Nat Turner, Black Prophet by Anthony E. Kaye

Author:Anthony E. Kaye
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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“AFTER WAITING SOME TIME FOR” his company, Nat “became impatient, and started to the house for them,” leaving six of his men as guards. Nat did not recount what he discovered of his men’s activities or how long it took for him to drag them away or what tactics of persuasion he used. We do know that eight people living at Parker’s plantation were later tried as participants in the rebellion, suggesting that the recruiting efforts had made headway.18

The only thing that Nat told Gray, or at least the only thing that Gray recorded, was what Nat encountered when he came back from the Parker house with his band. “On our return we were met by a party of white men, who had pursued our blood-stained track.” The war was about to take on a different aspect: a pitched battle between Nat and organized white forces.19

The white response came in waves: first impromptu gatherings of white men in town who, learning of the attacks, rode to discover the facts and confront them; then messengers to other counties, some deputized for the purpose and others simply running for their lives and raising the alarm in neighborhoods not too far away; next the arrival of loosely organized bands from Jerusalem and surrounding counties; then, finally, the coming of regular state militia and federal military forces. Each of these groups faced different conditions and attempted different actions, ranging from indiscriminate slaughter to efforts to calm the populace to formal legal proceedings. These differences brought tension and sometimes open conflict, yet they also revealed white people’s powerful advantages: their communication networks, their access to military weapons and organizations, and their ability to call upon a near-uniform determination to defeat the rebellion.

At Parker’s gate, Nat and his band eventually faced two white militia companies, one he seemed to overcome, another that thwarted Nat’s plans. The first posse that approached Parker’s was only about eighteen men strong when they encountered Nat on the pathway. Those men were the initial party to leave from Jerusalem when someone—perhaps Howell Harris—brought warnings that morning. They were not a formal militia but something more like a posse comitatus. Only one member of the group was identified by name, the cavalry lieutenant Alexander Peete, who claimed thirty-one enslaved people and more than a thousand acres, but some of the others have been deduced by historians. Allmendinger suggests that three men almost certainly joined on hearing the news: Thomas Gray, who would later interview Nat in the jail cell, might have been at his home office in town; James French, another young lawyer, was probably at the tavern; Aubin Middleton, a militia captain, was likely in Jerusalem for work as clerk and coroner, though he lived on a plantation near the Waller farm and owned seventeen enslaved people. Neither French nor Gray owned an enslaved person. The group picked up perhaps eight recruits in town, then added more after they rode across the bridge toward Cross Keys, possibly with Harris as a guide.

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