
Linda taps into its power.
Shortly after Linda discusses the aftermath of
Turner’s rebellion, she makes some remarks that suggest
that the subtle correlations she draws between Turner
and American Revolutionary themes are not casual
associations. She becomes very explicit in her
invocation of American Revolutionary themes when she
describes her resolve to escape a few passages later:
I had succeeded in cautiously conveying some
messages to my relatives. They were harshly
threatened, and despairing of my having a chance to
escape, they advised me to return to my master, ask
his forgiveness, and let him make an example of me.
But such counsel had no influence with me. When I
started upon this hazardous undertaking, I had
resolved that come what would, there should be no
turning back. “Give me liberty or give me death.”
146

146
Ibid. p. 844.
267

Contesting the norms to which her relatives want her to
submit, Linda calls upon the American Revolutionary
tradition to invoke a greater sense of purpose.
Inspirited by Turner’s revolutionary purpose, she
resolves to complete her mission, even if it cuts across
the narratives of domesticity and moral sanctity that
otherwise incriminate and defame her.
Linda further solidifies her connection to Turner
and her appropriation of the narratives of heroic
dignity as she reflects on one of the defining moments
of her decision to escape. She alludes to Nat Turner as
she reflects on her parents’ influence on her life and
the potency of a Turner-like spiritual epiphany:
I knew the doom that awaited my fair baby in
slavery, and I determined to save her from it, or
perish in the attempt. I went to make this vow at
the graves of my poor parents, in the burying
ground of the slaves. . . .I knelt by the graves of
my parents, and thanked God, as I had often done
before. . . .I had received my mother’s blessing
when she died; and in many an hour of tribulation I
had seemed to hear her voice, sometimes chiding me,
sometimes whispering loving words into my wounded
heart. . . .As I passed the wreck of the old
meeting house, where, before Nat Turner’s time, the
slaves had been allowed to meet for worship, I
seemed to hear my father’s voice come from it,
bidding me not to tarry till I reached freedom or
the grave. I rushed on with renovated hopes. My
trust in God had been strengthened by that prayer
among the graves.
147

147
Ibid. pp. 836-837.
268

Jacobs’s invocation of Turner in this passage is
significant because this is four chapters after her
chapter on Turner. Outside of her chapter on Turner,
this is the only other place that she mentions him.
Furthermore, she mentions the wreck of the church
demolished shortly after the insurrection as the site of
her epiphany. This further suggests the symbolic import
of the church building. Not only do whites in the
community recognize it as an incubator for black
Christian violent rebellion, but Jacobs recognizes it as
a potential source for God’s intervening guidance.
Because nothing else in the surrounding paragraphs
allude to the church building wreckage at all, she has
no reason to raise the issue of Nat Turner and the
wreckage except to correlate it with her epiphany. She
must be aware that an allusion to the wreckage is not a
casual reference. Given the full chapter she commits to
a discussion of Turner’s insurrection and given the fact
that she discusses Turner no where else but in the
passage above, her re-invocation of Turner and the
wreckage in this passage is incredibly significant
symbolically. Moreover, given the nature of this

269
epiphany, she enlists Turner as a kind of heroic model
after which she patterns her own escape. Turner’s
rebellion is inspired by a series of epiphanies. They
are considerably more elaborate than Linda’s, for
Turner’s are filled with specific allusions to Christian
typology, such as his references to Christ, Calvary, and
blood. However, he and Jacobs are similar in their
common reference to prophetic vision. In summarizing
his revelations Turner notes,
The Holy Ghost had revealed itself to me, and made
plain the miracles it had shown me. . . .it was
plain to me that the Savior was about to lay down
the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and the
great judgment was at hand.
148

Both Turner and Jacobs reference figures of God as
sources of inspiration and clarity with regards to their
individual destinies. The sense of religious conviction
behind both Turner’s and Linda’s pursuit of freedom
rallies their liberation efforts within the context of
an epic grandeur, which transcends the immediacy of
domestic concerns. Linda’s participation in this
underscores her challenge to the narratives of
domesticity and moral sanctity, which circumscribe her

148
Turner, Nat. The Confessions of Nat Turner. William L.
Andrews and Henry Louis Gates Jr. eds. New York: Library of
America, 2000. p. 253.

270
options for freedom. The connection that Linda forges
with Turner’s symbolism also calls upon the social
narratives available to black men in general. Linda
draws attention to this in the way that she
distinguishes between her mother and father’s voices
when she has her spiritual and political epiphany at
their gravesites. When she discusses her mother’s voice,
she describes them as “chiding” and “loving,” both
reflective of the world of domesticity and moral
sanctity. “Chiding” alludes to the rules of moral
sanctity and “loving” alludes to the nurturing world of
motherly care. This depiction of her mother is very
similar to Linda’s characterization of her grandmother,
who, for Linda, represents a limited subject-position.
However, Linda describes her father’s voice very
differently. In the same sentence in which she mentions
Nat Turner’s name, she alludes to her father’s voice and
its call for her to commit to escape in the spirit of
Patrick Henry. The fact that her father dies when she
is very young and that she mentions him only one other
time in the narrative suggests that her mention of him
here is very deliberate. Her father is clearly an
important symbol of the narratives of masculinity.
Linda recognizes that these narratives offer her and
271
decides to appropriate them in her construction of a
heroic identity. Linda later cross-dresses as a sailor
to conceal her escape, which solidifies her
appropriation of the narratives of masculinity in a
tangible symbol. Sailors represent heroism, patriotism
and physical mobility.
Ultimately, Jacobs finds within these allusions to
heroic masculinity a source of political possibility
generally not available to black women. Her use of them
is not about exalting narratives of masculinity over
femininity, but about constructing a new model of heroic
womanhood. Given her political goals, the examples of
empowered womanhood modeled by her grandmother and
Betsy, though strong and inspiring, are insufficient to
contest the moral and social imperatives relegating
Linda to the domestic sphere and requiring her to
fulfill an impossible moral double standard. Jacobs
honors Betsy and her grandmother, isolating them in
various passages that highlight their strength and bold
defiance of slavery’s evils. However, having exhausted
what is available to Linda in a political world
circumscribed by the domestic sphere and religious
legalism, Jacobs draws upon the empowering heroic
qualities available in the world of men. Symbolized
272
most potently in the allusions to Turner, but
embellished further in her characterization of black men
throughout her narrative, Jacobs constructs a model of
heroic womanhood that is worthy of the grandeur and
significance of her political cause.
Aligning himself with the narrative and symbolic
trajectory of Christian scripture, Turner himself becomes a
prophetic sign upon which Jacobs, Douglass and Walker
Signify. Walker’s allusion to Turner is anachronistic.
Publishing before Turner’s rebellion, Walker’s writings
predict the imminence of someone like a Nat Turner and
forwards the ideological framework from which a Nat Turner
would draw. Hence, along with Douglass and Jacobs, Walker
challenges the cultural order of the South, an order that
renders Turner as a recalcitrant and a wild aberration of
slave behavior. The writings of Walker, Douglass and
Jacobs draw upon alternative readings of black revolt that
perpetuate a black liberation politic. Essentially, they
underscore the links Turner makes between black revolution
and the Christian tradition, which come across as
illuminations into the original intent of Scripture. By
doing this, they position themselves as spiritual seers who
have divine insight into the ways of God. Their readings
are a kind of corrective hermeneutics that defends black
273
freedom by upholding and clarifying the religious and
ethical principles to which white Americans subscribe.
Consequently, their rhetoric serves as an internal critique
that re-interprets American destiny in light of a re-
reading of the signs of the times. This act of “reading”
is not at all a passive exercise. More than a meditation on
printed words, it is a voiced interpretation of rhetoric,
ideology and myth. The combined effect of literacy’s
function as a practical skill, the political leverage
literacy fosters for the enslaved and the biblical
convergence of spiritual and natural literacy stretch the
connotative possibilities of literacy as a concept.
Consequently, literacy retains a figurative adaptability
that correlates black literacy with spiritual foresight and
racial progress. In essence, the ability to read words
sustains a cultural association with an ability to read
spiritual signs and an ability to confer upon these signs
connotations of black revolt. This dynamic renders the
connotative definition of literacy as the ability to re-
read and re-voice the vocabularies of American culture in
service of black liberation.

274
Chapter 3: The Psychographic World of Thomas Gray

This chapter analyzes The Confessions of Nat Turner
within the context of the theatricality of plantation
culture and close readings of the text. These readings of
The Confessions hinge on a distilled focus on the
psychographic profile of Thomas Gray, The Confessions’
white transcriber, vis-à-vis Turner’s empowered
subjectivity. Far from reading The Confessions as a one-on-
one authorial and editorial power struggle between Gray and
Turner, this chapter focuses more on the broad range of
discursive forces that both forge and undercut narrative
continuity in the text and the culture. In light of this
more expansive interpretive window, The Confessions comes
across as a textual reflection of the tension between the
theatricality of plantation myth and the potency of Nat
Turner and his rebellion to unmask the travesty of this
myth.

275
The Theatricality of Plantation Culture

To be sure, the allusion to theatricality in
plantation mythology refers to the formal and informal,
conscious and subconscious acts of performance masking and
re-presenting that charade, camouflage, re-characterize and
clarify intentionality, cause and effect in southern
plantation culture. Gray’s psychographic profile plays out
within the context of this theatricality and Turner’s
subjectivity plays out in its undoing. Though this
theatricality can take on literal expression in staged
productions, such as it does in the performance of
minstrelsy in the decades following Turner’s rebellion, its
basic expression comes across in the common social
vernacular of plantation life. In fact, minstrelsy
resonates so well with its consumers in the North partly
because it stems from the basic theatrical premise of the
South’s social palatability: The paternalistic white slave
master—both nurturing and neurotic—and the subservient
black Sambo—both naughty and naïve—are the patent stock
role pairing of the South’s social order. The white
paternalist and black Sambo stock roles forge social
templates that hold the moral authority of the plantation
world in place. Moral in this instance does not denote
true virtue, but a contrived ethical rubric for slavery
276
based upon the plantation order’s pre-disposed social roles
for blacks and whites. The white paternalist and black
Sambo populate the imagined southern cosmos with mutually
benefiting and mutually agreeing whites and blacks.
Though premised upon the elusiveness of fantasy, this
social charade sustains a remarkable level of credibility
through an uncanny principle of reciprocity: Because the
authority of the paternalist is contrived, its legitimacy
has to be confirmed by its continuity in the plantation
world rather than by its function as an abstract truth or
principle. This means that part of the validity of this
authority relies upon the slaves. Slaves confirm the moral
authority of slavery when they demonstrate that they
concede to the plantation myth. This extends far beyond
the physical and legal domination of the master over the
slave. The influence that the master levies over the slave
by force does not count toward the legitimacy of moral
authority in the same way. Only the willful submission of
the slave to the master fulfills the principle of
reciprocity necessary to confirm the legitimacy of the
master’s authority. However, because of the power dynamics
of slavery—the amicability of master and slave always being
undermined by the prospect of punishment or escape—, the
277
willful submission of slave to master is virtually a
categorical impossibility.
Hence, the pretense of submission is really the only
way that any form of submission happens. Either slaves
consciously pretend that they are loyal to the master or
they submit to the master under the hidden, camouflaged,
subliminal, subconscious or implied influence of force.
That is, slave and master can participate in a charade of
mutual deference to the slave order with such a degree of
normalcy and constancy that the contrived nature of it to
both parties can seem invisible. Slaves can genuinely
believe that they are loyal to their masters, masters can
genuinely believe that they are loyal to their slaves, and
both parties can genuinely believe in the good intentions
of the other party. However, the good will of master and
slave only belies the fact that the physical and legal
parameters forge the relationship into existence in the
first place. Regardless of how relatively amicable the
relationship between master and slave ever become, this
relationship is always haunted by the prospect of the
slave’s rebellion or of the lash of the master’s whip. The
threat of either destabilizes any genuineness. This
renders the charade of amicability perpetual and further
278
reinforces the need for the slave order to legitimize
itself though the appearance of reciprocity.
As a result of the inextricable relationship between
the legitimacy of the paternalist’s moral authority and the
appearance of reciprocity between master and slave,
reciprocity becomes a status symbol that marks the slave
master’s honor. In fact, honor itself becomes a euphemism
that consolidates all of the contrived elements of the
plantation world, from its theatrical underpinnings, to its
misplaced constructs of morality, to its anxious dependence
upon appearances. It situates white men and their
aspirations for paternalist prestige at the center of the
southern social order. Indeed, honor in the southern world
is an attribute of social distinction, primarily reserved
for white men of means. For white men, it is a
consolidated representation of all that constitutes high
social standing in the American South. Having less to do
with character and more to do with reputation, it is marked
by various political, social, cultural, economic and
religious status symbols. However, the most recognizable
status symbols are material: land and slaves. Land and
slaveownership mark a southern white man’s inclusion in a
paternalistic tradition, which distinguishes him as a
father-like king. A reputation of taking good care of his
279
immediate family members, his slaves, and his land
distinguish him as a benevolent and caring father. At the
same time, his land is also his territory and his slaves
and family, his subjects. Taking on rights and privileges
akin to kingship, the paternalist views his ownership of
land and slaves as symbols of his private kingdom. At the
same time, honor in the South is “an intangible thing.”
149

For white landholding men especially, it consolidates a
contrived sense of identity continuity across race, sex and
class and serves as a bulwark against cultural
contamination by those less-than-honorable. More
importantly, honor itself is a form of power.
150
As Orlando
Patterson notes, the power dynamic between master and slave
is strongly tied to honor as a cultural value: “What was
universal in the master-slave relationship was the strong
sense of honor the experience of mastership generated, and
conversely, the dishonoring of the slave condition.”
151

Honor is such a pervasive cultural force amongst
southern white men that it not only engages men of means,
but it also transfixes the imagination of white men without

149
Franklin, John Hope. The Militant South 1800-1861.
Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002. p. 34.
150
Patterson, Orlando. Slavery and Social Death: A
Comparative Study. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1982. p. 10.
151
Ibid. p. 11.
280
material wealth. Both non-landowning and non-slaveholding
white men subscribe to its power in the prospect of or in
their figurative association with slaveownership. As
cultural historian Walter Johnson notes, a figurative
association with honor can often serve as a proxy for the
possession of the material status symbols of honor. He
comments on how social distinction becomes possible for
aspiring white male slaveholders through narrative, even
when the actual ownership of slaves is merely a faint
prospect or barely a possibility. Somehow the narration of
slaveownership—even when the slaveownership is imagined—can
forge figurative collateral upon which aspiring or imagined
slaveholders build social prestige in the South’s cultural
economy:
Writing to older male relatives about [their starts]
in the slave market, [young planters] translat[e] the
productive and reproductive labor of their (bought and
imagined) slaves into images of their own upward
progress through slaveholding society. These young
men [write] themselves into the history of the
antebellum social order—the lineal and patriarchal
story of how their fathers’ world would be produced
over time and space.
152

Slaveholders-to-be and even slaveholders-that-never-will
enlist themselves in the cultural narrative of progress
marked by the legal, physical and figurative mastery of

152
Johnson, Walter. Soul by Soul: Life Inside the
Antebellum Slave Market. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1999. pp. 83-84.
281
slaves.
153
Whether to participate in the plantation legacy
of biological fathers or in the plantation legacy of
fathers adopted through myth—the likes of Thomas Jefferson
and other Founding Fathers serving as implicit ideals of
white paternalism—white southern males needy for social
recognition reinvent themselves through anecdotes of
prospective or imagined accomplishment in the slave
economy.
Amazingly, the power of narrative self-invention is so
forceful that even when aspiring slaveholders become actual
slaveholders they continue to use the power of narrative to
bolster their social ranks. In fact, slaves invented in
paternalist narrative represent the ultimate expression of
honor for many of these distinguished southern men. This is
because imagined slaves or slaves imaginatively represented
in narrative fulfill the reciprocal requirement of honor
without restraint. There is no pretense in the submission
of slaves that are constructed in the paternalist
imagination. Because the slaves invented in narrative are
essentially blank slates upon which their masters can apply
any paternalistic fantasy, these imagined slaves mark the
apex of paternalistic fulfillment. The stroking of their
ego through narrative invention is not something

153
Ibid. pp. 78-116.
282
paternalists openly disclose or, for that matter, a dynamic
of which they are necessarily consciously aware. Rather,
they convince themselves and others that their narratives
are really objective descriptions of the responsibilities
of plantation management. In what Johnson calls “the
grammar of economic speculation” and “imagined necessity,”
slave purchasers, slaveholders and prospective participants
“objectif[y] their desires into necessities.”
154

Paternalists’s plantation life fantasies take on
pseudo-materiality and market rationality because they
borrow from the provisional condition of slave value, the
potential productivity of slave labor and the economic
logic associated with both prospects. The prospect of
future abundance serves as the material proof of the
slaveholders’ preeminent social value and provides the
cultural vocabulary from which he scripts his self-
invention. Savvy slaveholders or purchasers are able to
inscribe their self-inventions into the through-lines of
economic necessity that are inherent to the commercial
dynamics of slavery. “As they [narrate] their upward
progress through the slave market, [they] construct
themselves out of slaves.”
155
They secure “access to the

154
Ibid. pp. 84, 85.
155
Ibid. p. 88.
283
master languages of slave buying, languages which
transmut[e] the realities of dependence on slaves into the
conventions of slaveholders’ self-willed independence.”
156

The fiscal concerns of supply and demand, cost and benefit,
and profit and loss all serve as thematic gateways through
which planters communicate the subtexts particular to their
self-re-creation. Forging the purchase, ownership and
management of slaves as all-purpose responses to a milieu
of logistical, economic and social needs, white male
participants in the slave market forge discursive and
material contexts for their climbs up the southern social
ladder.
157
Johnson further explains how this mindset plays
out how in the minds of Southern planters:
In the planter’s world of well-reasoned decisions,
innumerable slaves could be bought to solve endless
problems. More acres could be cleared and more cotton
or sugar produced. Ditching and draining, clearing
and fencing, hoeing and planting, cutting and packing—
these tasks could be expanded infinitely. What could
not be achieved through expansion might be done
through intensification. Having coopers, carpenters,
and bricklayers on the plantation could provide labor
at just the moment it was needed and could solve
problems as quickly as they arose, eliminating the
time it took for outside laborers to be contacted and
contracted. As [planters] described their business,
they objectified their desires into necessities—the
crops and buildings themselves demanded that their
owners buy more and more slaves. . . .There was, of
course, nothing necessary about these choices except
the language that described them: these men did not

156
Ibid.
157
Ibid. p. 85.
284
have to buy slaves. But to say that these invocations
were imaginary is not to say that these planters
misrepresented their motivation in letters. . . .As
they explained the choices they made in the slave
market, [they] were explaining themselves—giving
cultural meaning to the economy in people upon which
their lives (or at least their livelihoods) depended.
158

The cultural meaning that planters imbue upon these choices
emerges out of the theatrical underpinnings of plantation
life, which provides the raw material for self-invention.
The stock role of the southern paternalist alone provides
the character mold out of which planters forge a socially
elevated plantation identity. Taking on the cultural
vestiges of the paternalist figure, planters inscribe into
the logistics of slave purchasing and management socially
palatable ideals that enrich the narratives of their self-
invention:
Through the incredible generative power of the
slaveholding ideology, the slave-made landscape of the
antebellum South [is] translated into a series of
statements about slaveholders: about their manly
independence, their able stewardship of family legacy,
their speculative savvy, or their managerial skill,
about their planter-class leisure and their luminous
good cheer, about the well-ordered households and
well-serviced needs, about their wise and generous
provision for their families and their futures.
159

In essence, the paternalist mythos, which is centered on a
motif of altruistic oversight, enables them to claim the
virtues of vision, stewardship, compassion, and abundance.

158
Ibid. pp. 85-86.
159
Ibid. p.102.
285
Drawing upon these virtues, planters redefine slave
purchase and ownership as acts of charity and the condition
of slavery itself as an expression of custodial care. The
mythos of the paternalist stock role enlists the southern
planter as a glorified father figure, one who takes good
care of his family (which by mythological extension
includes his slaves), who is a wise steward of present
assets, and who possess the foresight to make on-going
investments that bolster his ability to fulfill the other
two expectations.
Hence, the theatricality of the plantation world
becomes even further embedded in southern life as the
paternalist reframes his cruelty as kindness, justifying
his own honor as a slaveholder by presuming that, like a
king in relationship to his subjects, his honor extends to
his slaves. Essentially, the paternalist believes that
submitted slaves are expressions of the master’s honor
while a caring and materially prosperous master is the
ultimate expression of the slave’s honor. However, as
Patterson notes, the dishonor of this scenario in real
terms for slaves is in that they have “no independent
social existence. . .no public worth” and “ no name[s] of
286
[their] own to defend. [They can] only defend [their]
master’s worth and [their] master’s name.”
160

The concept of the slave’s total dependence on the master
is the psychological truth upon which slavery’s moral
authority lies, but as such, it also unsettles the master’s
grip on the slave. This is because the contours of the
plantation myth are so delicate that they create a
remarkable level of instability. Slave masters attempt to
manage this instability, but are nonetheless plagued by the
prospective permeability of the boundaries distinguishing
their honor from their shame. The slave’s expression of an
independent existence, however subtle, threatens the
continuity of this truth outside of the plantation world’s
controlled social dynamics. The prospect of the master’s
loss over the slave certainly affects the master in
practical and material terms, but more dynamically in
cultural and symbolic terms. Slaves mark the extremities
of dishonor, which in turn delineate the contours of honor
for whites. Slaves that defy their dependent status, even
in symbolic ways, expose the charade of this boundary.
Exposed as charade, the plantation myth loses its moral

160
Patterson, Orlando. Slavery and Social Death: A
Comparative Study. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1982. pp. 10-11.

287
authority and renders the boundaries between honor and
dishonor in the southern world permeable. The permeability
of the perimeters of honor makes blacks viable competitors
with whites in the world of social distinction and cultural
meaning.
Such uncanny fragility of the plantation myth social
order creates a two-sided anxiety for plantation
paternalists: One side of the anxiety has to do with the
deficiency of meaning, which refers to the fundamental
inadequacy of the plantation myth at the start. The
minutia of plantation oversight, slave management and the
interworkings of the slave business comprise so many
interrelated components of slavery that the total
domination of every slave in every way is impossible.
Plantation theatricality is never total or comprehensive
because, just as persistently as slave masters enforce
their power, slaves contest it and find creative ways to
undercut the vestiges of slavery’s domination. There are
always cracks and slippages in the system that foster some
expression of slave autonomy. Remarkably, the
psychological needs of the master are such that even subtle
expressions of slave independence threaten the paradigm
distinguishing the dignity of the master from the shame of
the slave. The other side of this anxiety has to do with
288
the surplus of meaning, the unwanted effect of cultural
narrative production. Ironically, the theatrical nature of
plantation culture causes paternalists to lose themselves
in imitation. The caricature of slaves by paternalists
confuses the honored with the shamed. The type-casting of
slaves as inherently dishonorable in the plantation
narrative script only calls attention to the scripted
nature of the paternalist’s honor. When the status of the
honored is reduced to its discursive roots, the boundaries
between shame and honor become confused. The prospective
permeability of the fictional line dividing the honored
from the dishonored fosters the anxiety that the occupants
on either side are exchangeable with each other. As
cultural historian Joseph Roach notes, within this dynamic
“resides the deeply seated and potentially threatening
possibility of involuntary surrogation through the act of
performance.”
161

161
Roach, Joseph. Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic
Performance. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. p.
6.
289
The Cultural Context of Gray’s World

Nat Turner exploits the discursive surpluses and
deficiencies of plantation myth theatricality. Engaging in
violent revolutionary activity uncharacteristic of an
otherwise compliant and obedient slave, he draws attention
to the insufficiency of the plantation myth to account for
slave behavior. Turner also comes across as an empowered
subject through the surplus of meaning produced by the
theatricality embedded in Virginia’s legal treatment of
Turner and latent in American mythological and symbolic
associations otherwise intended to suppress Turner. With
regards to the legal structures processing Turner’s case,
they are so fraught with the theatrics of plantation custom
that the charade comes full circle to inadvertently
legitimize Turner as a legal and free-willed subject. This
obviously works against the relegation of Turner to the
Sambo stock role, but Gray’s undoing of Turner as a subject
ironically involves his constitution of Turner as a
subject. To re-narrate the Turner rebellion in a manner
palatable with the Southern social order, Gray must first
acknowledge the rebellion as a physical fact, which, in
turn, enlists Turner as a free-willed subject and legal
entity. Moreover, the ability for Turner to narrate his
story, though conveyed in a transcription, speaks to the
290
prospect of his own subjectivity and his role as a
recognized authority on his own story. The aura of
authenticity that The Confessions secures is premised upon
the exclusivity of Gray’s interview with Turner and upon
the existence of Turner as a thinking and speaking subject
who is capable of acting upon intentions radically contrary
to the southern social order.
The prospect of Turner’s subjectivity is further
compounded by Turner’s confluence with American myth and
symbol. The moral authority from which Turner makes his
claims derives from a cultural matrix native to American
conceptualizations of Christianity and nation that, in its
appropriation by Turner, becomes aligned with black
liberation efforts that rewrite the discourse of American
freedom. Turner’s categorical association with America’s
founding political and spiritual male leadership critiques
the presumed exclusivity, immutability and constancy of
America’s theo-cultural matrix and the honor it extends to
elite slaveholding southern white males. Turner’s
rebellion undercuts the contrived honor of the southern
slaveholder and enlists Turner as a recipient of honor.
Outside of zealous white abolitionists, this honor is
virtually unacknowledged by whites directly. Rather, their
honor of Turner is reflected in their awkward and often
291
subconscious submission to the spiritual rectitude,
prophetic truth and mythical force of Turner’s rebellion.
The respect that many whites of the nineteenth century
reserve for Christian revivalism and American patriotic
traditions extend inadvertently to Turner because of the
way his rebellion aligns with the imperatives of these
phenomena. The translation of Turner’s rebellion in terms
of America’s theo-cultural signifiers leaves whites to
contend with a volatile black subjectivity and mythical
forcefulness that their discourse cannot erase.
All of these matters are incredibly relevant for Gray,
for shortly before the Turner rebellion, he finds himself
in a tenuous socio-economic position that cuts across all
of the anxieties correlated with the fear of symbolic
replacement. In particular, Gray experiences significant
changes in his economic standing over a four-year period,
which hang his social position and placement in the
hierarchy of masculine honor in the balance: As a medium-
sized landowner and slaveholder in the late 1820s, he is,
at one time, an up-and-coming white male elite.
162
In 1827,
he owns 400 acres, eight horses and 23 slaves. Also, having

162
Allmendinger, Jr. David. “The Construction of The
Confessions of Nat Turner.” Nat Turner: A Slave Rebellion
in History and Memory. Ed. Kenneth S. Greenburg. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2004. p. 27.
292
recently married and having recently become a justice of
the peace, he amasses a collection of paternalistic status
symbols that allow him to begin to vie for position amongst
the southern elite.
163
Poised to start a family, poised to
further his wealth with the labor of slaves, and serving in
a respectable public service role, Gray has all of the
trimmings of a young paternalist. He needs only to
continue to nurture his social and economic capital to
increase his ranks amongst the most respected white men in
the South. However, by 1830, Gray’s wife dies. He loses
half of his farm and all of his horses and slaves.
164
His
circumstances eventually become so dire financially that he
is forced to leave his farm home and live in a home owned
by his father.
165
With such a huge financial set back, but
more importantly, a huge social setback, Gray finds his
class status hanging in the balance. Having tasted the
beginnings of a paternalistic lifestyle, one with cultural
affinity to the lifestyle of the Founding Fathers, Gray
finds himself a few possessions away from poverty.
Gray wastes no time in the attempt to rectify his
situation. Relinquishing his seat in the county

163
Ibid.
164
Ibid.
165
Ibid.
293
courthouse, he takes up a new career as a lawyer.
166
This
new profession, heavily associated with the Founding
Fathers and contemporaries of Gray’s who are in high social
standing, re-situates Gray to command more prestige in the
social economy of the South. However, not having
completely restored his fortunes and being so recently
removed from the prospect of poverty, Gray is in a liminal
socioeconomic space that also leaves him in psychographic
limbo. Gray reaches for the accoutrements of America’s
politically and culturally elite even as his loss of them
minimizes the social distinctions that mark his difference
from blacks. Though Gray is far from experiencing anything
close to slavery, in his mind and in the minds of other
whites, economically humble circumstances can strip whites
of the symbolic power, authority and value that mark their
superiority over blacks. The prospect of this comes close
to home for Gray, not only because of how close he comes to
poverty, but because the breakout of Turner’s rebellion
occurs shortly after this happens. The explosiveness of
Turner’s rebellion—its physical repercussions, its
psychological blow to plantation myth apologists, the
economic threat that it poses to plantation owners—already
challenges the symbolic potency of the South’s

166
Ibid.
294
paternalists, but the occurrence of Turner’s rebellion
during such a transitional socio-economic period for Gray
magnifies this challenge for Gray. Remarkably, within a
year of Gray fulfilling the requirements to serve as a
lawyer, the Turner rebellion breaks out and inadvertently
participates in Gray’s evolving sense of socio-cultural,
socio-economic and professional identity. The immediacy of
the Turner rebellion brings Gray into a level of engagement
with matters of symbolic replacement that are much stronger
than that of the general public. In sum, Gray’s
involvement in the legal proceedings of Turner’s rebellion
are uncanny, for in a very tangible way, Turner’s rebellion
threatens the economic and cultural basis of the way of
life Gray so ardently pursues. Hence, on the cusps of a
newfound sense of social and economic prominence, Gray must
wrestle with the implications of the Turner rebellion on
his sense of socio-cultural identity. To make things more
complicated, the publication of The Confessions puts Gray
in a position to increase his fortunes. Laying claims to
the copyright of Turner’s testimony, Gray not only views
his transcription work as a public service, but as an
opportunity to increase his fortune and, eventually, his
social standing.
295
With all of the social, cultural and economic nuances
weighing on The Confessions, Gray’s involvement with Turner
is much more than procedural. Gray’s participation in the
legal aftermath of the Turner rebellion is one way that
Gray sorts through a very involved identity formation
process. Gray wrestles with his socio-cultural sense of
meaning and identity in his attempt to both document
Turner’s acts and make sense of them in ways that do not
undercut the value system validating Gray’s attempts to
rise in prominence. This happens even as Gray’s prominence
rests in some degree on the commercial success of The
Confessions as a publication.

296
The Confessions as Cultural Window

Gray’s internal conflicts are at the heart of the
struggle between plantation theatricality and Turner’s
subjectivity, which is just as explosive in a discursive
and mythological sense as Turner’s rebellion is in a
material sense. In fact, the tension between the
theatricality circumscribing Gray’s sense of self and the
mythological through-lines underscoring Turner’s
subjectivity are so strong that the intensity of their rub
against each other comes across in the title page of The
Confessions. In a cultural dynamic so dense with
implications, even the subtleties of copyright
documentation have an enlarged role in the introduction of
The Confessions. In fact, the introductory materials within
The Confessions contain far more than the legal
documentation common to any other published work, extending
beyond the documentation of copyright. The legal regalia in
the opening pages of The Confessions is so heavily
pronounced that it abandons the marginal role normally
slated for such information in a published work and takes
on a more dynamic function as a framing device
contextualizing the reception and interpretation of
Turner’s testimony. In particular, the legal language of
the title page is itself a rhetorical device that enlarges
297
Gray’s role in relationship to Turner’s testimony,
rendering Gray’s transcription not only as an attempt to
document Turner’s story, but an attempt to document Gray’s
self-reinvention and redefined place in the social
hierarchy of the South. A close reading of the title page
and the page immediately following it bears this out:
The Confessions of Nat Turner, The Leader of the Late
Insurrection in Southampton, VA, as fully and
voluntarily made to Thomas R. Gray, in prison where he
was confined, and acknowledged by him to be such when
read before the Court of Southampton; with the
certificate, under seal, of the Court convened at
Jerusalem, November 5, 1831, for his trial. Also, an
authentic account of the whole insurrection, with
lists of the whites who were murdered, and of the
negroes brought before the Court of Southampton, and
there sentenced, &c..
167

On the very next page, the words of the title page are
repeated, but prefaced by a very formally phrased short
paragraph which reads:
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, TO WIT: Be it remembered, That
on this tenth day of November, Anno domini, eitghteen
hundred and thirty-one, Thomas R. Gray of the said
District, deposited in this office the title of a
book, which is in the words as following.
168

Following the repeat of the title page words, the text
reads as follows:
the right whereof he claims as proprietor, in
conformity with an Act of Congress, entitled “An act

167
Gray, Thomas. The Confessions of Nat Turner in The
Confessions of Nat Turner and Related Documents. Ed.
Kenneth S. Greenburg. New York: Bedford, 1996. p. 38.
168
Ibid. p. 39.
298
to amend the several acts respecting Copy Rights.” –
EDMUND J. LEE, Clerk of the District. In testimony
that the above is a true copy, from the record of the
District Court for the District of Columbia, I, Edmund
J. Lee, the Clerk thereof, have hereunto set my hand
and affixed the seal of my office, this 10
th
day of
November, 1831.
169

The legal language within these pre-textual materials is
very extensive, giving a very measured and exacting tone to
The Confessions. Gray appropriates the legal process’s
language, coding system and formality in order to lend the
weight and import of legal certainty to his document.
Apart from the title page’s excessive and decorative
language in general, specific words like “seal,”
“certificate,” “authentic account,” “Act of Congress,” true
copy,” and “record of the District Court” are all terms
borrowed from the legal culture that brand upon The
Confessions an official document status. Given the erratic,
reactionary, explosive, and inconclusive nature of the
occurrence and aftermath of the Turner rebellion, the use
of the legal language within the text’s introductory
materials is strategic. The legal language provides the
tenor of institutional certainty, safety and
predictability. It reinforces the idea that Turner’s
capture and death is official and that all of his past

169
Ibid.

299
activities are institutionally manageable. The redundancy
of the legal language invokes this mood even more. Legal
language is inherently redundant, but The Confessions adds
to this by stating the words to the title page twice and
then authenticating this authentication with a legal
statement from the Clerk of the District. The extra step
to notarize a document that is already overtly decorated in
official language only speaks to the overstated nature of
these introductory remarks.
The connotations of order, authority, certainty and
state power correlated with this legal language also plays
a very important role relative to Gray’s participation in
the culture of paternalistic self-reinvention. This comes
across in the fact that Gray’s interview with Turner is not
part of the official legal proceedings. Notably, Gray’s
publication plays no formal role in the prosecution of
Turner. Though Gray participates in periphery legal
activity relative to the Turner case—he provides legal
council for five of the slave defendants—, none of Gray’s
formal responsibilities are tied to Turner directly.
170
In
fact, his interview with Turner is not an assignment

170
Allmendinger, Jr. David. “The Construction of The
Confessions of Nat Turner.” Nat Turner: A Slave Rebellion
in History and Memory. Ed. Kenneth S. Greenburg. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2004. pp. 24-27.
300
mandated by the court, but rather a function of Gray’s own
initiative and undertaking. The sense that The Confessions
is more a function of Gray’s narrative inventiveness than
of official legal formalities also comes across in the
discrepancy between the official court record of Turner’s
trial and in what appears to be legal documentation in
other places of The Confessions beyond the title page. In
particular, Gray inserts what has the appearance of a
court-sealed and signed affidavit that affirms that the
testimony documented in The Confessions is read in Turner’s
presence. It contains the signatures of six white men
involved in the legal or logistical proceedings of the
Turner case, but, curiously, the official transcript of the
trial contains no such document.
171
Also, towards the end of
The Confessions, Gray inserts what appears to be an excerpt
of the formal sentencing of Turner by the judge, followed
by a list of slaves Gray alleges to have been involved in
the Turner case. The sentencing concludes with a
melodramatic detailing and commentary on the prescribed
nature of Turner’s execution:
The judgment of the court is, that you be taken hence
to jail from whence you came, thence to the place of
execution, and on Friday next, between the hours of 10
A.M. and 2 P.M. be hung by the neck until you are

171
Greenburg, Kenneth S. ed. The Confessions of Nat Turner
and Related Documents. New York: Bedford, 1996. p. 13.
301
dead! dead! dead! and may the Lord have mercy uponyour
soul.
172

The judge’s hyperbolic address to Turner is not present in
the official records and neither is the list of slaves Gray
alleges to have been involved in the legal proceedings of
the Turner case.
173
Gray categorizes the names of the slaves
by owner and also by their legal status at the completion
of the legal proceedings, indicating whether they are
“convicted,” “discharged,” “transported,” “acquitted,”
“discharged without trial,” “sentenced on for further
trial” or some combination thereof.
174
This method of
categorization and its print formatting—Gray lists the
supplementary information correlated with each slave in
categorical columns—has all of the connotations of legal
formality, but is inconsistent with the official trial
record.
175
Finally, what is alleged to be the actual
testimony of Nat Turner within The Confessions is framed by
a set of questions, presumably made by Gray. The measured

172
Gray, Thomas., Kenneth S.. Greenburg ed. The Confessions
of Nat Turner and Related Documents. New York: Bedford,
1996. p. 57.
173
Greenburg, Kenneth S. ed. The Confessions of Nat Turner
and Related Documents. New York: Bedford, 1996. pp. 13-14.
174
Gray, Thomas in Kenneth S.. Greenberg ed. The
Confessions of Nat Turner and Related Documents. New York:
Bedford, 1996. pp. 57-58.
175
Greenburg, Kenneth S. ed. The Confessions of Nat Turner
and Related Documents. New York: Bedford, 1996. p. 13.

302
insertion of these questions before and between what are
presumed to be Turner’s responses to them has the effect of
making the whole exchange between Gray and Turner appear to
be one between a prosecuting attorney and a witness at the
witness stand. Gray makes no claim that he actually cross-
examines Turner in Turner’s trial, but Gray’s structuring
of Turner’s testimony within The Confessions certainly
implies such a claim. In light of the great lengths Gray
goes to extend to The Confessions the import of legal
formality, an attempt to lure his reading audience into
associating his questioning of Turner with the formal court
proceedings would be consistent with Gray’s larger
rhetorical and self-reinvention strategy.
None of what The Confessions documents to be the
exchange between Gray and Turner is noted in the official
legal documentation of Turner’s trial. However, for Gray’s
purposes, The Confessions serves just as well as a cultural
document, for it authenticates Gray’s transition back into
social prominence in the South. In fact, Gray’s rhetorical
framing of Turner’s testimony connects him to the tradition
of the paternalist storyteller and the power of narrative
to facilitate social reinvention. As a man stripped of the
physical symbols of southern paternalist prestige, Gray
relies ever more on the cultural leverage of narrative to
303
stake his claim as a paternalist power. Rendered
culturally invisible in his sudden material misfortune,
Gray re-constructs his visibility through the power of
discourse. In fact, Gray becomes hyper-visible through the
decorative elements of legal regalia within The
Confessions. The legal language of the text is an
authenticating device designed to present Gray’s role in
the Turner trial as one vastly different than the one
represented in the court record. By the court’s
documentation, Gray is legally invisible relative to any
direct exchanges with Turner. For Gray, this erasure from
the legal record also equates to cultural invisibility.
Because of the symbolic meaning of Turner’s rebellion
relative to the plantation myth and relative to Gray’s
recent devaluation in the social hierarchy of the South,
Turner becomes a symbol of Gray’s social marginalization.
However, like all other southern men vying for position in
the matrix of the southern plantation culture, Gray
substitutes the material symbols of distinction in the
South with narrative symbols of distinction.
Notwithstanding, Turner is the ultimate anti-Sambo. He
represents the erasure of the boundary between slave and
master and, hence, the very antithesis of the plantation
myth. However, the mastery of Turner reverses this
304
prospect. Gray certainly does not claim mastery of Turner
in terms of the material or legal ownership of Turner’s
body, but for Gray, the legal and rhetorical mastery of
Turner’s story (or the representation thereof) serves the
same purpose. Hence, the question of accuracy or legal
documentation in relationship to Turner’s testimony is less
Gray’s concern than accentuating his own role as
authenticator. Historian Kenneth Greenburg comments:
Whatever the explanation, the official record of the
trial does not mention Gray but his own version places
him in a prominent role. In fact, the entire document
that Gray presents as a trial record [is] very likely
his own creation. It differs considerably from the
official transcript—especially in the addition of the
presiding justice’s dramatic speech condemning Turner
to death. While it is possible that the justice
deliver[s] such an eloquent address, it seems more
likely this [is] another attempt by Gray to shape his
production into a compelling literary tale.
176

Greenburg’s suggestion that The Confessions is akin to a
literary tale is not only an allusion to Gray’s
inventiveness, but to the cultural practice of
storytelling, narrative construction and boasting that is
central to the southern paternalist’s self-reinvention. In
his publication of The Confessions, Gray takes on the
characteristics of the typical aspiring or imagined slave
owner attempting to secure figurative mastery of slaves
through narrative. Gray takes on the qualities of a

176
Ibid. pp. 13-14.
305
particular version of this prospective slaveholder, for in
his attempt to forge and rhetorically represent a mastery
of Turner through discourse, he resembles the qualities of
one of the most important imagined slaveholders in the
plantation economy: the slave breaker.
Slave breakers are men, usually of low economic
standing, who generally never own slaves outright, but who,
for a limited period of time, gain virtual slaveownership
by taking under their “care” the slave of a slaveholder who
considers the slave to be unruly. An effective slave
breaker is able to break the will of the slave to the point
that when the breaker’s contractual use of the slave is
complete, the slave is prepared to submit to the owner
without resistance. Though the owner loses the slave for a
period of time, the benefit to the owner is that the slave
is returned with a spirit of subservience and docility.
The benefit to the slave breaker is that he not only
receives the benefit of a slave’s work for free, but also
that, for the period of time that he has control of the
slave, he becomes a virtual master, taking on all of the
psychological dynamics of ego available to legal slave
masters. Furthermore, at the conclusion of his contractual
arrangement with the slave owner, the slave breaker is able
to boast, narrating his anecdotes of slave taming success
306
to bolster his social distinction and market his services
for even more slave breaking and boasting opportunities.
Because of the power of the slave breaker’s boast,
sometimes slave breakers purchase unruly slaves outright,
just for the on-going opportunity to make boasts about
breaking slaves. In other cases, the power of the boast
becomes so exalted that the boast itself may substitute for
the actual slave breaking.
177
This dynamic has led Johnson
to make the argument that slave breaking is “less a
profession than a pose—a way of treating slaves and of
talking to and about them, a way of building a reputation
for indomitability out of brutality.”
178

There is credence to this perspective because the
posturing affiliated with the slave-breaking boast has
incredible power, one that Gray harnesses figuratively in
his publication of The Confessions. Like the slave
breakers who agree to take on the challenge of taming
unruly slaves, Gray takes on the ultimate unruly slave by
“taming” Turner in narrative. This taming through-line
comes across succinctly in an implicit juxtaposition Gray
makes between Turner’s alleged madness and his own ability

177
Johnson, Walter. Soul by Soul: Life Inside the
Antebellum Slave Market. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1999. p. 247.
178
Ibid. p.106.
307
as interviewer to neutralize this madness. This becomes
clear in the preface, where Gray depicts Turner as a
mentally deranged fanatic. A couple of paragraphs into his
prefacing statements, Gray writes, “a gloomy fanatic was
revolving in the recesses of [Turner’s] own dark,
bewildered, and overwrought mind.”
179
Later in the paragraph,
Gray adds, “a mind like [Turner’s] endeavor[s] to grapple
with things beyond its reach.”
180
This depiction of Turner
is not much different than depictions of Turner in
speculative journalistic accounts preceding the publication
of The Confessions, which aim to reframe Turner’s rebellion
in a way that reaffirms the plantation myth status quo.
The idea is that a mentally deranged Turner is an exception
to a Sambo rule. However, Gray’s purposes extend beyond the
need to reassert the ideology of the plantation myth.
Rather, beyond the reassertion of the plantation myth, Gray
depicts Turner as a wild mental case in order to set
himself up as the empowered and boastful slave breaker.
Gray positions himself to make the ultimate boast by taming
the mind of the ultimate unruly slave.

179
Gray, Thomas. Preface. The Confessions of Nat Turner in
The Confessions of Nat Turner and Related Documents. Ed.
Kenneth S. Greenburg. New York: Bedford, 1996. p. 41.
180
Ibid.
308
Because of the quick execution of Turner shortly after
Turner becomes available for interview, The Confessions
reflects a unique exchange that Gray has with Turner about
which no other person can make a claim. Because of Gray’s
exclusive meeting with Turner, Gray has the exclusive
distinction of “breaking” Turner to the point of
confession. Consequently, Gray is able to take on the same
kind of social honor as an actual slave breaker. A slave
breaker who buys slaves is “buying the chance to show that
he [is] a better master—more discerning, more confident,
more formidable, more honorable—than any other man
around.”
181
This is what Gray accomplishes by securing an
exclusive interview with Turner and publishing what, in
effect, becomes an exclusive boast. The distinction of
breaking Turner in contrast to other attempts to do so by
other men comes across implicitly in the opening of the
preface to The Confessions. Titled “To the Public,” the
preface commences with:
The late insurrection in Southampton has greatly
excited the public mind, and led to a thousand idle
exaggerated and mischievous reports. It is the first
instance in our history of an open rebellion of the
slaves, and attended with such atrocious circumstances
of cruelty and destruction, as could not fail to leave
a deep impression, not only upon the minds of the

181
Johnson, Walter. Soul by Soul: Life Inside the
Antebellum Slave Market. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1999. pp.106-107.
309
community where this fearful tragedy was wrought, but
throughout every portion of our country, in which this
population is to be found. Public curiosity has been
on the stretch to understand the origin and progress
of this dreadful conspiracy, and the motives which
influences its diabolical actors. The insurgent
slaves had all been destroyed, or apprehended, tried
and executed, (with the exception of the leader,)
without revealing any thing at all satisfactory, as to
the motives which governed them, or the means by which
they expected to accomplish their object. . . .Since
his confinement by permission of the jailor, I have
had ready access to him, and finding that he was
willing to make a full and free confession of the
origin, progress and consummation of the insurrectory
movements of the slaves of which he was the contriver
and head; I determined for the gratification of public
curiosity to commit his statements to writing, and
publish them, with little or no variation from his own
words. That this is a faithful record of his
confessions, the annexed certificate of the County
Court of Southampton, will attest. They certainly
bear one stamp of truth and certainty.
182

The fact that the preface is titled “To the Public” only
underscores the hyper-construction of audience that Gray
forges within the preface as he stages himself to deliver
the ultimate slave breaker boast. Beginning the preface by
reducing public knowledge of Turner to “idle, exaggerated
and mischievous reports,” Gray sets himself up to be the
ultimate solution to the Turner mystery. However, by
becoming a de facto authority on Nat Turner, Gray also
becomes a viable response to white fear about Turner. Gray
euphemistically depicts this fear as a “deep impression,”

182
Gray, Thomas. Preface. The Confessions of Nat Turner in
The Confessions of Nat Turner and Related Documents. Ed.
Kenneth S. Greenburg. New York: Bedford, 1996. p. 40.
310
but he nonetheless remarks on the white community’s anxiety
over Turner’s rebellion, a distress that presumably becomes
allayed when clarity over the motives of Turner are
revealed. Indeed, the eccentricity of someone like Turner
is quite a terror. A rational explanation of Turner’s
motives presumably puts these fears to rest by depicting
Turner as a rare exceptional case and re-scripting Turner’s
rebellion to be more aligned with plantation myth normalcy.
Gray writes directly to his exclusive ability to do this,
for in the remark, “I have ready access to him,” he
indicates the unique privilege and ability he possess to
secure a confession from Turner. Gray also points to his
exclusive “Turner breaking” powers in noting that “public
curiosity has been on the stretch to understand the origin
and progress of [Turner’s] conspiracy.” In this, Gray
indicates just how far out of reach knowledge of Turner is
to the general public. He sends the implicit message that
Turner is inaccessible outside of someone like himself, who
not only transcribes Turner’s testimony, but who also, in
effect, quells Turner’s madness to the point of securing a
rational confession from him.
Harping on the verity and accuracy of Turner’s
statements within The Confessions, Gray returns to a
subject about which he is even more redundant:
311
authenticity. Ironically, Gray’s incessant harping on the
matter of authenticity creates a loophole that exposes the
duplicity of Gray’s charade and through which Turner’s
empowered subjectivity seeps. Reminding his readers about
the overly decorated legal regalia of the title page, he
returns to his preoccupation with legal certification.
However, in this over-annunciation of legal verity, as with
anything false, Gray comes across as pretentious. Gray’s
anxious and excessive replication of legal verity has the
dual effect of appearing official and disingenuous. As
with most things contrived, the nervous compulsion to
overcompensate for absent substance exposes a more
pervasive fiction. Things that are true simply are, while
things only purporting to truth expose their falsity in
their anxious attempts to appear true. Sundquist speaks to
this dynamic in remarking how Gray inserts legal regalia to
“mimic” the legal and journalistic documentation “that make
up the otherwise available evidence about Turner’s life and
his rebellion.”
183
For Sundquist, this enlists Turner’s
confession as one that “wears a transparent mask” in the
form of legal decoration:
184

183
Sundquist, Eric. To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making
of American Literature. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1993. pp. 44-45.
184
Ibid. p. 45.
312
Leaving aside for the moment the issue of Gray’s own
revision of Turner’s language. . .the legal apparatus
alone requires the reader to pass through three
screens of authority before reaching the confession:
the copyright, the statement by the justices, and the
attestation of the court clerk. All of these
documents have as their purpose the clarification and
authentication of the revolt of Turner’s confessions,
and in this respect they function in much the same way
as similar authenticating frame materials attached to
slave narratives in order to guarantee their accuracy.
185

In Sundquist’s allusion to slave narratives, he further
hints at the ironic theatricality inherent in Gray’s
attempt to authenticate, for characteristic of the slave
narrative is a narrative framing technique that is
generally steeped in layers of rhetorical masking. The
introductory framing materials of The Confessions are a
throw back to this technique, which becomes popular in its
use by the white editors and benefactors of slave narrative
authors.
Slave narratives are autobiographical documents of
escaped or legally freed slaves that are generally written
with the purpose of persuading a white northern audience to
support the abolition of slavery. As generic fusions of
historical documentation and literary discourse, slave
narratives written by slaves in the U.S. “form one of the
largest bodies of literature produced by any group of

185
Ibid.
313
slaves in history.”
186
The preface, introduction and other
writings preceding the main body of the slave narrative
generally serve as framing techniques that affirm the
authenticity of the primary text. The authenticity question
generally addresses whether the narrative is actually
written by a slave, whether the slave is intelligent enough
to make a case for his or her freedom and whether any
fabrications are made to the text by the hand of white
abolitionists. Though The Confessions is technically not a
slave narrative, the structural dynamic of the text mimics
one and calls the slave narratives tropes into play. Beyond
the symbols of legal regalia, Gray extends to his
publication the aura of official certainty by attaching The
Confessions to the tradition of authentication within the
slave narrative. At the same time, the authenticating trope
of slave narrative editors takes on a new significance
within the context of the political, generic, and narrative
framework of The Confessions. Specifically, the
“verification” and “staging” mechanisms in the pretext of
The Confessions are hyper-pronounced. Unlike the same
devices in typical slave narratives, the authenticating

186
Davis, Charles T. and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. eds. The
Slave’s Narrative. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
pp. xi–xii.
314
tools within The Confessions are not subtle.
187
While the
framing work of most slave narrative pretexts come down to

187
Because the overt intentions of the white editors of
slave narratives are to lend credibility to the slave's
abolitionist message, the theatricality in the pretexts is
generally subtle, but nonetheless functional. This comes
across in the authenticator’s use of flattery,
patronization, postured rhetorical gesture, clichéd
symbolism, euphemistic language, politically expedient
optimism and other forms of duplicitous speech. All forms
of which forge thematic subplots to the primary narrative
in an attempt to mask or at least “manage” the politically
subversive implications that are inherent to slave
narrative writing. Even though the white writers of the
pretexts are generally people with overt political
allegiance to abolitionism, many of them are loyal to the
political cause of abolitionism rather than to the slaves.
Actual revolution a la Nat Turner’s rebellion is far too
extreme, exceeding what most abolitionists would consider
to be manageably subversive. Aside from the way that the
pre-texts shift the interpretive emphasis of the slave’s
story by their very existence, they often expose implicit
expectations from white editors upon slave authors to
subscribe to a set of generic criteria and subject matter
incongruent with the full nature of the slave’s story.
White editors of slave narratives often want to temper the
politically subversive edge of slave narrative subject
matter to highlight their own role in either “discovering”
the slave or authenticating the slave’s story. Hence, in
terms of the broader political and publication world,
white-authored pre-textual documents become important
points of reference in relationship to the primary
narratives with which they are correlated. The pretexts
frame the reading audience’s relationship to the slave’s
story, in many cases rendering the narrative both palatable
and marketable. As Robert Stepto comments on the role of
authenticating devices in the slave narrative of Henry
Bibb: “authentication is, apparently, a rhetorical strategy
designed not only for verification purposes, but also for
the task of initiating and insuring a readership (Stepto,
Robert Burns. “I Rose and Found My Voice: Narration,
Authentication, and Authorial Control in Four Slave
Narratives” in The Slave’s Narrative. Charles T. Davis and
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. eds. New York: Oxford University
315
rhetorical nuances, the framing work within The Confessions
is heavily decorated—so much so that it calls attention to
itself as framing work.
In Gray’s anxiety over the authentication of The
Confessions, he presents a surplus of verification tools
that serve, ironically, to accent its pretentious
representation of the verification process. This
ultimately works to underscore Turner’s subjectivity in
ways that Gray does not anticipate, for in Gray’s narrative
re-invention and reframing of Turner, Gray also encounters
Turner’s subjectivity. Despite Gray’s attempt to diminish
Turner’s subjective potency by characterizing Turner as a
madman, Gray is forced to account for Turner’s rationality
in the fact that Turner provides a confession at all. Even
on the premise that Turner is a “gloomy fanatic,” for at
least the short period of time that Gray has with Turner,
one must conclude that Turner becomes a rationally thinking
and speaking subject. Clearly, for Turner to make a
confession that is amenable to transcription and logically
progressive, Turner must possess some rationality, even if
it is a rationality that is presumably induced by Gray’s
psychological mastery of Turner. This is an implication

Press, 1985. p. 233.) .” This readership then constitutes
the audience that forges the authenticator-performer.
316
that Gray continues to evoke to the point of redundancy,
for he makes repeated allusions to the notion that The
Confessions is written “with little or no variation from
[Turner’s] own words.” Certainly, in framing Turner as an
authority on his own rebellion, Gray is able to frame
himself as an authority on Turner by documenting Turner’s
words and notarizing their transcription. However, Gray
cannot authenticate himself without authenticating Turner.
This not only comes across in the narrative conundrum
enlisting Turner as a thinking and speaking subject, but
also in terms of the legal language by which Gray works
feverishly to upstage Turner’s subjective power.
Ironically, Gray sabotages the legal fortress he constructs
to imprison Turner’s voice because, in Gray’s excessive
replication of legal language and iconography, he gives
legal voice to Turner’s subjectivity. This quandary is
completely embodied in the problem of Nat Turner’s name.
Nat Turner’s name is a problem because it exposes the
paradox of plantation myth logic: The plantation myth
enlists slaves as object-subjects, passive person-less
containers of the slave master’s wishes, who, by
definition, have no will of their own. At the same time,
slave masters subscribe to the need to threaten slaves with
punishment to suppress wills they must disavow slaves have
317
in the first place. The representation of slaves as legal
entities reflects this definitional dilemma. When slaves
are connected to any legal problem that a white person
wants to resolve, the law must often designate the slave as
a legal entity, but for the continuity of plantation myth
logic, it must also negate the slave’s personhood.
Generally, the best way for the legal system to respond to
both imperatives is to designate the slave only with a
first name. This procedure is commonly matter of course,
for slave masters rarely provide or acknowledge slave
surnames and there is generally no recognition of slave
surnames in the southern culture at large. However, Nat
Turner, eventually recognized legally with the surname of
one of his former masters, is a glaring exception to this
cultural rule. It is an exception that Gray cannot
dismiss, even as the transcriber and editor of Turner’s
testimony. Greenburg writes more specifically to the
nature of Nat Turner as a legal conundrum and how Turner’s
paradoxical subjectivity unsettles the plantation myth’s
cultural imperatives. Because of the important and
intricate legal, cultural and ideological turns that
Greenburg documents in explaining the evolution of Turner’s
name and naming, Greenburg’s elucidation is quoted at
length:
318
To understand that the naming of slaves was contested
terrain is to set the stage for an appreciation of the
problem of Nat Turner’s name. It is best to begin
with the recognition that, legally, in nineteenth-
century Virginia, as in virtually all slave societies,
a slave had no surname. This was no trivial matter.
The denial of a legal family name was one of the most
powerful symbolic ways in which masters asserted their
dominance while simultaneously affirming the slavish
condition of the people they owned. . . .The denial of
a legal last name was also part of the larger process
by which masters excluded slaves from participating in
the culture of honor reserved for the master class.
It was only free people who could express honor and
respect for each other by using last names. . .So the
man who would one day become widely known as Nat
Turner was most commonly known as “Nat” among the
people who owned him in Southampton County, Virginia.
This was the name used in the few legal documents that
mention him before 1831. . .Some newspaper accounts
certainly called the rebel leader “Nat,”. . .but. . .
.quite often, his name appeared as “Gen. Nat Turner,”
General Nat Turner,” “Gen. Nat,” “The Preacher-
Captain,” “The General,” or “Capt. Nat”. . . .It must
be noted that when newspapers referred to Nat Turner
as “General” or “Captain” they were not inventing the
titles themselves. These were actually honorific
titles awarded to Nat Turner by the black community. .
. .In a world so deeply divided along racial lines,
even a single name, such as “General Nat,” was really
two names with two meanings, depending on whether or
not it was uttered by a black or a white voice. . .
.[However,] the official documents of the rebellion
tell a different story of Nat Turner’s name. Since a
slave had no legal surname, the courts and other legal
authorities could not simply call him “Nat Turner.”
They certainly couldn’t use “General” or “Captain,”
since they didn’t want to sanction titles they
considered fraudulent. On the other hand, the name
“Nat” probably didn’t seem entirely adequate for a man
who had become so famous and was already widely known
as “Nat Turner.” One can see the struggle to use and
not use the name ‘Nat Turner’ in several official
sources. The trial court reached an awkward solution
by calling him “Nat alias Nat Turner”—thereby
simultaneously denying and affirming his surname. The
reward notice issues by Governor Floyd for the capture
319
of Nat Turner shows similar evidence of a struggle.
It begins with reference to “Nat, otherwise called Nat
Turner” and then calls him “Nat” elsewhere in the
document. . . .However, the single most influential
“naming” of Nat Turner cannot be found in newspapers,
trial records, or official government records. It is
contained in Thomas R. Gray’s Confession of Nat
Turner. . . .Here, a reader can find no references to
“Captain Nat” or “General Nat”. . .and here, in the
list of slaves tried for rebellion, every slave but
one is given only a first name. The only slave with a
surname is “Nat Turner.” And most importantly, on the
cover of The Confessions, the name “Nat Turner” is
presented in large bold print at the center of a
title. The publication of The Confessions is a key
naming moment in the life of Nat Turner—even though it
occurred after his death.
188

In detailing this labyrinth progression of Turner’s naming,
Greenburg documents the inescapable predicament to which
Gray is fastened by virtue of his own anxiety over
authentication: Gray’s self reinvention is inextricably
tied to Turner’s affirmation as an empowered subject. The
material evidence and impact of Turner’s rebellion, its
corresponding apocalyptic overtones, its mysterious
conception and the enormity of its political scope all
require a reluctant white public to not only give Turner’s
rebellion a place in the cultural nomenclature, but also
name its architect. Because of the broad claims Gray makes
in The Confessions relative to his unique ability and

188
Greenburg, Kenneth. “Name Face, Body” in Nat Turner: A
Slave Rebellion in History and Memory. Kenneth Greenburg
ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. pp. 4-8.

320
opportunity to (re)present this political insurgent to the
public, Gray’s representation of Turner must match the
legal and cultural enormity of Turner as a subject and as
an emerging cultural icon. The whole complexity of this
dynamic becomes consolidated in the rhetorical and legal
recognition of Nat Turner as “Nat Turner.” Though there
are some instances in the preface and legal regalia of The
Confessions in which Gray identifies Turner as “Nat” or
“Nat alias Nat Turner,” as Greenburg affirms, the
predominate sense with which one leaves after reading The
Confessions is the unequivocal and inseparable attachment
of Turner the person with Turner the surname. Aside from
the matter of how Turner refers to himself or the degree to
which Turner influences how Gray refers to him, Gray’s
publication of The Confessions legitimizes Turner as a
legal entity and thereby Turner’s personhood and thereby
Turner’s qualifications as a thinking and speaking subject.
Regardless of how potentially inventive Gray may or may not
be on his representation of the substance of Turner’s
testimony, Gray unavoidably cedes to Turner the recognition
of a conscious and free-willed subject who is capable of
willing and acting upon intentions contrary to the
plantation myth social order. Ironically, this inadvertent,
yet glaring affirmation of Turner is part and parcel of the
321
legal superfluousness Gray creates to restrict Turner
subjectively.
This legal recognition of Turner extends past the
logistics of the legal system into the way that Gray refers
to Turner rhetorically, for even in the preface, a place
where Gray should feel free to disavow Turner’s
subjectivity explicitly, Gray affirms the growing cultural
acceptance of Turner’s surname: “Every thing connected with
this sad affair was wrapt in mystery, until Nat Turner, the
leader of this ferocious band, whose name has resounded
throughout our widely extended empire, was captured.”
189
In
this single sentence, Gray establishes three key elements
that significantly underscore Turner’s subjectivity: the
recognition of “Turner” as Turner’s surname, of Turner as
the architect of the rebellion and of the acceptance of
both instances of recognition by the general public.
Though Gray derides Turner’s mental faculty and leadership
strength in other parts of the preface, Gray’s recognition
of Turner as a subject in this instance is unmistakable.
This statement reflects the paradoxical dynamics of social
and legal category in the text’s title page. It is also a

189
Gray, Thomas. The Confessions of Nat Turner and Related
Documents. Ed. Kenneth Greenberg. Boston: Bedford Books,
1996. p. 40.

322
precursor to a continuing tension throughout the rest of
The Confessions over the authorial, cultural and
categorical distinctions between Gray and Turner. Though
inadvertent on Gray’s part, the documentation of this
tension renders visible Gray’s internal struggle over
social redefinition and Turner’s forceful interruption in
the plantation mythology enabling Gray’s potential social
transformation.
This brings to bear the more overt tension of dual
authorship, which unavoidably plagues The Confessions no
matter how much Gray inadvertently undercuts his own
editorial power. Given Gray’s position, he has virtually no
reason to paint Turner or his actions in a positive light.
Hence, the degree to which The Confessions conveys Turner’s
testimony and the degree to which it conveys Gray’s
propaganda is a question that will likely never be answered
fully. In fact, beyond what the legal mimicry in The
Confessions suggests about Gray’s narrative inventiveness,
there is significant historical evidence to suggest that
Gray begins composing some and possibly most of The
Confessions before meeting Turner.
190
Certainly, between the

190
Allmendinger, Jr. David. “The Construction of The
Confessions of Nat Turner.” Nat Turner: A Slave Rebellion
in History and Memory. Ed. Kenneth S. Greenburg. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2004. pp. 24-42.
323
testimony witnesses, co-conspirators, and anonymous letters
to the press (one version of which narrates an account of
Turner’s rebellion that is remarkably similar to the one in
The Confessions and to which some historians believe is
actually written by Gray), there are enough sources of
information about Turner’s rebellion to begin plotting
basic plot points on the progression of Turner’s life and
rebellion before Turner’s capture.
191
Additionally, as a
participating lawyer in the Turner case, Gray has
privileged access to and affiliation with the close circle
of legal, governmental and cultural authorities possessing
guardianship over the collection, dispersion and
documentation of details on Turner and his rebellion.
192
At
the same time, Turner’s subjectivity is very difficult to
dismiss. As the pre-textual materials of The Confessions
already indicate, the best attempts to silence Turner, or
at least, distort a clear view of him through legal and
rhetorical screens have the uncanny effect of underscoring
his personhood and political will as a legal and narrative
inevitability. Much in the way that an algebraic equation
hides its answer by substituting it with a variable, the
very structure of the math problem as equation renders the

191
Ibid.
192
Ibid. pp. 24-25.
324
answer visible in its invisibility. Hence, even if one
concedes that the representation of Turner’s testimony in
The Confessions is a complete fabrication by Gray, the
basic plot point themes and through-lines of Turner’s
emergence into an empowered personhood—his constitution as
a free-willing subject, a political hero and a prophetic
leader—are still available in the text. The scope of
Turner’s material and mythological impact on the South are
simply too enormous to eliminate Turner’s presence in the
text altogether.
This conundrum of Gray’s is most pronounced in the
representation of Turner’s intellectual and spiritual
prowess in the text. Ironically, this topic serves both
Turner and Gray, for though they have divergent political
intentions, the agendas of both men congeal on the subject
of Turner’s mental acumen and spiritual aptitude. This does
not belie the fact that the two men have different
interpretations of Turners I.Q. and spiritual
perceptiveness. Given external accounts of Turner
identifying himself as a religions seer, Turner would have
wanted to communicate that he is a prophet called by God
with special spiritual and intellectual gifts of
discernment. Gray on the other hand, given his allegiance
to the cultural milieu of the day, would have wanted to
325
depict Turner’s alleged gifts as manifestations of mental
derangement and spiritual naiveté. On the same token, both
men have an interest in highlighting Turner’s intellectual
and spiritual eccentricities, rendering the textual
allusions to Turner’s “gifts” specimens of both men’s
interpretations. Specifically, references to signs and the
decoding of signs are relatively prolific in The
Confessions, pointing both to the desire of Turner to exalt
his intellectual and spiritual aptitude and to the desire
for Gray to condescend Turner’s ambition and render Turner
as a fulfillment of Gray’s own assumptions about black
spirituality and perceptiveness. In the opening paragraph,
for example, The Confessions accounts for Turner’s belief
that he is a prophet called by God with reference to
“certain marks” on Turner’s head:
Being at play with other children, when three or four
years old, I was telling them something, which my
mother overhearing, said it had happened before I was
born—I stuck to my story, however, and related
somethings which went, in her opinion, to confirm it—
others being called on were greatly astonished,
knowing that these things had happened, and caused
them to say in my hearing, I surely would be a
prophet, as the Lord had shewn me things that had
happened before my birth. And my father and mother
strengthened me in this impression, saying in my
presence, I was intended for some great purpose, which
they had always thought from certain marks on my head
and breast—[a parcel of excrescences which I believe
are not at all uncommon, particularly among negros, as
I have seen several with the same. In either case he
326
has either cut them off or they have nearly
disappeared.]
193

The bracketed words at the end of this passage denote
Gray’s inserted commentary. They explain what Gray implies
is Turner’s first inconsistency. Ironically, though Gray
makes emphatic claims that he represents Turner’s testimony
word for word, his insertion of an aside is formatted in
such a way that confuses when Turner’s testimony ends and
Gray’s commentary begins. Certainly, the brackets help to
distinguish what we discover to be Gray’s comments by the
tenor of the second line of his commentary and in Gray’s
use of the pronoun “he.” However, as what is alleged to be
Turner’s testimony progresses, Gray is inconsistent in how
he punctuates distinctions between Turner’s voice and his
own. As in this initial instance of Gray’s insertion of
commentary, the reader is often reading through a comment
by Gray a few words into the comment before realizing that
the comment is Gray’s. These formatting discrepancies are
likely intentional, especially in this first instance, for
in Gray’s implicit disavowal of Turner’s claim to possess
special marks on his head, Gray’s formatting discrepancy

193
Turner, Nat., Kenneth S.. Greenburg ed. The Confessions
of Nat Turner and Related Documents. New York: Bedford/St.
Martin’s, 1996. p. 40.

327
mirrors the discrepancy in logic Gray wants to attribute to
Turner’s statement about prophetic endowment. This extra
level of emphasis on the alleged inaccuracy of this
particular statement by Turner is important because this
criticism is Gray’s single most important contestation of
Turner’s political and spiritual legitimacy.
Gray is successful in framing the context for Turner’s
logical fallacy. Clearly, Turner cannot be uniquely and
commonly gifted at the same time. The fact that The
Confessions makes no explicit explanation regarding this
disparity of claims is enough for Gray to infer that Turner
is simply delusional. The other caveat of Gray’s influence
on the text is that the allusion to “certain marks on
[Turner’s] head” sparks a connection to the field of
phrenology, which is popular in the 1830s. It is the
science of mapping out the structure of the brain to locate
the origins of human behavior.
194
However, whites also use
this science to advance a racial agenda.
195
The common myth
during this period is that blacks have large skulls, but
small brains and that the existence of this physiological
pattern generates the kind of delusional proclivities that

194
Fossett, Judith. University of Southern California.
Taper Hall, Los Angeles. 28 Feb. 2003.
195
Ibid.

328
would lead someone like Turner to incite a slave rebellion.
However, Gray’s documentation of Turner’s claims to
spiritual potency also undercut his criticism of Turner,
one which ties back to one of the key premises of the
plantation myth: Even though Gray ultimately regards
Tuner’s spiritual epiphanies as manifestations of Turner’s
spiritual gullibility, this line of thinking is consistent
with the plantation mythology rendering black people as
Sambos, intrinsically child-like and therefore natively
receptive to spiritual truths. This concept not only
receives reinforcement from the fact that thousands of
blacks convert to Christianity over the course of the
Second Great Awakening, but also from plantation myth
apologists who regard black people as sheep-like and with
an incessant need for guidance. Essentially, southern
paternalists claim that, like children, black people take a
native pleasure in their bondage and intrinsically embrace
the managerial, but also spiritual oversight of their white
master-fathers. The euphoria that paternalists presume
blacks naturally cultivate within an environment of human
debasement is the basis for the paternalist conclusion
that, despite the depravity of black slave lifestyles,
black people have a special ability to connect with divine
peace and joy. Hence, given the premise of the providential
329
connection that blacks sustain in their simplicity, Gray’s
attempts to counter Turner’s claims of spiritual perception
may in fact underscore the notion of Turner’s spiritual
insightfulness. Certainly, the construction of black
people as children is condescending, but the language and
tenor of spiritual endowment remains constant, whether it
emerges out of attempts to degrade or uplift blacks.
The language of spiritual endowment correlated with
Turner is saturated with cultural and mythological
dualities. These dualities service Turner in his emergence
as an empowered spiritual, and ultimately political,
figure. This is because of the centrality of Christianity
to the interpretation of the socio-political phenomena of
the world of the American South. Hence, Turner’s casting
of himself and his rebellion into the Christian allegorical
cosmos grants him valuable cultural cache, even as a slave
rebel. His registry with Christian symbol and type grants
him access to their interpretive implications and the
discursive powers they emit as a result of their
magnification in the southern world. As historian Randolph
Scully notes,
Religion, and in particular the evangelical varieties
of Christianity that [come] to dominate Virginia’s
religious landscape in the nineteenth century,
[become] central to the battle to understand, define,
and control the Nat Turner revolt. Even before
330
accurate details about Turner and his religions vision
emerg[e], white Virginians assum[e] that the rebellion
ha[s] religious roots.
196

Scully goes on to comment that

the debate about the Turner rebellion and its meaning
[becomes] a wide-ranging and multifaceted argument
about religion. As advocates of different
understandings of the revolt buil[d] their competing
interpretations, it [i]s impossible to discuss the
uprising and its implications without addressing
issues of religious authority, religious authenticity,
religious legitimacy, and religious community.
197

However, in this religious and cultural battle over
narrative continuity, discursive power, and symbolic
interpretation, Turner has an upper hand. In a society and
time in American history in which a critical mass of the
populous readily accepts the prospect and imminence of
prophetic phenomena, apocalyptic signs and God’s large
scale punishment of sin, Turner’s claims to prophetic
appointment are not altogether far-fetched, even given
Turner’s subject position as a black slave. This is
because, in addition to the fact that the history and
culture of the American South is heavily informed by
Christian tradition, the prospect of Turner’s statements
about his prophetic calling resonates with whites to an

196
Scully, Randolph Ferguson. Religion and the Making of
Nat Turner’s Virginia: Baptist Community and Conflict,
1740-1840. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press,
2008. p. 3.
197
Ibid. p. 5.

331
even greater degree because of the Second Great Awakening.
The Second Great Awakening is a Christian revival extending
from the late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries.
Facilitating several conversions among both blacks and
whites, the revival places an even greater emphasis on the
prospect of prophetic and apocalyptic occurrences, but more
importantly on the prospect of God’s punishment of the sin
of slavery. Certainly, there are many Christian whites who
do not subscribe to the view that African slavery is
inconsistent with biblical doctrine, however, with the
longevity and forcefulness of the Second Great Awakening on
American culture and the destructive material impact of
Turner’s rebellion, the idea of God’s punishment of
slaveholders by the hand of a slave prophet carries weight
among some whites. By this time in American history,
slaveholders are already alerted to the success of the
Haitian slaves who, only forty years prior to Turner’s
rebellion, throw off the colonial domination of the French
in such a way that the Haitian Revolution signals overtones
of the apocalypse and of divine vengeance. As Sundquist
comments,
The outbreak of [the Haitian] revolution of 1791
brought a flood of white planter refugees to the
United States, some ten thousand in 1793 alone, most
of them carrying both slaves and tales of terror to
South and North alike. Thereafter. . .Haiti came to
332
seem the fearful precursor of black rebellion
throughout the New World,
198

and, for many whites of the American South, a prophecy
fulfilled upon the break out of Turner’s rebellion.
199

Rumor, gossip and informal black communication networks
already slate Turner as the spiritual impetus for what
appears to be God’s divine wrath on the sin of slavery.
However, Gray’s documentation of Turner’s boasts about his
spiritual proclivities, even in the criticism of Turner’s
accuracy, forefronts the prospect of Turner’s claims to
prophetic powers to ring true and legitimizes his rebellion
as a sign of things to come.
Furthermore, The Confessions later highlights key
spiritual epiphanies by Turner that resonate with the key
hermeneutical implications of the Second Great Awakening.
Gray may believe that he undercuts the sticking power and
believability of these epiphanies by contesting Turner’s
prophetic accuracy from the start, but the epiphanies
nonetheless highlight key vocabulary words and concepts
that are central to the conversion experiences and
spiritual belief systems of Second Great Awakening

198
Sundquist, Eric. To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making
of American Literature. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1993. p. 32.

199
Ibid.

333
participants. In particular, in parts of Turner’s
testimony in which he utters “the Spirit that spoke to the
prophets in former days,” “the Spirit whose revelations I
often communicated,” “the Spirit instantly appeared to me,”
“the Holy Ghost was with me,” and “the Holy Ghost had
revealed itself to me,” Turner accentuates the figure of
the Holy Spirit. This is important because the Holy Spirit
is a particular biblical expression of God’s personhood,
who, from a revivalist perspective, facilitates the
charismatic, eccentric and transformational dimensions of
the conversion experiences of Awakening converts.
Additionally, the Holy Spirit represents a brand of divine
authority that signals a break from the tenants of human-
based religious conventions, which work against the full
expressiveness of spiritual life. This attitude of dissent
against the institutional church is a key impetus of the
Awakening’s origins and carries the overtones of this
dissent for the duration of its popularity in the
nineteenth century.
200
Hence, in making allusions to the Holy
Spirit, Turner becomes aligned with a brand of spiritual
renewal that validates departures from institutionalized

200
Scully, Randolph Ferguson. Religion and the Making of
Nat Turner’s Virginia: Baptist Community and Conflict,
1740-1840. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press,
2008. pp. 32-36.
334
interpretations of scripture. For Turner, this underscores
his advance of the biblical interpretation that slavery is
a sin and not a sacred privilege for those possessing
institutional power.
Other portions of Turner’s testimony that detail
Turner’s spiritual epiphanies contain key terms that are
just as affirming of Turner’s congruency with the basic
tenor of the Awakening and of the Awakening’s potentially
subversive potential for servicing Turner’s political
cause. Recalling one particular epiphany Turner explains,
the Holy Ghost was with me, and said, “Behold me as I
stand in the Heavens”—and I looked and saw the forms
of men in different attitudes—and there were lights in
the sky to which the children of darkness gave other
names than what they really were—for they were the
lights of the Savior’s hands, stretched forth from
east to west, even as they were extended on the cross
on Calvary for the redemption of sinners. And I
wondered greatly at these miracles, and prayed to be
informed of a certainty of the meaning thereof—and
shortly afterwards, while laboring in the field, I
discovered drops of blood on the corn as though it
were dew from heaven—and I communicated it to many,
both white and black, in the neighborhood—and I then
found on the leaves in the woods hieroglyphic
characters, and numbers, with the forms of men in
different attitudes, portrayed in blood, and
representing the figures I had seen before in the
heavens. And now the Holy Ghost had revealed itself
to me, and made plain the miracles it had shown me—For
as the blood of Christ had been shed on this earth,
and had ascended to heaven for the salvation of
sinners, and was now returning to earth again in the
form of dew—and as the leaves on the trees bore the
impression of the figures I had seen in the heavens,
it was plain to me that the Savior was about to lay
335
down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and
the great judgment was at hand.
201

What becomes immediately noticeable in this epiphany is
that it begins with image of Christ at the cross of Calvary
and then ties this imagery to a prophecy of judgment. This
essentially congeals the prevailing tenors of the New and
Old Testaments into a single spiritual moment, which is a
theological dynamic common during the Second Great
Awakening. Specifically, the theology framing the
conversions of Awakening participants brings together the
wrath thematic of the Old Testament and the mercy thematic
of the New Testament. Turner’s epiphany weaves this fusion
of biblical themes around the figure of Christ and his
blood, which evokes the central reconciling attribute of
the Bible’s divergent themes: God’s wrath against sin
placed upon Christ in bloody death to allow for the
extension of God’s mercy upon humanity. The evangelical
thrust of the Awakening is also conveyed in this, for this
message of the cross as the intersection between wrath and
mercy is, in a nutshell, the gospel message touted by
Awakening evangelists. The thematic of judgment upon which
this epiphany concludes not only corresponds to the wrath

201
Turner, Nat., Kenneth S. Greenburg ed. The Confessions
of Nat Turner and Related Documents. New York: Bedford/St.
Martin’s, 1996. p. 47.

336
dimension of the cross, but also to an apocalyptic and
prophetic dimension of biblical narrative. This is
signified in part by Turner’s allusion to “hieroglyphic
characters.” It also links God’s wrath to restitution,
another important theological nuance of the Second Great
Awakening. Turner’s combined references to blood falling
out of the sky, enigmatic symbolism, and Christ’s second
arrival to earth all allude to two New Testament books—
Revelation and Acts. Each of these books, though placed in
the New Testament cannon, take on the combined motifs of
wrath, mercy, and apocalyptic restitution. The book of
Revelation in particular lends a strong sense of immediacy,
currency and legitimacy to what Second Great Awakening
adherents view as apocalyptic spiritual signs. Old-
Testament-esq in its symbolism, premised as a written
oracle of things to come, and often understood in terms of
things presently imminent, the book of Revelation
underscores the relationship between New Testament
overtones of redemption, mercy, and grace with Old
Testament themes of wrath, judgment and restitution. The
opening sequence of the book of Acts has the same effect.
Commencing in a tangible outpouring of God’s Spirit and a
proliferation of strong Christian evangelical activity, the
opening sequence of Acts also highlights prophetic
337
references from the Old Testament that point to apocalyptic
signs in the heavens, one of which cites the moon turning
to blood.
As the details of these biblical signs convey,
Turner’s epiphany connects in several different ways to the
key symbolism and typology captivating the minds and
inspiring the spiritual renewal of several Christian
converts of the Awakening. Moreover, in making these
biblical allusions, he not only provides validity to his
message about divinely inspired revolt, but also validates
himself as a prophetic voice. Because the matters of
intellect and spirituality are intimately connected in
Turner’s testimony, Turner receives even further
credibility: the validity extended to Turner based on his
spiritual acumen also becomes associated with his
intellection acumen, which significantly challenges Gray’s
criticism that Turner is insane. Turner links his
intellectual and spiritual capacities so closely together
that to mention one automatically implies the other. Turner
explains:
My grandmother, who was very religious, and to whom I
was much attached—my master, who belonged to the
church, and other religious persons who visited the
house, and whom I often saw at prayers, noticing the
singularity of my manners, I supposed, and my uncommon
intelligence for a child, remarked I had too much
sense to be raised, and if I was, I would never be of
338
any service to any one as a slave—To a mind like mine,
restless, inquisitive and observant of every thing
that was passing, it is easy to suppose that religion
was the subject to which it would be directed, and
although this subject principally occupied my
thoughts—there was nothing that I saw or heard of to
which my attention was not directed—The manner in
which I learned to read and write, not only had great
influence on my mind, as I acquired it with the most
perfect ease, so much so, that I have no recollection
whatever of learning the alphabet—but to the
astonishment of the family, one day, when a book was
shewn me to keep me from crying, I began spelling the
names of different objects—this was a source of great
wonder to all in the neighborhood, particularly the
blacks—and this learning was constantly improved at
all opportunities—when I got large enough to go to
work, while employed, I was reflecting on many things
that would present themselves to my imagination, and
whenever an opportunity occurred of looking at a book,
when the school children were getting their lessons, I
would find many things that the fertility of my own
imagination had depicted to me before; all my time,
not devoted to my master’s service, was spent either
in prayer, or in making experiments in casting
different things in moulds made of earth, in
attempting to make paper, gunpowder, and many other
experiments, that although I could not perfect, yet
convinced me of its practicability if I had the
means.
202

This excerpt illustrates how Turner’s intellect and
spiritual abilities are inseparable from each other. To
begin with, his “uncommon intelligence” is noted by
spiritual figures from both the black and white world—his
grandmother and his master—and at moments when they are all
participating in spiritual activity, in this case, prayer
meetings. Turner also implies that he learns to read

202
Ibid. pp. 44-45.

339
supernaturally, for he states that he “acquire[s]
[literacy] with the most perfect ease, so much so that [he]
has no recollection whatever of learning the alphabet.”
Finally, he notes that he spends the majority of his time
participating in a combination of both spiritual and
intellectual activity: “prayer” and “making experiments.”
This thematic forging of the relationship between spiritual
and natural literacy ultimately works against Gray because
of the cultural and mythological cache Turner receives as a
spiritual symbol and authority figure. The positive
associations of Turner’s spirituality forge positive
associations with his intellect, which in turn, temper the
charge that Turner is mentally deranged. Certainly, the
eccentric, paranormal and enigmatic dynamics of Turner’s
story could also take on the nuances of lunacy. Someone
outside the Southern theo-cultural cosmos would likely view
the details of Turner’s story far outside the realm of
reason and reality. However, within the historical and
cultural context in which Turner writes, his story has
credibility. Even if what is represented to be Turner’s
testimony is a complete fabrication by Gray, the Turner
that Gray creates retains associations that align Turner
with symbolism that advances the cause of black liberation.
340
The spiritual dynamic of this symbolism is very clear,
but there is also a political dynamic of this symbolism
that propels Turner into an even more powerful place in the
culture. In particular, within Turner’s testimony, there is
a brief reference to the fact that Turner originally plans
to launch his rebellion on the Fourth of July, a strategic
detail that is amended because Turner falls ill:
It was intended by us to have begun the work of death
of the 4
th
of July last—Many were the plans formed and
rejected by us, and it affected my mind to such a
degree, that I fell sick, and the time passed without
our coming to any determination how to commence.
203

The significance of this is that Thomas Jefferson and John
Adams die five years prior to this on the same Fourth of
July date. The symbolism in this is not only that two
iconic founding fathers die concurrently on the fourth of
July, but also that their deaths mark the end of the whole
Founding Father generation. The symbolic vacuum left open
by the deaths of the last of the Founding Fathers not only
places pressure upon the second generation of politically
elite, but also sets up Turner to upstage them. Hence, his
plan to launch a rebellion on the Fourth of July is
strategic. For someone with an intellect and spiritual
acumen as sophisticated as Turner’s, the deaths of
Jefferson and Adams and the symbolism tied to them is not

203
Ibid. p. 48.
341
lost on him. Nor is it lost on anxious Christian
slaveholders who recognize the symbolic and political
implications of Turner’s revolt. Many of them note this in
expressions of their reservations about teaching their
slaves about Christian doctrine.
To be sure, the duplicitous meanings of Christianity
give slaveholders ambivalence about whether or not and the
extent to which they introduce Christianity to their
slaves. Just as the Haitian Revolution begins to call
attention to the subversive potential of Christianity in
relationship to slave rebellion, Christian slaveholders
engineer an alternate Christian discourse to serve as an
ongoing justification and reinforcement of slavery.
Whereas many slaveholders initially frown upon their
slaves’ Christian conversion, several others endorse
Christian influences on slaves, viewing an emphasis on New
Testament themes of submission as a means of manipulating
their slaves into subservience. However, even in this,
slaveholders acknowledge the necessity of being careful in
the application of Christian theology to slaves. Stephen
Oates elaborates on this in his voicing of the sentiments
of Christian slaveholders bent on using Christianity as a
means of slave control:
342
to make sure. . .that [your slaves interpret Christian
doctrine to favor slavery], you must give your slaves
only censored sermons—and absolutely forbid them to
talk with a Quaker or learn about Thomas Paine or
Jefferson’s Declaration. In fact, enlightened slave
owner or not, it was best to remove such writings from
your library and go about your affairs with confidence
and equanimity—much as Samuel Turner was doing down in
Southampton County—so that your slaves would never
suspect that you were anxious in any way.
204

Oates notes how delicate the matter of Christian influence
on slaves is, even when white bias in it is overtly
emphasized. This is because, in many cases, staunch
defenders of Christianity’s ability to render slaves
submissive are not completely convinced of this themselves.
Though they may not admit it publicly, the Haitian
Revolution, Turner’s rebellion and several lesser-acclaimed
slave revolts in between continue to weigh upon their
minds. The revivalist thrust of the Second Great Awakening
with its emphasis on the reality of apocalyptic signs is
part of the reason for this, but the potency of Turner’s
revolt also weighs heavy in the minds of whites because of
Christianity’s secular adaptations within American
patriotic traditions.
As Oates notes, paranoid slaveholders easily see the
link between revolt based upon biblical precedent and

204
Oates, Stephen B. The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner’s
Fierce Rebellion. New York: HarperPerennial, 2004. p. 9;
Kolchin, Peter. American Slavery 1619 – 1877. New York:
Hill and Wang, 1995. p. 9.
343
revolt based upon precedents in early American history.
This link calls attention to the relationship between
Christian discourse and American patriotic traditions, a
connection that poignantly situates Turner as a recipient
of honor. The pairing of Turner’s Christian theology with
his revolutionary actions enlists him as a recipient of
honor in the vein of Thomas Jefferson or Patrick Henry.
Turner’s combined association with Christian and American
patriotic traditions insert him and other black male rebels
into a tradition of heroic leadership that is otherwise the
domain of elite white southern males. This tradition of
heroic leadership is part of a mytho-religious tradition
linking the “biblical hero” with the American patriot. It
syncs biblical and national heroes in ways that make the
historic plight of Old Testament Israel and the plight of
American mythologized leadership part of one continuous
collective spiritual biography.
205
It fuses biblical typology
and symbolism with American patriotism, nationalism and
cultural symbolism. More specifically, the legacy of
America’s Founding Fathers and its male-centered Puritan
roots serve as important forging dynamics in relationship
to a particular set of American ideals: freedom, violent

205
Bercovitch, Sacvan. The Puritan Origins of the American
Self. New Haven: Yale, 1975. p. ix, 36.
344
revolution and providential intervention. Turner’s
rebellion enlists him as an icon for the ironic twinning of
this American cultural value system:
206
Turner’s messianic
vision for black freedom, his use of violent force and his
invocation of the Christian God and scripture. The
centrality of these ideals to the American sense of nation
is such that Turner’s implicit allusions to them via his
rebellion disrupt the perception of them as both culturally
pristine and sacred. Moreover, the positioning of a black
slave within America’s revolutionary and spiritual lineage
is a significant affront to white American hegemony and its
male conservators. This is a very serious matter in the
early nineteenth century, since these conservators,
generally amongst the slaveholding elite, fit the
demographic mold of the Founding Fathers. This correlation
is one held dearly by this second generation of political
elites, for they are aware that they must prove themselves
against their legend-creating, myth-making predecessors.
“The anxiety of the ‘post-heroic generations’ in the face
of the inimitable achievements of the [American] Revolution
[leave] them. . .unable to act with originality,” which
leaves them befuddled at Turner’s decisive revolutionary

206
Sundquist, Eric. To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making
of American Literature. Cambridge: Belknap, 1993. p. 58.
345
actions.
207
Unable to re-invoke America’s revolutionary
heritage without revisiting well-rehearsed stories of early
American colonial exploits, the post-heroic generation
essentially finds itself upstaged by Turner.
Even with the editorial power to silence Turner, Gray
finds himself undone by the mythical power of Turner’s
story. Hence, his only recourse is to divest Turner’s fame
from his person. He attempts to do this in a subtle play
on the word and the person of Will. The first evidence
comes across as part of an explanation for Turner
voluntarily returning to his master after he successfully
runs away:
About this time I was placed under an overseer, from
whom I ran away—and remaining in the woods thirty
days, I returned, to the astonishment of the negroes
of the plantation, who thought I had made my escape to
some other part of the country, as my father had done
before. But the reason for my return was, that the
Spirit appeared to me and said I had my wishes
directed to the things of this world, and not to the
kingdom of Heaven, and that I should return to the
service of my earthly master—“For he who knoweth his
Master’s will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with
many stripes, and thus have I chastened you.” And the
negroes found fault, and murmured against me, saying
that If they had my sense they would not serve any
master in the world.
208

207
Ibid. p 35.
208
Turner, Nat., Kenneth S.. Greenburg ed. The Confessions
of Nat Turner and Related Documents. New York: Bedford/St.
Martin’s, 1996. p. 46.

346
The specific scriptural reference here is Luke 12:47: “And
that servant, which knew his lord’s will, and prepared not
himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten
with many stripes.” This verse is part of a larger
biblical passage, which explains the difference between
faithful and unfaithful stewards. As the basis for
Turner’s return, this scriptural reference is odd in that
it is inconsistent with other mandates from the Spirit,
which command Turner to rebel against his earthly master.
Furthermore, it contradicts Turner’s earlier statement,
just a few sentences prior, in which he remarks that he has
“influence” “over the minds of” his “fellow servants.” In
this earlier statement, he also says that when he
communicates his visions to his fellow slaves, they believe
him and tell him that his revelations are divine. These
inconsistencies suggest Gray’s manipulation of the text.
Gray’s intervention in Turner’s recorded testimony also
comes across in the term “will.” “Will” is part of an
ongoing pun in The Confessions that figuratively castrates
Turner. To be specific, the text later refers to a person
named Will, a silent executioner who allegedly accompanies
Turner during the insurrection raids. The dynamics of
Will’s involvement in the insurrection are curious because,
347
based on the written testimony, Will, not Turner, is the
lead murderer:
It was then observed that I must spill blood. On
which armed with at hatchet, and accompanied by Will,
I entered my master’s chamber, it being dark, I could
not give a death blow; the hatchet glanced from his
head, he sprang from the bed and called his wife, it
was his last word, Will laid him dead, with a blow of
his axe, and Mrs. Travis shared the same fate, as she
lay in bed. . . ;there was a little infant sleeping in
a cradle, that was forgotten, until we had left the
house and gone some distance, when Henry and Will
returned and killed it. . . .From Mrs. Reese’s we went
to Mrs. Turner’s. . . .as we approached, the family
discovered us and shut the door. Vain hope! Will,
with one stroke of his axe, opened it, and we entered
and found Mrs. Turner and Mrs. Newsome in the middle
of the room, almost frightened to death. Will
immediately killed Mrs. Turner, with one blow of his
axe. I took Mrs. Newsome by the hand, and with the
sword I had when I was apprehended, I stuck her
several blows over the head, but not being able to
kill her, as the sword was dull. Will turning around
and discovering it, dispatched her also. . . .as we
approached the house we discovered Mr. Richard
Whitehead standing in the cotton patch, near the lane
fence; we called him over into the lane, and Will, the
executioner, was near at hand, with his fatal axe, to
send him to an untimely grave. . . .As I came around
to the door I saw Will pulling Mrs. Whitehead out of
the house, and at the step he nearly severed her head
from her body, with his broad axe.
209

This excerpt comprises the majority of the description of
the insurrection in The Confessions. Only once does the
text mention that Turner kills anyone directly and, even in
this instance, Turner’s victim dies only after Turner
inflicts several blows to the victim. Hence, with regards

209
Ibid. pp. 49-50.
348
to the actual killing, Turner only plays a supporting role.
The import of Gray’s comments in the preface and of
Turner’s visions in the main body of the text certainly
isolates Turner as someone crazy and determined enough to
kill. However, the text’s description of the actual
insurrection renders Turner as an impotent conspirator who
manipulates others to do most of his dirty work. The
aggressive sense of purpose and swift action that myths and
rumors of the insurrection attribute to Turner are
qualities that The Confessions attributes to Will. The
overwhelming displacement of Turner’s violent fanaticism
with Will points to Gray’s interference in the
transcription of Turner’s story. Moreover, the court
documents listing the slaves brought to trial for the
insurrection suggest that Will is not even a real person.
While the other named conspirators in Turner’s testimony
are listed in the official court records, Will is not.
Hence, in all likelihood, Will is a character that Gray
creates to negate the dynamism of the Turner that Gray
presents in the beginning.
210

210
Fossett, Judith. University of Southern California.
Taper Hall, Los Angeles. 28 Feb. 2003.

349
The Turner of the early and middle sections of The
Confessions is clearly one who is “crazy” and determined
enough to enact a killing spree. However, Gray cannot
leave this as the prevailing tenor of the Turner testimony
because it would attribute too much power to Turner and
other potential slave insurrectionists. In effect, a potent
Turner would lend credence to the “thousand idle,
exaggerated and mischievous reports” that Gray wants to put
down. However, as indicated in the preface, Gray must
account for the disastrous consequences that emerge out of
Turner’s insurrection, one then and now considered to be
“among the largest slave rebellions in United States
History.”
211
Hence, Gray upstages Turner with Will,
transferring Turner’s potency to Will’s character. This
enables Gray to account for the enormous political and
cultural effects of the insurrection while alienating
Turner from the notoriety that Turner’s leadership in the
rebellion attracts.
Essentially, Gray figuratively dismembers Turner from
his body, as an integrated Turner is much too potent and
much too validating of Turner’s political agenda. This

211
Greenburg, Kenneth S. ed. The Confessions of Nat Turner
and Related Documents. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s,
1996. p. 14.

350
figurative dismantling of Turner also allows Gray to
attribute to himself the sense of empowered manhood that
Turner steals from him symbolically. For Gray, Will
becomes a tabooed cultural specimen, which cultivates both
repulsion and desire. Will absorbs an array of negative
connotations associated with the notion of slave rebellion.
Because the negative stigmas associated with Will render
him as culturally and hopelessly unredeemable, Will is
implicitly “free” from the moral and social obligations to
which Gray is culturally bound as a respectable white man
in pursuit of an increased socio-economic status. Gray
understands Will to be fundamentally savage, but this
ironically gives Will an implicit attraction: Gray is drawn
to the liberty implicit in the idea of Will’s role in the
rebellion, for it offers a figurative arena in which Gray
can construct a kind of creative license. In essence, Gray
attempts to take on the perceived freedom of Will’s
imagined role in the rebellion as a source of cultural
energy without shouldering any of the responsibility for
the institutional oppression that creates Turner’s need to
rebel in the first place. Gray also leverages Will
symbolically to castrate a Turner that Gray has no other
way of containing.
351
In such an incredibly vulnerable time for Gray in
terms of his finances, social status, esteem, and sense of
identity, his treatment of Turner in The Confessions draws
out a series of conflicting sentiments and
characterizations of Turner. These contradictory dynamics
not only point to the political and mythical staying power
of Turner’s rebellion, which blatantly contradicts the
plantation myth social order, but to a psychological tug-
of-war dragging Gray back and froth between intrigue with
and repulsion of Turner. Turner’s heroism, appropriation
of American revolutionary ideals and status as a Christian
prophet all coalesce around symbolism that Gray seeks to
associate himself with in his pursuit of social status as a
lawyer and previously as a landowning slaveholder. In
seeking to represent Turner’s testimony in print, Gray not
only looks at the prospect of his own material fortunes
increasing in the sale of Turner’s Confessions, but at the
prospect of appropriating Turner’s mythical aura into his
own sense of importance. As a rebel figure, Turner takes
on the role of villain, but also as hero. Turner receives
criticism for alleged mental derangement, but his
unconventional thinking is tied to deeply rooted
convictions about God commensurate with the belief systems
352
of a critical mass of southern blacks and whites at the
time.
As editor and transcriber of Turner’s Confessions,
Gray plays upon all of these varied characterizations of
Turner as Gray works through his own sense of identity and
social value. In this way, Gray participates in the
narrative self-reinvention culture of his counterparts in
the slave trading economy. Though Turner represents the
ultimate anti-slave, Gray appropriates Turner as a figure
to figuratively turn himself into a master of slaves. By
mastering Turner in narrative, Gray appropriates Turner’s
heroic qualities and carves out a figurative space for
himself as a master of slaves. Whereas his material
mastery of slaves fails, Gray recovers this figuratively,
with hopes that the financial success of The Confessions
positions him for the material mastery of slaves again.
One must also keep in mind that the pressing nature of
Gray’s fluid sense of self and the editorial control over
which he wields upon The Confessions does not completely
erase the power of Turner’s subjectivity in the text. The
fact that Turner has no ability to affect the editing and
publication of his own testimony certainly services Gray in
terms of Gray’s catharsis and the social and financial
reconstruction of Gray’s identity, but this by no means
353
reduces Turner to a mere literary device for Gray. However
much The Confessions compromises an actual confession from
Turner or dismisses Turner’s political vitality outright,
it still documents the single empirical fact upholding
Turner’s empowered subjectivity: The rebellion itself. The
fact of Turner’s rebellion, its material consequence and
the staying power of Turner’s mythical significance
undercut the attempt by Gray to exploit Turner as a figure.
The materiality and mythical potency of Turner’s rebellion
brings into manifestation the underlying fear amongst
whites that the theatricality of plantation life is as
pretentious as the Northern minstrel show. Gray wrestles
with these slippages in representation as he attempts to
validate The Confessions with legal certainty. At the same
time, the material consequences and mythic power of Turner
creates a subtext competing with the authority of this
constructed legality.

354
Conclusion

This dissertation signals the lasting impact that Nat
Turner and his rebellion leave upon American history,
mythology and symbolism. As a historical figure, Turner
opens up an important conversation about the nature and
scope of American freedom, revolution and citizenship.
Through his leadership in the Southampton County, Virginia
1831 slave rebellion, Turner forwards a tangible signal of
the urgency and possibility of a black antebellum New
World, one replete with the full array of privileges,
benefits and securities celebrated at America’s founding.
Turner’s rebellion also creates the context for the
publication of The Confessions of Nat Turner. Though
compromised in terms of its authenticity, The Confessions
encapsulates Turner’s significance to the culture, serving
both as a microcosm of Turner’s impact on the nation and as
a key synergistic element in the development of other
aspects of Turner’s legacy in America. Even though one
must plow through Gray’s editorial manipulation to draw
this out, The Confessions is significant in perpetuating
the primary plot points and themes of Turner’s revolt.
Whether intended by Gray or not, the text underscores the
subjectivity and free-willing subversive intentions of
355
Turner as a black revolutionary. This basic tension
between the narrative Gray wants to create in The
Confessions and the counter-narrative perpetuated by
Turner’s violent revolt is at the crux of Turner’s legacy
within American myth and symbol.
The scope of Turner’s legacy creates the basis for
future Turner studies that delve into Turner’s impact on
the later two thirds of nineteenth century. For example, no
part of Turner’s legacy is quite as nuanced as the
unsuspecting relationship between the narrative tension in
The Confessions and the popularity of blackface minstrelsy
later in the nineteenth century. Blackface minstrelsy is a
popular form of white parody on racial blackness in the
early nineteenth century. Within a couple of years of
Turner’s rebellion, blackface minstrelsy shifts from being
a marginal form of local amusement cultivated in the
outskirts and backwater regions of southern towns into an
intensely popular form of entertainment across the nation.
212

This is no accident. Thomas Gray fits the psychographic
profile of several white men throughout the South who are
anxious about the continuity of white masculine privilege
in light of Turner’s rebellion. The narrative tension in

212
Lott, Eric. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the
American Working Class. New York: Oxford University Press,
1993. pp. 38-62.
356
The Confessions is a direct reflection of this anxiety, but
the textual reflection of this tension also models a way of
mitigating it: To the extent that Gray passes himself off
as Turner, Turner comes across as a person-character
duality, which fits within the theatrical dynamic of
blackface. The Confessions and blackface minstrelsy become
ways that Thomas Gray and other white males (as the primary
blackface performers) process the anxiety that the potency,
heroism, and sexual appeal of black men (the central parody
of blackface) compromise the cultural centrality of white
masculinity.
213

The dynamic of plantation myth theatricality—its stock
role pairing of the benevolent white master-father with the
child-like black Sambo—sits within the processes forging
the narrative tension of The Confessions and the cultural
tensions of blackface minstrelsy. Plantation myth folklore,
blackface minstrelsy and the narrative competition within
The Confessions each bring to bear the impending threat of
Nat Turner’s antebellum New World upon nineteenth century
America. The literal and figurative investment in drama on
the part of the southern male has everything to do with the
prospect of Turner and others like him upstaging them.

213
Ibid. pp. 3-12.

357
Turner’s heroic leadership within the context of the
significant symbolism of American revolutionary and
spiritual history places enormous performance pressure upon
the political and biological sons of the revolutionary
generation.
Because of Turner’s rebellion, Thomas Jefferson
Randolph and William Henry Roane, the grandsons of Thomas
Jefferson and Patrick Henry respectively, are thrown into
the spotlight, having to make key decisions on the future
of slavery within their state.
214
As career politicians
serving in the Virginia State Assembly, they find
themselves in the throes of an unsettling déjà vu, as they
face the same challenge their grandfathers face at the
nation’s founding. Not only the death and destruction that
Turner’s rebellion causes, but the utter contradiction to
Virginia’s social order that the rebellion creates forces
Virginia’s political leadership to seriously question
whether slavery can continue to be a viable institution in
Virginia. For Randolph, Roane and other second-generation
political elites, this becomes both a legal issue and a
symbolic issue. These men find themselves in the throes of

214
Masur, Louis. “Nat Turner and Sectional Crisis.” Nat
Turner: A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory. Ed.
Kenneth S. Greenburg. New York: Oxford University Press,
2003. p. 55.
358
the same daunting question plaguing their forefathers in
the Constitutional Convention: How does one reconcile the
immorality of slavery with the impracticality of its
immediate abolition? The Founding Fathers answer the
question by postponing their perceived need to answer it,
setting the date for the legal end of the American slave
trade twenty years into the future. Of course, this only
lays the burden upon their posterity. However when
Randolph, Roane and other revolutionary generation
successors take on the burden, the pressure is much more
intense.
As the new generation of white American political
leadership debates over what eventually becomes another
postponed decision over slavery’s abolition, Turner
materializes the revolutionary generation’s idealism.
Though in service of a black antebellum New World, Turner’s
rebellion invokes the ideals of the American Revolution,
refreshing the Revolution’s spirit with the same heroic
leadership of America’s Founding Fathers. While Randolph,
Roane and others debate over the pros and cons of both the
immediate and gradual abolition options, the aftermath of
Turner’s violent revolt screams out a call for abolition’s
immediacy and a return to the rallies for freedom
contextualizing America’s founding. David Walker, Fredrick
359
Douglass and Harriet Jacobs echo this call as they either
anticipate or invoke Turner in their political writings.
Drawing both upon Enlightenment rationality and Christian
morality, they contest the argument that slavery’s
immediate abolition is not practical. They challenge the
binary opposition between rationality and faith, collapsing
the logic of abolition with the totality of God’s rule over
humankind. Viewing sacred and secular history as part of a
single continuum, they place their appeals for freedom in a
higher court. Their appeals have some resonance with white
audiences because blacks and whites in the nineteenth
century draw from a common Christian vocabulary. Though
often interpreting the Bible in service of radically
different political objectives, blacks and whites in the
nineteenth century share a common respect for biblical
typology and symbolism.
This sharing of mythological space renders African
Americans as symbolic doubles in relationship to Whites.
Though constructed as racial and cultural opposites to
white Americans, Blacks also become symbolic twins. They
serve as alter egos to the white American psyche and,
hence, as convenient muses for white cultural renewal.
With the profound import of biblical meanings onto early
American conceptions of itself, biblical symbolism and
360
typology—especially the language of Exodus and spiritual
nationhood—renders the black experience in America not only
as a parallel version of the white American experience, but
as a purer, more authentic demonstration of the values
overtly associated with the white American experience.
Turner’s rebellion converts the symbolism and
mythology of this dynamic into a material artifact,
accentuating the critique of slavery and making more
emphatic the counter-narrative detailing the political
possibilities of a black antebellum New World. The
remaining two thirds of the nineteenth century illustrate
how potent this counter-narrative becomes. Not only does
Turner’s counter-narrative contribute to the popularity of
blackface minstrelsy, which is partly a reactionary
response to the prospect of an empowered black masculinity,
but Turner’s counter-narrative also has a significant
connection to other historical and political through-lines
in the nineteenth century. Turner’s counter-narrative
keeps in play the political symbolism of Haiti, which for
white Americans represents terror, but for black Americans
represents political possibility. Because the Haitian
Revolution only precedes Turners by 40 years, its cultural
aftermath is enough to pull Turner into its lore.
Consequently, Turner’s counter-narrative is part of an
361
important thematic nuance shaping America during the
greater portion of the nineteenth century. The dynamics of
New World Slavery and colonialism in relationship to
Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas concentrates a
particular mix of cultural tension implicating Turner and
southern slavery with the occupation of North American
western territory. Many of the tensions informing
America’s territorial acquisitions in its expansionist
period in the 1840s has much to do with the fear of a
“continental Haiti,” an anxiety over a violently revolting
black population in America that is kept alive largely
because of the counter-narrative emerging out of Turner’s
revolt.
215
Many of the debates over what eventually results
in the acquisition of Texas have to do with the prospect of
turning Texas into a holding tank for untamable blacks like
Turner, who the government can eventually force to leave
the country altogether.
216

The important role that the fear of slave revolts
plays in American political history over the course of the
nineteenth century is a testimony to the legacy of Nat
Turner. Positioning himself and his rebellion against a
backdrop of national symbols and Christian typology, Turner

215
Hietala, Thomas. Manifest Design: Anxious Aggrandizement
in Late Jacksonian America. New York: Cornel, 1985. p. 48.
216
Ibid. p. 31.
362
eventually affects the debate about slave emancipation, the
rise of blackface minstrelsy, western expansionism, and the
political build-up to the Civil War. He keeps the vision
of a black New World as a conceivable prospect, one that
not only draws fearful reactionary responses from whites,
but engenders inspired revolutionary possibilities for
blacks. In this sense, Turner’s rebellion is not a
failure. If his claims of prophetic vision have any
validity, his sights extend beyond a single revolutionary
event. Though his rebellion is short-lived, Turner’s
impact on American history, myth and symbol is long-
lasting.

363
Bibliography
Alexander, David., and Pat Alexander eds. Eerdmans Handbook
to the Bible. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983.

Allmendinger, Jr. David. “The Construction of The
Confessions of Nat Turner.” Nat Turner: A Slave
Rebellion in History and Memory. Ed. Kenneth S.
Greenburg. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Aptheker, Herbert. American Negro Slave Revolts. New
York: International Publishers, 1963.

---. Nat Turner’s Slave Rebellion, Including the 1831
“Confessions.” New York: Dover, 2006.

Bercovitch, Sacvan. The American Jeremiad. Madison,
Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1978.

---. The Puritan Origins of the American Self. New Haven:
Yale, 1975.

Bermuda Royal Gazette. 9 August 1831.

Davis, Charles T. and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. eds. The
Slave’s Narrative. New York: Oxford University Press,
1985.

Douglass, Fredrick. My Bondage and My Freedom. New York:
Penguin, 2003.

---. Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass. Slave
Narratives. Eds. William L. Andrews and Henry Louis
Gates Jr.. New York: Library of America, 2000.

---. “The Dred Scott Decision.” American Abolition Society.
New York. 11 May 1857. Two Speeches by Fredrick
Douglass; one on West India Emancipation Delivered at
Canandaigua, Aug. 4
th
, and the Other on the Dred Scott
Decision, Delivered in New York on the Occasion of
Anniversary of the American Abolition Society, Amy
1857. Rochester: Dewey.

Du Bois, W. E. B.. The Suppression of the African Slave
Trade to the United States of America 1683-1870. New
York: Longmans, 1896.
364
Finseth, Ian Frederick. “The Experience of Conversion.”
Liquid Fire Within Me: Language, Self, and Society in
Transcendentalism and Early Evengelicalism, 1820 –
1860. Masters Thesis University of Virginia, 1995.

---. “The Second Great Awakening and Rise of
Evangelicalism.” Liquid Fire Within Me: Language,
Self, and Society in Transcendentalism and Early
Evengelicalism, 1820 – 1860. Masters Thesis University
of Virginia, 1995.

Floyd, John. Diary Entry 23 Aug. 1831. The Southampton
Slave Revolt: A Compilation Of Source Material
Including The Full Text Of The “Confessions” Of Nat
Turner. Ed. Henry Irvin Tragle. New York: Random
House, 1973.

Fossett, Judith. University of Southern California. Taper
Hall, Los Angeles. 28 Feb. 2003.

Franklin, John Hope. The Militant South 1800-1861. Chicago:
University of Illinois Press, 2002.

Gates, Henry Louis. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of
Afro-American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1988.

Gray, Thomas. Preface. The Confessions of Nat Turner in The
Confessions of Nat Turner and Related Documents.
Kenneth Greenberg, ed. Boston: Bedford Books, 1996.

Gray, Thomas. The Confessions of Nat Turner and Related
Documents. Ed. Kenneth Greenberg. Boston: Bedford
Books, 1996.

Greenburg, Kenneth. “Name Face, Body” in Nat Turner: A
Slave Rebellion in History and Memory. Kenneth
Greenburg ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

---. Introduction. Nat Turner: A Slave
Rebellion in History and Memory. Kenneth Greenburg ed.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

---. ed. The Confessions of Nat Turner and
Related Documents. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s,
1996.

365
Hatch, Nathan. The Democratization of American
Christianity. New Haven: Yale University, 1989.

Hietala, Thomas. Manifest Design: Anxious Aggrandizement in
Late Jacksonian America. New York: Cornel, 1985.

Holy Bible: King James Version. Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
1999.

Honderich, Ted, ed. The Oxford Guide To Philosophy. Oxford:
Oxford UP, 2005.

Hunt, Alfred. Haiti’s Influence on Antebellum America:
Slumbering Volcano in the Caribbean. Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1988.

“Insurrection in Southampton County.” The Norfolk Herald 26
Aug. 1831.

Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
Slave Narratives. Eds. William L. Andrews and Henry
Louis Gates Jr.. New York: Library of America, 2000.

Johnson, Walter. Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum
Slave Market. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1999.
Kolchin, Peter. American Slavery 1619 – 1877. New York:
Hill and Wang, 1993.

“Latest Account.” The Richmond Enquirer 26 Aug. 1831.

Lott, Eric. Introduction. Love and Theft: Blackface
Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1993.

---. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American
Working Class. New York: Oxford University Press,
1993.

Niles Weekly Register [Baltimore] 19 Mar. 1831: p. 52.

Norfolk Herald 24 Aug. 1831.

366
Masur, Louis. “Nat Turner and Sectional Crisis.” Nat
Turner: A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory. Ed.
Kenneth S. Greenburg. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2003.

Oates, Stephen B. The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner’s Fierce
Rebellion. New York: HarperPerennial, 2004.

Patterson, Orlando. Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative
Study. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982.

Richmond Compiler 29 Aug. 1831.

Richmond Herald 24 Aug. 1831.

Robertson, David. Denmark Vesey: The Buried History of
America’s Largest Slave Rebellion and the Man Who Led
It. New York: Knopf, 1999.

Roach, Joseph. Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic
Performance. New York: Columbia University Press,
1996.

Scully, Randolph Ferguson. Religion and the Making of Nat
Turner’s Virginia: Baptist Community and Conflict,
1740-1840. Charlottesville: University of Virginia
Press, 2008.

Sundquist, Eric. To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of
American Literature. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1993.

The American Beacon [Norfolk] 29 Aug. 1831.

The Constitutional Whig [Richmond] 25 Aug. 1831.

The Constitutional Whig [Richmond] 3 Sep. 1831.

The Enquirer Compiler [Richmond] 30 Aug. 1831.

The Liberator [Boston] 12 Mar. 1831: p.43.

The Liberator [Boston] 12 Mar. 1831: p.43.

The Liberator [Boston] 26 Mar. 1831: p.43.

The Liberator [Boston] 30 Apr. 1831: p.71.
367

The Liberator [Boston] 7 May. 1831: p.74.

The Liberator [Boston] 4 Jun. 1831: p.90.

The Liberator [Boston] 17 Sep. 1831: p.151.

The Liberator [Boston] 24 Sep. 1831: p.155.

The Norfolk Herald 24 Aug. 1831.

The Norfolk Herald 4 Nov. 1831.

The Richmond Compiler 24 Aug. 1831.

The Richmond Compiler 29 Aug. 1831.

The Richmond Compiler 3 Sep. 1831.

The Richmond Enquirer 30 Aug. 1831.

The Richmond Enquirer 27 Sep. 1831.

Turner, Nat. The Confessions of Nat Turner. The Confessions
of Nat Turner and Related Documents. Ed. Kenneth
Greenburg. New York: Bedford Books, 1996.

---. The Confessions of Nat Turner. William L.
Andrews and Henry Louis Gates Jr., eds. New York: The
Library of America, 2000.

Walker, David. Walker’s Appeal, In Four Articles Together
with a Preamble to the Colored Citizens of the World,
But in Particular, and very Expressly to Those of the
United States of America in Walker’s Appeal and
Garnet’s Address. Nashville: Winston, 1994.

Abstract (if available)

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Conceptually similar

PDF

A peculiar paradise: tribal place, property and the peripatetic tradition in African American literature

Asset Metadata

Creator Smith, Joshua Damu (author)

Core Title The mythology of Nat Turner: black theology and black revolt in the shaping of American myth and symbol

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program English

Publication Date 02/05/2010

Defense Date 12/01/2009

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag African- American studies,African-American literature,American Literature,Black literature,David Walker,Fredrick Douglass,Harriet Jacobs,Myth,Nat Turner,OAI-PMH Harvest,slave rebellion,slave revolt,symbol

Place Name Southampton (counties), USA (countries), Virginia (states)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Fossett, Judith Jackson (committee chair), Briggs, Sheila (committee member), Gustafson, Thomas B. (committee member), Kemp, Anthony (committee member)

Creator Email docjoshplot@gmail.com,jdsmithvision@hotmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m2835

Unique identifier UC1468769

Identifier etd-Smith-3426 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-298036 (legacy record id),usctheses-m2835 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Smith-3426.pdf

Dmrecord 298036

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Smith, Joshua Damu

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu