Nat Turner Revisited

In the introduction to his text Baker writes about what motivated him to retell Nat Turner’s story through the medium of a graphic novel. He states that he often wondered why Turner’s rebellion was cited in all the history books but never covered in detail. As I studied Baker’s text last week, and as I read the additional text about Turner’s rebellion for class this week I find myself wondering the same thing. It is clear why the elite during Turner’s time would want to suppress his story, and portray him as someone purely motivated by visions of grandeur, and religious fanaticism. The intelligence that Turner displayed in organizing and carrying out the rebellion was an obvious threat to the power structure of his day, seeing that subsequent to the rebellion stricter laws against educating slaves and restricting their right to assemble were passed.  It is clear that certain facts and realties that provoked the rebellion were omitted from Thomas Gray’s text and from earlier accounts of the rebellion, so I am left wondering whether or not we can fully know the story in all its truth and complexity. How we record and chose to remember events in history, control our ability to accurately tell those stories in the future. Baker’s portrayal of Nat Turner’s rebellion moved me emotionally, but it also left me wanting more information. I am left wondering now if my lingering questions about Turner’s story can ever be answered.

When you compare Baker’s text to Thomas Gray’s retelling of Turner’s story, it is clear that both authors work to create different images of Nat Turner. Greenberg correctly points out that Gray’s book most certainly was written from a biased point of view, given he was a slave owner, and would have been familiar with many of the families that were killed during the rebellion. He also accurately points out that we can never know how much of what Nat Turner revealed to Gray was accurately portrayed in the retelling of the rebellion. In spite of the above concessions, I have to admit that I could not get through Greenberg’s piece without feeling a mixture of anger and skepticism. Greenberg describes the Southampton community that was the setting of the rebellion to be “relatively isolated, and economically stagnant” (6). He also points out that blacks out numbered whites in the community, and it was likely that “masters and slaves lived and worked together in small numbers and in close proximity” (7). In addition to this description of the community in which Nat Turner lived we are also expected to believe that Turner himself did not face any “unusually brutality” from a master, besides being relocated and sold to different owner numerous times in his lifetime. Greenberg’s examination of Turner’s rebellion and its aftermath provided numerous details, but I still found myself with lingering questions. Greenberg mentioned that slaves and masters worked together in close proximity, but the apparent distrust that would have existed between the two groups even prior to Nat Turner’s rebellion is not addressed. Given the obvious tensions that existed between slaves and slave owners, and knowing that slaves out numbered the white population in the Southampton community, it is safe to surmise that fierce actions were continually taken by the white power structure to control the black population. I am sure that these actions did result in brutality that would be considered both usual and unusual.

In his text, Greenberg also offers details about the aftermath of the rebellion and writes, “It is important when studying the Nat Turner rebellion to recognize white Virginian’s efforts at restraint” (22).  This recognition of “restraint” he explains is not meant to praise slave owners for their decency, but he later states that slave owners liked to “think of themselves as caring and humane in dealing with slaves” (22). This is emblematic of what gives me pause in Greenberg’s text. His argument is based on the assumption that because the slave owners wished to display themselves as benevolent that the salves interpreted their actions as such. I resist such a reading of slave history. It seems to me more likely that slaves did not respond to the “justice” of the trials as benevolent but saw the trials as another representation of the total and severe authority that was over every aspect of their lives.  It is clear that all the actions that were leveled upon those who were a part of Turner’s rebellion or suspected of participating in the rebellion were done so to deter future slave rebellions, and keep the institution of slavery alive. I reject any retelling of Turner’s rebellion or any retelling of slavery in America that would assume that most slaves viewed their master’s concern for justice as benevolent. Slavery in American was profoundly unjust and shameful. What I appreciated most about Baker’s text is that he manages to retell Turner’s rebellion in a unique way; and also manages to visually capture the horrors of slavery that would eventually provoke an outcry and crusade for freedom.