American Dreams Trilogy

by Michael Phillips

  By the time the nineteenth century opened, an invisible divide existed between North and South. At first it was an economic divide, not particularly a moral one. In the North, freedom for Negroes posed no threat and was simply accepted. In the South, however, where slavery lay as the foundation of a mushrooming plantation-based economy, such freedom was a threat to what gradually came to be called “the Southern way of life.” Though some, like Quaker John Woolman, railed against that way of life in the years prior to the Revolution, widespread moral abolitionist outrage against it lay yet decades in the future.

  But the divide which was economic at root would grow in time to be a moral and cultural chasm as well. Slowly the voices of men like John Woolman began to cause thinking, conscientious, and spiritual men in every state to lament the existence of slavery. Written or verbal appeals did little, however, to stop the traffic of human flesh or the increasing contempt with which masters viewed their slaves. The only hope of deliverance lay in the hope that the Master of both black and white would stir the hearts and consciences of those with courage enough to stand against it.

  Freedom Stirs

  1808–1830

  Among all the nations of the world, it was England whose national conscience first began to awake to the inhumanity of men owning men and making them beasts of labor.

  Persuaded by George Whitefield and others, and at last realizing that the inhumanity had persisted far too long, the British parliament ordered an investigation into slavery in the English colonies of the Caribbean.

  The persuasions of such voices of conscience mounted across the Atlantic to join Woolman’s and the Quakers’ and began to slow the flow of human traffic there as well. Blacks in the northern states of America were increasingly given their freedom. Others managed to purchase it. Many who had fought in the war against Great Britain were rewarded for their service with liberty. But the early cries that would ultimately extend freedom to all, in both Great Britain and the United States, were not at first directed against the institution of slavery itself, but only against the commerce of the slave trade.

  In 1808, the U.S. Congress banned further importation of slaves from the Guinea coast. But the decision did nothing to stop the domestic slave trade within the states themselves. Deafened to opposing views by the whir of the cotton gin, southern plantation owners declared “that peculiar institution” of slavery a vital necessity to their economic survival. Supported by the federal government on the basis of states’ rights, even most northern politicians went along with the argument.

  As a means of keeping their slaves content, and also perhaps in some measure to keep their consciences asleep, spiritually minded southern plantation owners steeped their slaves in the religion of Christianity. If slaves could be Christianized, and taught that slavery was not prohibited in the Bible—indeed, that slaves were instructed to obey their masters—they would be far more likely to remain compliant and obedient.

  Through the early decades of the 1800s, however, louder and louder voices publicly deplored the existence of what was increasingly seen as a blot on the national character. Thoughtful northerners came to hate the very thought of such a vile institution. In England and the United States, consciences grew restless. The weight of the mounting power of Evangelicalism began to speak forcefully for abolitionism. The debate grew more and more heated.

  Yet… what could be done? The nation had been founded on certain principles—states’ rights among them, inviolate as freedom itself. The national government was powerless to alter it without a constitutional amendment. Such a drastic change was impossible without support from the southern states. Evangelicals of the South were just as adamantly supportive of states’ rights as those in the North were against slavery. Religion, it seemed, was no guarantee of unity. A permanent impasse seemed likely.

  But freedom was in the air. The American and French revolutions had set forces in motion throughout Europe and the West that could not be stopped. Gradually the divide between North and South widened.

  At the center of the conflict and debate sat a huge, slumbering, silent people of dark skin and African descent. In some eyes it was a tremendous workforce and the principal form of economic capital of the South. In other eyes it was an even more powerful army… if only its potential could be aroused. The descendents of Tungal and his brethren who had endured the Middle Passage in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had, by the early years of the nineteenth, grown to nearly a million people, a vast horde of dark Americans slowly coming awake to the stirring of freedom in the world, and to its own destiny as a race.

  For many of them, the dream of freedom seemed too distant to imagine. Here and there, however, a few courageous voices began to try to awaken their fellows.

  Some, like Boston’s David Walker—who began the nation’s first black newspaper, Freedom’s Journal, in 1827 and published a widely distributed and inflammatory booklet in 1829 called Appeal to the Slaves of the United States—urged his black brethren to claim their freedom by force.

  Deliverer

  1831

  An uneasy breeze stirred through the sultry Virginia night.

  Four dozen or more dark faces, illuminated by the flickering flames of a small bonfire, waited in silence as the preacher they had crept out to hear rose and stood before them. For days, word had been secretly spreading through the slave shanties of the surrounding countryside—here and there men and women quietly singing a few bars of “Steal Away to Jesus,” followed by a knowing glance and nod as word of the gathering was invisibly made known.

  All knew what the hymn meant, and where the meeting would be held.

  Slowly Brother Turner raised a solemn finger. His white eyes flashed in the firelight. His was a mission… a holy and prophetic mission.

  “Freedom calls, my brothers and sisters,” he began. “Listen to my voice, for it is the voice of liberty… and it is calling to you.”

  He paused and glanced around at his listeners.

  “Are you willing,” he continued, “to live subjected to our enemies? Does the call of freedom mean nothing to you? Surely you are brave men. Look around at your wives, your children. Are you not willing to sacrifice yourselves to the heavenly cause of freedom… if not for yourselves, for their sakes? The time has come for us to act!”

  Everyone listening knew well enough what preacher Nat Turner meant. When he said the time had come, it was a call to arms, to demand their freedom by violence. Word of his summons to the blacks of Virginia had been spreading secretly from plantation to plantation for weeks. Now they heard his plea with their own ears.

  He was not the first Negro firebrand to call for freedom. Gabriel Prosser had led a proposed uprising in 1800. He secretly raised an army of nearly a thousand and planned to take the city of Richmond with a three-pronged attack using homemade swords, bayonets, scythes, and a few guns. Prosser’s orders were to kill all whites except Methodists, Frenchmen, and Quakers. From Richmond, they would march throughout the entire state until all of Virginia was under their control. A violent storm interfered with their first attempt, making it impossible to cross a bridge into the city. Before a second attempt could be made, the plot was betrayed by two slaves who told their owner of the plan. Those involved were either hanged or deported. But Prosser’s efforts led to a major debate throughout Virginia about the advisability of ending slavery. Virginia governor James Monroe, the later president, spoke with his friend Thomas Jefferson, himself a slave owner, about what should be done. In secret sessions, the Virginia legislature brought the matter of abolishing slavery to a debate, but in the end put off a decision.

  Within the next two years, however, all states above the Maryland-Pennsylvania border—the dividing line between North and South—with the exception of New Jersey had abolished slavery. The legislatures of Maryland and Kentucky also discussed that possibility, though, like Virginia, decided against it.

  White Virginia businessman George Boxley led another attempted slave revol
t in 1816. But the most highly organized conspiracy of all was led by Denmark Vesey in 1822. Vesey managed to recruit, by some estimates, nine thousand to his cause. Their proposed march on Charleston possessed the complexity of a well-planned military operation, and called for five separate routes into the city, which would be put to the torch and burned. The planning, however, continued for so many months that white informants penetrated the plot before the march began. Vesey and most of his followers were rounded up and paraded through the city in carts, each seated on the coffin that would hold his body. They were then publicly hanged and their bodies left hanging in a row as a warning against further uprisings.

  Prosser, Boxley, and Vesey had all been educated men. But when field hand Nat Turner began to preach to Virginia’s slaves in the summer of 1831, he commanded an even wider following. He was one of them. He would lead the fight with his own hands. A spiritual visionary, Turner’s passionate rhetoric called for rebellion. His confidence that he was God’s prophetic voice to raise America’s blacks to a general uprising throughout the South led hundreds to follow him.

  Claiming to have discovered the gift of prophecy at the age of three, several years before coming to national prominence Turner declared, “I heard a loud noise in the heavens, and the Spirit instantly appeared to me and said the Serpent was loosened, and Christ had laid down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and that I should take it on and fight against the Serpent.” He then went on to relate in bloody detail the murders of whites he intended to carry out when the time was right. And now, three years later, he was going about the countryside raising the army to carry out exactly such a mission.

  “Those who call themselves our masters,” Turner went on to the group listening around the fire, “while draining the lifeblood from us, must meet the judgment, like the Egyptian tyrants of old. You remember the words of our brother David Walker in his Appeal. Like him, I tell you it is no more harm for you to kill a man who is trying to kill you, than it is for you to take a drink of water when thirsty. The Serpent must be laid waste and crushed beneath our heel. We have an example in the Good Book. As Moses killed his Egyptian, so too you and I must—”

  “’Scuse me, Rev’rund Turner,” interrupted a young boy at the front of the group, “but I’se a mite confused.”

  Surprised by the interruption, Turner squinted in the dim light to make out who had spoken. “What confuses you, boy?” he asked, seeing the child staring up at him.

  “I’se confused ’bout who be dose enemies. You be talkin’ ’bout dose ’Gyptians, but I ain’t neber seen one.”

  “Hush yo mouf, Zeb. You don’ know nuthin’,” snapped the boy’s mama beside him, enforcing her words with a sharp elbow between the ribs of the twelve year old. Neither she nor her son had ever heard of an ancient chieftain by the name of Tungal, or knew that they had descended from his daughter Danyawo. Yet though the legacy had grown dim, still she had repeated to him many times what she had heard from her own mother, that the lines in her hand stood for the five rivers of the land of her ancestors, and that the blood of ancient kings ran in their veins.

  “Let the boy talk,” said Turner. “If he must give his life for the cause, he should know the reason for it. What is your name, young man?”

  “Zeb, sir… Zebediah Albright.”

  “Well, Zeb,” said Turner, “the Egyptians I’m talking about are the cruel white tyrants who keep you and your mama and your sisters under bondage. And their appointed end has come. The Serpent has been loosed and a deliverer shall arise to crush them beneath his heel.”

  Zeb rubbed his head and looked more confused than ever.

  Turner saw that he must speak more plainly. “The time has come when we must fight for our freedom,” he said. “Those in power never give freedom willingly. It must be demanded. It must be taken by force. We must take up arms against those who treat us like animals. The first shall be last and the last first.”

  “You mean… fight Massa Travis?” asked Zeb in amazement.

  “Not just your master, but every man, woman, and child who participates in the abomination of slavery. We must cleanse the land with their blood.”

  Zeb’s eyes widened in horror. “Not little Miz Emily!” he said. “You don’ mean dere blood, duz you, Rev’ren’ Turner? Not Miz Travis!”

  Zeb’s mama clamped a firm hand over his mouth. “Hush up!” she hissed. “You want yo’ voice driftin’ up to da big house? Hit’s time fo us ter git back.”

  She stood, yanked him to his feet, apologized to Reverend Turner for the disturbance, and marched into the night toward the slave village.

  Gradually the murmur of the preacher’s voice died out behind them. But the boy called Zeb could not forget his words. A shudder crawled down his young spine at what the preacher seemed to have said. He edged closer to the big black woman who walked through the blackness ahead of him.

  “Mama, he don’ really mean what he sez—he don’ mean ter hurt Massa and Miz Travis, duz he? He wuzn’t talkin’ ’bout killin’ w’ite folks, wuz he, Mama… not Massa Travis, duz he, Mama?”

  She stalked on in silence.

  “Mama?” repeated Zeb, trotting behind to keep up. Almost at the door of their rough-hewn primitive cabin, she wheeled around and looked him in the eye.

  “Don’ you know why yo pappy ain’t wif us no mo?” she said, her eyes gleaming with the same fire of hatred as the preacher’s. “Massa Travis dun sol’ him down ter Alabama, dat’s why. Duz you know what happened ter yo sister Liz? Miz Travis said she wuz too lazy fo housework an’ dun gib her ter Massa Horace. Effen Massa can gib away my husban’ an’ chillins like dey wuz cattle, I don’ hab no feelin’ er kindness lef fo dat man. Rev’ren’ Turner knows what’s right. He’s read dat Good Book fo hizself. He’s like God’s angel, cum ter lead us ter freedom. He be a proffit, dat’s what folks be sayin’. Sumtime da proffits ob da Almighty duz fearsum things fo da Lord, an’ dis be one er dose times.”

  Her passion silenced the boy’s questions. Meekly he followed her inside and lay down on his pallet. But the preacher’s words rang eerily in his ears for hours, and sleep eluded him until only one or two hours before the roosters were beginning to look eagerly toward the dawn.

  Before the next light of day, the preacher and his followers moved to another midnight meeting at yet another clandestine location. Within a week Nat Turner’s slowly mounting army was indeed ready to turn their general’s words into actions.

  In the middle of the night, led by the firebrand preacher, several dozen blacks from three or four plantations west of Norfolk, armed with stolen guns and muskets, a handful of pistols, clubs and knives, scythes and axes, shovels and pitchforks, and whatever makeshift weapons they could devise, broke into the house of wealthy widow Catherine Whitehead. Whether theft or murder was their original intent, within an hour Mrs. Whitehead, her son, and five daughters lay brutally massacred on their bedroom floors. The mob, emboldened by the success of their initial raid, and gathering more slaves as they went, now headed west across the fields toward the Travis plantation.

  Zeb Albright came suddenly awake. It was the middle of the night, that was all he knew. The blackness outside was filled with evil shouts and strange lights.

  He climbed to his feet and shuffled sleepily to the window. What looked like hundreds of men were running and shouting outside. A band with torches, shouting and calling for others to join them, was coming from the direction of the big house. He heard singing, hymns and loud battle songs, in the midst of the commotion. They were carrying hoes and shovels and rakes.

  A large figure came toward the cabin through the night. Fully awake by now, Zeb ran to the door as his mother walked up the rickety steps.

  “What is it, Mama?” he asked. “What’s everybody doin’ out at dis time er night?”

  “Zeb, what you doin’ up?”

  “I couldn’t sleep from all da ruckus, Mama. What is it?”

  “It’s Rev’ren’ Turner,” she replied. �
��He an’ his angels er mercy, dey be exactin’ da recompense er da Lord’s judgment!”

  “What dat mean, Mama?”

  “Massa Travis be dead, dat’s what!” she said, her eyes gleaming in the night. “Dey’s all dead up at da big house!”

  Too stunned to say more, Zeb stumbled past her out into the darkness. Shuddering in horror, he watched the throng of rioters march across the fields to the next plantation. He walked from the porch, but managed only a half dozen more steps. His stomach lurched, then again, until everything he had eaten that night for supper lay on the ground at his feet. He could think of nothing but the faces of Master Travis’ family. He could not believe they were actually… dead.

  Why did they have to die? Was this the thing they called freedom?

  Jubilant slaves everywhere rejoiced at the news. The hand of God had given Reverend Turner and his followers the victory! The triumphant rioters had gone on to the Malone plantation next, singing battle songs of praise, and had burned it to the ground.

  God had raised up a new Moses to lead them to freedom!

  Blacks everywhere left their shanties to join the rebellion. Before night was over, the violence was spreading throughout Southampton County. Over the next few days Nat Turner and his growing band of slaves swept through southeastern Virginia leaving a wake of bloody triumph behind them. Six to eight hundred black men flocked to the rebellion. Within four days they had murdered more than sixty whites.

  Zeb Albright, despite his mama’s rejoicing, continued to feel sick at heart. He could think of nothing but the many hours he had spent playing with Master Harold and Master John at the big house. He had crooned over baby Emily. He remembered her tiny white fingers curling around his dark one. Once Mrs. Travis even let him taste lemonade along with her own boys. He didn’t care about the color of their skin. They were his friends and playmates. They had never been mean to him. Imagining them lying in their own blood made him gag every time he thought of it.