The Madman/Martyr Dichotomy

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June 7, 2013 by Michele Seabrook

“Horrid Massacre in Virginia,” Woodcut published in 1831

“The Confessions would never have been circulated had it overtly suggested that the rebellion had roots in the nature of slavery rather than in the madness of a single slave.” -Kenneth Greenberg, The Confessions of Nat Turner

“A…tradition, common among the black community and sympathetic whites, portrayed Nat Turner as a brilliant freedom fighter and hero.” -Kenneth Greenberg, The Confessions of Nat Turner

Nat Turner is understood not as a man, but as a symbol. He is viewed by many as a raging lunatic, an ego maniacal and violent slave whose uprising brought great harm to his fellow Virginia slaves. Those sympathetic to Turner typically portray him as a dedicated liberator of his people who martyred himself for the cause of abolition. These two stark interpretations of Turner offer little room for nuanced historical interpretation.

What about the collective nature of slave rebellions? What about the other slaves who followed Turner, axes in hand, murdering not nameless, unknown whites, but their masters and their masters’ wives and children? Nat Turner was the leader of the rebellion, but not the only participant. He did not enslave his fellow rebels and force them to commit murder. Rather, he organized an insurrection that focused his fellow slaves’ desires to strike a blow against the system of slavery that so oppressed and dehumanized them. Focusing on Thomas Gray’s depiction of Turner in The Confessions of Nat Turner diminishes Turner’s role, both self-defined and validated by those who joined him, as an “agent of black liberation” (Gray, 7).

Turner was a man in specific circumstances with a specific purpose: to resist slavery in Tidewater Virginia in the way he believed would be most effective. Typical patterns of slave resistance in the U.S. show that slaves, regardless of gender, attempted to resist their status as property and carve out their own space in a plethora of ways, few of them violent or direct. Most resistance did not center on physical liberation but on spiritual and emotional autonomy. Blacks created separate communities and living spaces through religion, marriages, music, folk tales like those of the trickster Bre’r Rabbit.  Slaves also committed small infractions that subtly undermined their productivity and, therefore, the authority of the master.

Nat Turner’s brand of resistance was more physical, more visceral, and more incendiary than this. It was not quiet. It sought response and reaction. Turner was, by all accounts, very intelligent. Did he realize the complexity of the social order of slavery? Did he realize his actions would only incite a harsh, terrified reaction from whites? The rebellion was planned. Unlike the murder at Belle Grove plantation, in which a female slave single-handedly killed her female master, Turner and his men sought to strike the system at its root. In Turner’s eyes, all whites were responsible for the world in which they lived intimately with their black slaves. He placed blame on the heads of infants, insisting that white infants were born oppressors, just like black infants were born slaves.

What can be gained from further exploring who Nat Turner was, who his fellow rebels were? Is a simple madman/martyr dichotomy sufficient? Or was he a more nuanced, complicated figure that deserves to be understood as impartially as possible? How will returning to the ground of the rebellion, in Southampton County, Va. (pictured above), help bolster a better historical understanding of Nat Turner?