Nat Turner: Hero or Villain?
So we all know that in 1831 Nat Turner led a slave rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia. Turner, inspired by radical African-American Christian messianism, was inspired to lead the revolt in August that led to deaths of unfortunately, too few Virginia whites. Perhaps 50-60 whites were killed, a disproportionate number of them being women and children. During the actual rebellion, less than a hundred free blacks and slaves joined in the violence, initially using knives, hatchets and blunt instruments to avoid arousing suspicion. They swept through different homes, killing as many whites as possible and liberated the slaves.
Nat Turner himself was literate and believer in the Black Christian anti-slavery movement that inspired slave revolts in Jamaica during the same period (Christmas Uprising or Baptist War, led by Samuel Sharpe, who was a Baptist preacher like Nat Turner). Since he believed he was chosen for a special mission of liberation by God, some may see him as a religious fanatic and see little value in celebrating his life. On the contrary, Turner’s Christian beliefs represent the best of 19th century Christianity by espousing a quick, radicalizing affront to human life to demonstrate the violence and inhumanity of the slave regime. Though he killed supposedly innocent beneficiaries of the slavocracy, Turner represented the best in Christian tradition with a thorough rejection of injustice in the present rather than waiting for a brighter times in the distant future. Without a brutal,dehumanizing assault on white life (including relatively innocent women and children), white abolitionists and moderates in the North would have taken longer to realize the importance of ending slavery sooner rather than later, especially after the brutal white reprisals taken against blacks throughout the South and the toughening of anti-free black laws and harsher penalties further polarized the United States.
In addition, white Americans, at least in the South, would have heard of the Baptist Uprising in Jamaica, a 10-day slave rebellion involving 60,000 of Jamaica’s 300,000 slaves. This enormous revolt, starting peacefully as a strike, quickly showed the importance of emancipation sooner rather than later or face additional widespread revolts and work stoppages. Or to go back even further, the 1816 Bussa Rebellion in Barbados and the successful Haitian Revolution provided frightening possibile futures for Euro-Americans if slavery continued unabated: enormous ‘race wars’ and so-called “savage” black vengeance taken in the form of the feared black rape of white women and all other horrors (which were things actually done by white men against black slaves, particularly sexual abuse and rape of women and girls, and excessive and cruel punishment of course). So the specter of Haiti was always present in the pysche of white Southerners, causing excessively brutal crackdowns on slave conspiracies and actual revolts (including the largest revolt in American history, the 1811 Louisiana revolt led by a slave from Saint Domingue (Haiti) that included 500 slaves) Thus, white Southerners were right to fear the “contamination of American blacks and slaves with the example of Haiti, even in cases where slaves knew little about Haiti. Indeed, free blacks were the African-Americans who often knew the most about Haiti, particularly early black nationalists such as Denmark Vesey and free black communities in northern cities who celebrated Haiti’s day of independence instead of the Fourth of July. Nat Turner, as a literate man influenced by Vesey and presumably knowledgeable about the largest slave revolt in the Atlantic world, would likely have known the importance of violence, including violence against so-called innocent whites as necessary for the success of the Haitian Revolution.
Of course this is morally questionable territory Nat Turner put himself in when he and his followers murdered white women and children. One would assume his Christian preacher background would have deterred violence taken out against children, but remember that the slaveholders also called themselves “Christians” yet held people in bondage. If one focuses on what may be considered moral hypocrisy in the case of Nat Turner and other violent slave rebellions, why not focus on the even larger moral and political hypocrisy of the United States? Besides, the unarmed white women and children were still part of slaveholding families, and although the children did not choose to be members of a repugnant racist class, the murdering of women and children was easier to achieve than armed white militias, who eventually did defeat our heroes Nat Turner and company. And perhaps Fanon had it right; violence as a means of raising consciousness and a rejection of the colonizer/oppressor is a vital step. Unfortunately, the majority of enslaved African-Americans did not rise up in violent revolt, but that would have been unrealistic anyway given the lack of access to weapons and the huge hurdles facing large-scale slave rebellions in the expanse of North America. Raising a revolutionary consciousness of resistance could take multiple forms, including the much easier individual flight, infanticide, work stoppages and a counterculture or resistance in religion.
Ultimately, most African-Americans view Nat Turner as a hero for his valiant effort to overthrow slavery in Southhampton, although it may have seemed as audacious and foolish as John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry. Another one of the consequences the Virginia Assembly enacted on slave populations was requiring white clergy to be present at black religious gatherings, in a vain attempt to control black Christianity. So Nat Turner was indeed a hero, despite some morally-questionable actions taken by his group. Although something like 200 blacks throughout the South were killed in the retaliation by white mobs and vigilantes, Turner pushed white America and the enslaved population toward the necessary Civil War to end slavery once and for all.
So we all know that in 1831 Nat Turner led a slave rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia. Turner, inspired by radical African-American Christian messianism, was inspired to lead the revolt in August that led to deaths of unfortunately, too few Virginia whites. Perhaps 50-60 whites were killed, a disproportionate number of them being women and children. During the actual rebellion, less than a hundred free blacks and slaves joined in the violence, initially using knives, hatchets and blunt instruments to avoid arousing suspicion. They swept through different homes, killing as many whites as possible and liberated the slaves.
Nat Turner himself was literate and believer in the Black Christian anti-slavery movement that inspired slave revolts in Jamaica during the same period (Christmas Uprising or Baptist War, led by Samuel Sharpe, who was a Baptist preacher like Nat Turner). Since he believed he was chosen for a special mission of liberation by God, some may see him as a religious fanatic and see little value in celebrating his life. On the contrary, Turner’s Christian beliefs represent the best of 19th century Christianity by espousing a quick, radicalizing affront to human life to demonstrate the violence and inhumanity of the slave regime. Though he killed supposedly innocent beneficiaries of the slavocracy, Turner represented the best in Christian tradition with a thorough rejection of injustice in the present rather than waiting for a brighter times in the distant future. Without a brutal,dehumanizing assault on white life (including relatively innocent women and children), white abolitionists and moderates in the North would have taken longer to realize the importance of ending slavery sooner rather than later, especially after the brutal white reprisals taken against blacks throughout the South and the toughening of anti-free black laws and harsher penalties further polarized the United States.
In addition, white Americans, at least in the South, would have heard of the Baptist Uprising in Jamaica, a 10-day slave rebellion involving 60,000 of Jamaica’s 300,000 slaves. This enormous revolt, starting peacefully as a strike, quickly showed the importance of emancipation sooner rather than later or face additional widespread revolts and work stoppages. Or to go back even further, the 1816 Bussa Rebellion in Barbados and the successful Haitian Revolution provided frightening possibile futures for Euro-Americans if slavery continued unabated: enormous ‘race wars’ and so-called “savage” black vengeance taken in the form of the feared black rape of white women and all other horrors (which were things actually done by white men against black slaves, particularly sexual abuse and rape of women and girls, and excessive and cruel punishment of course). So the specter of Haiti was always present in the pysche of white Southerners, causing excessively brutal crackdowns on slave conspiracies and actual revolts (including the largest revolt in American history, the 1811 Louisiana revolt led by a slave from Saint Domingue (Haiti) that included 500 slaves) Thus, white Southerners were right to fear the “contamination of American blacks and slaves with the example of Haiti, even in cases where slaves knew little about Haiti. Indeed, free blacks were the African-Americans who often knew the most about Haiti, particularly early black nationalists such as Denmark Vesey and free black communities in northern cities who celebrated Haiti’s day of independence instead of the Fourth of July. Nat Turner, as a literate man influenced by Vesey and presumably knowledgeable about the largest slave revolt in the Atlantic world, would likely have known the importance of violence, including violence against so-called innocent whites as necessary for the success of the Haitian Revolution.
Of course this is morally questionable territory Nat Turner put himself in when he and his followers murdered white women and children. One would assume his Christian preacher background would have deterred violence taken out against children, but remember that the slaveholders also called themselves “Christians” yet held people in bondage. If one focuses on what may be considered moral hypocrisy in the case of Nat Turner and other violent slave rebellions, why not focus on the even larger moral and political hypocrisy of the United States? Besides, the unarmed white women and children were still part of slaveholding families, and although the children did not choose to be members of a repugnant racist class, the murdering of women and children was easier to achieve than armed white militias, who eventually did defeat our heroes Nat Turner and company. And perhaps Fanon had it right; violence as a means of raising consciousness and a rejection of the colonizer/oppressor is a vital step. Unfortunately, the majority of enslaved African-Americans did not rise up in violent revolt, but that would have been unrealistic anyway given the lack of access to weapons and the huge hurdles facing large-scale slave rebellions in the expanse of North America. Raising a revolutionary consciousness of resistance could take multiple forms, including the much easier individual flight, infanticide, work stoppages and a counterculture or resistance in religion.
Ultimately, most African-Americans view Nat Turner as a hero for his valiant effort to overthrow slavery in Southhampton, although it may have seemed as audacious and foolish as John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry. Another one of the consequences the Virginia Assembly enacted on slave populations was requiring white clergy to be present at black religious gatherings, in a vain attempt to control black Christianity. So Nat Turner was indeed a hero, despite some morally-questionable actions taken by his group. Although something like 200 blacks throughout the South were killed in the retaliation by white mobs and vigilantes, Turner pushed white America and the enslaved population toward the necessary Civil War to end slavery once and for all.
No comments:
Post a Comment