The God of Pity
I want to tell you a story — or, rather, I want to let others tell it. It’s a story of what binds us, and what tears us asunder. The entirety is taken from historical documents. The words are of the participants (with some exception for the slaves, who were seldom allowed their own voice). It involves Homeric metaphor, a terrible insurrection, early scientific methodology, and two of over two dozen reported rains of blood in 19th-Century America.
It is dark, complex, and fascinating, taking in centuries of perception, reality, and unconscious meaning. It ultimately suggests, at least to me, an enormous narrative engine working at a level not fully known to any of us. Please read it through. I’d love to hear your thoughts. — Tom
And the son of Kronos sent evil turmoil upon them, and from aloft cast down dews dripping blood from the sky, since he was minded to hurl down many strong heads to the house of Hades.
Homer, The Iliad, 11.53–55, tr. Richmond Lattimore
And the Lord said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all abominations that be done in the midst thereof…Slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women: but come not near any man upon whom is the mark; and begin at my sanctuary.
Ezekiel 9:4–6
August 1831
“Near the southeastern border of Virginia, in Southampton County, there is a neighborhood known as ‘The Cross Keys.’ It lies fifteen miles from Jerusalem, the county-town or ‘courthouse,’ seventy miles from Norfolk, and about as far from Richmond. It is some ten or fifteen miles from Murfreesboro’ in North Carolina, and about twenty-five from the Great Dismal Swamp. Up to Sunday, the twenty-first of August, 1831, there was nothing to distinguish it from any other rural, lethargic, slipshod Virginia neighborhood, with the due allotment of mansion-houses and log-huts, tobacco fields and ‘old fields,’ horses, dogs, negroes, ‘poor white folks,’ so called, and other white folks, poor without being called so.”
- Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “Nat Turner’s Insurrection: An Account of America’s Bloodiest Slave Revolt, and Its Repercussions,” Atlantic Monthly, August 1861
“Nat [Turner] is between 30 & 35 years old, 5 feet 6 or 8 inches high, weighs between 150 and 160 lbs, rather bright complexion, but not mulatto — broad shouldered — large flat nose — large eyes — broad flat feet — rather knock-kneed — walks brisk and active — hair on the top of the head very thin — no beard except on the upper lip, and the tip of the chin — a scar on one of his temples — also one on the back of his neck — a large knob on one of the bones of his right arm near the wrist produced by a blow.”
- Proclamation by Virginia Governor John Floyd, 17 September 1831
“My grand mother, who was very religious, and to whom I was much attached — my master, who belonged to the church, and other religious persons who visited the house, and whom I often saw at prayers, noticing the singularity of my manners, I suppose, and my uncommon intelligence for a child, remarked I had too much sense to be raised, and if I was, I would never be of any service to any one as a slave.”
“And from the first steps of righteousness until the last, was I made perfect; and the Holy Ghost was with me, and said ‘Behold me as I stand in the Heavens’ — and I looked and saw the forms of men in different attitudes — and there were lights in the sky to which the children of darkness gave other names than what they really were — for they were the lights of the Saviour’s hands, stretched forth from east to west, even as they were extended on the cross on Calvary for the redemption of sinners. And I wondered greatly at these miracles, and prayed to be informed of a certainty of the meaning thereof — and shortly afterwards, while labouring in the field, I discovered drops of blood on the corn, as though it were dew from heaven — and I communicated it to many, both white and black, in the neighbourhood — and I then found on the leaves in the woods hieroglyphic characters and numbers, with the form of men in different attitudes, portrayed in blood, and representing the figures I had seen before in the heavens. — and now the Holy Ghost had revealed itself to me, and made plain the miracles it had shown me — For as the blood of Christ had been shed on this earth, and had ascended to heaven for the salvation of sinners, and was now returning to earth again in the form of dew…it was plain to me that the Saviour was about to lay down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and the great day of judgment was at hand.”
“In the woods of the plantation of Joseph Travis, upon the Sunday just named [21 August 1831], six slaves met at noon for what is called in the Northern States a picnic and in the Southern a barbecue. The bill of fare was to be simple: one brought a pig, and another some brandy, giving to the meeting an aspect so cheaply convivial that no one would have imagined it to be the final consummation of a conspiracy which had been for six months in preparation. In this plot four of the men had been already initiated — Henry, Hark or Hercules, Nelson, and Sam. Two others were novices, Will and Jack by name. The party had remained together from twelve to three o’clock, when a seventh man joined them, — a short, stout, powerfully built person, of dark mulatto complexion and strongly-marked African features, but with a face full of expression and resolution. This was Nat Turner.”
- Thomas Wentworth Higginson
“It was quickly agreed that we should commence at home (Mr. J. Travis’) on that night, and, until we had armed and equipped ourselves, and gathered sufficient force, neither age nor sex was to be spared, (which was invariably adhered to.) […]”
“It was then observed that I must spill the first blood. On which armed with a hatchet, and accompanied by Will, I entered my master’s chamber; it being dark I could not give a death blow, the hatchet glanced from his head, he sprang from the bed and called his wife, it was his last word. Will laid him dead, with a blow of his axe, and Mrs. Travis shared the same fate, as she lay in bed. The murder of this family five in number, was the work of a moment, not one of them awoke; there was a little infant sleeping in a cradle, that was forgotten, until we had left the house and gone some distance, when Henry and Will returned and killed it.”
- Confessions of Nat Turner
“[I]t was hardly in the power of rumor itself, to exaggerate the atrocities which have been perpetrated by the insurgents: whole families, father, mother, daughters, sons, sucking babes, and school children, butchered, thrown into heaps, and left to be devoured by hogs and dogs, or to putrify on the spot.”
- “Extract of a letter from the Senior Editor, dated JERUSALEM, Southampton Ct. House Thursday Evening, Aug. 25” Richmond Constitutional Whig, 29 August 1831
“A slaveholder went to the woods accompanied by a faithful slave, who had been the means of saving his master’s life during the insurrection. When they reached a retired place in the forest, the man handed his gun to his master, informing him that he could not live a slave any longer, and requested either to free him or shoot him on the spot. The master took the gun, in some trepidation, levelled it at the faithful Negro and shot him through the heart.”
- Rev. M.B. Cox, Liberian Missionary, then in Virginia, from John W. Cromwell’s The Aftermath of Nat Turner’s Insurrection, 1920
“What we have so long predicted, — at the peril of being stigmatized as an alarmist and declaimer, — has commenced its fulfilment…The first drops of blood, which are but the prelude to a deluge from the gathering clouds, have fallen.”
“Read the account of the insurrection in Virginia, and say whether our prophecy be not fulfilled. What was poetry — imagination — in January, is now a bloody reality.”
- William Lloyd Garrison, The Liberator, 3 September 1831
“The insurrection of the blacks in one of the counties of Virginia, and the indiscriminate massacre of the white inhabitants…furnish a subject of serious reflection. It certainly is an awful warning; and they indeed must be fool-hardy, who despise its admonition. The good man must shudder at the recital of the outrage, whilst the Christian philanthropist feels that renewed exertions are necessary to prevent one oft-recurring evil, but the suppression of another, whose long endured existence diminishes our sensibilities, and makes us think of it but too lightly, until a day of tremendous retribution approaches, and the curse of inhumanity recoils to plague the offender.”
- “Comments of Editors,” The Liberator, 3 September 1831
“The ‘Vigilance Association of Columbia,’ composed of gentlemen of the first respectability, offer a reward of $1,500 for the apprehension and prosecution to conviction, of any white person who may be detected in distributing or circulating within the State the newspaper, called ‘the Liberator,’ printed in Boston…or any other publication of a seditious tendency.”
- Charleston Mercury, 11 October 1831
“Ques. Do you not find yourself mistaken now? Ans. Was not Christ crucified?”
- Confessions of Nat Turner
“The Court after hearing the testimony and from all the circumstances of the case are unanimously of opinion that the prisoner is guilty in manner and form as in the Information against him alleged, and it being demanded of him if anything for himself he had or knew to say why the Court to judgment and execution against him of and upon the premises should not proceede — he said he had nothing but what he had before said. Therefore it is considered by the Court that he be taken hence to the Jail from whence he was taken therein to remain until Friday the 11th day of November instant on which day…he is to be taken by the Sheriff to the usual place of execution and then and there be hanged by the neck until he be dead. And the Court value the said slave to the sum of three hundred and seventy-five dollars.”
- Southampton Oyer and Terminer Trials, Trial of Nat, alias Nat Turner (slave of Putnam Moore, deceased) 5 November 1831 p. 123
“An immense throng gathered on the day of execution though few were permitted to see the ceremony. [Turner] exhibited the utmost composure and calm resignation. Although assured if he felt it proper he might address the immense crowd, he declined to avail himself of the privilege, but told the sheriff in a firm voice that he was ready. Not a limb nor a muscle was observed to move. His body was given over to the surgeons for dissection. He was skinned to supply such souvenirs as purses, his flesh made into grease, and his bones divided as trophies to be handed down as heirlooms. It is said that there still lives a Virginian who has a piece of his skin which was tanned, that another Virginian possesses one of his ears and that the skull graces the collection of a physician in the city of Norfolk.”
- John W. Cromwell
“There are many citizens still living who have seen Nat’s skull. It was very peculiarly shaped, resembling the head of a sheep, and at least three-quarters of an inch thick. Mr. R.S. Barham’s father owned a money purse made out of his hide.”
- William Sidney Drewry, The Southampton Insurrection, 1890
“Constant dripping will finally wear the solid rock. Our negros are constantly tempted to cut our throats, or pink us with SHARP’S, or rather BEECHER’S rifles. I am therefore for trusting no one here on earth but ourselves. Let us be prepared for the worst, if it never comes, so much the better. History teaches us that the most effectual mode to rouse an ignorant people is to appeal to their superstition and to their lust. Nat Turner made his followers in Virginia believe that the vengeance of God was about to fall upon the white men, because it had about that time rained blood, and it was a powerful instrument in his hand…”
- “Vigilance,” letter to the Charleston Mercury, November 1859
AUGUST 1841
“For the violence of Lebanon shall cover thee, and the spoil of beasts, which made them afraid, because of men’s blood, and for the violence of the land, of the city, and of all that dwell therein.”
Habakkuk 2:17
“On Tuesday we heard from various persons that a shower, apparently, of FLESH AND BLOOD had fallen in Wilson county near Lebanon in this State, and that the fields were covered to a considerable extent. The account staggered our belief; but strange as it may appear, it has been confirmed by the statement of several gentlemen of high character, who have personally examined the scene of this phenomenon. — They state that the space covered by this extraordinary shower, is half a mile in length, and about seventy five yards in width. In addition to the information thus received we have been favored by Dr. Troost, Professor of Chemistry in the University of Nashville, with the following letter from a highly respectable physician of Lebanon; we have also seen the specimens sent to him for examination. To us they appear to be animal matter, and the odor is that of putrid flesh. We do not pretend to offer any theory to account for this phenomenon — we leave that to abler and more scientific heads. When the specimens have passed through the crucibles of Dr. Troost we will furnish our readers with the result.”
“Lebanon, August 8, 1841.
DR. G. TROOST — I have sent you some matter, which appears from an authentic source to have fallen from the clouds.
With me there can be no doubt of its being animal, blood, muscular fibre, adipose matter. Please account to us, if you can, on philosophical principles, for the cause of this phenomenon. The particles I send you, I gathered with my own hands from the extent of surface of which it has spread, and the regular manner it exhibited on some green Tobacco leaves, leaves very little or no doubt of its having fallen like a shower of rain, and it is stated on the authority of some negroes only, to have fallen from a small red cloud no other clouds visible in the heavens at the time. It took place on Friday last between 11 and 12 o’clock, about five miles N.E. of Lebanon. I have sent what I think to be a drop of blood, the other particles, composed of muscle and fat, although the proportions of the shower appeared to be a much larger quantity of blood than of other properties.
I am, in haste,
Your most obedient,
W.S. SAYLE”
- The Nashville Banner, August 1841
“The particles which I received at first were wrapped up in a paper which was enclosed in a letter — this letter had been placed under the cushion of a gig, having the greater part of the day the rider on it, so that all organic structure in it was obliterated — it had the offensive smell of putrid animal matter, and the paper in which it was enclosed and the letter were wholly stained with fat.”
- Dr. Gerard Troost, “Shower of Flesh and Blood,” The Sun, 13 September 1841
“The following communication is from too respectable a source to question its verity; we therefore give place to it. We will add that we have evidences of the fact, that the substance mentioned in the communication, did fall from the heavens in a shower, that no man in his senses can doubt. Although no one save the negroes saw it fall, yet the manner it was found spattered upon the tobacco leaves, could leave no doubt upon the mind of every one who saw it, that it had fallen. — We have seen and examined the substance — what it is, we do not pretend to conjecture but it looks like putrid flesh, or a bloody glutinous matter concreted, and smells very nauseous. It is indeed a miraculous occurrence but not stranger than true. Scores of men of unimpeachable veracity, will testify to the fact of the substance being found as described in the following communication, and none who have seen the place, and learned the circumstances, pretend to question its having fallen from the heavens.”
“It is with some degree of diffidence that I submit to the task of making the following communication to the public thro’ your paper: being well aware that, from the novelty and strangeness of the occurrence which I shall relate, I shall subject myself to the incredulity of the public.
On Saturday last, a young man brought to my office a small piece of tobacco leaf, with an apparent drop of coagulated blood upon it, and requested an analysis of it — stating that the substance upon the leaf fell from a cloud in the heavens. This excited my curiosity, and led me to make particular enquiry relative to this strange phenomenon. I ascertained that Mr. J. M. Peyton, of Lebanon, was in the neighborhood at the time this strange shower fell, which led me to enquire of him. Mr. P’s statement was that he was in the house of Mr. E.M. Chandler living on Spring Creek, about five miles from Lebanon, on Friday last: that at about 1 or 2 o’clock, P.M. two of Mr. Chandler’s negroes came in from the tobacco field, where they had been at work, and stated to their master that it had been raining blood in the tobacco field. Whereupon, Mr. Chandler, accompanied by Mr. Peyton and Mr. D.S. Dew, returned with the negroes, and found, promiscuously scattered over a portion of the field, drops of blood adhering to the tobacco leaves. This statement of Mr. Peyton’s — he being a gentleman of strict veracity — induced me to go in person to the spot, and examine for myself. Accordingly, on Sunday last, I went to the house of Mr. Chandler, who, in company with Mr. T.R. and John Jackson, proceeded with me to the tobacco ground. Mr. Chandler stated in substance the same that Mr. Peyton had stated, that his negroes were at work in the tobacco field, and about half past eleven or 12 o’clock, a rattling noise like rain or hail was heard by them, falling around, which they soon found to be drops of blood falling. On looking up, the negroes state they saw a small red cloud, passing swiftly from east to west, immediately over their heads, and which, soon after passing over them, disappeared entirely.
Mr. Chandler and Mr. Peyton visited the place about 3 o’clock the same evening, and found as they thought, drops of blood and small portions of flesh. Mr. C. stated he found a piece which he thought to be about half flesh and half fat, an inch and a half or two inches long, all of which produced a very offensive smell, extending all over the field.
My visit was not until Sunday evening, about 50 hours from the time the matter fell; at that time there was no odor perceptible, except when the particles were brought very near — the smell was then very offensive. I examined the drops on the tobacco leaves and satisfied myself that they had fallen perpendicularly on the leaves. I next examined for the extent of the shower, & ascertained it to have been from forty to sixty yards in width, and six or eight hundred yards in length. A forest on the east, and a field of weeds on the west, prevented our tracing it beyond the green tobacco. It was thinly scattered, probably a drop for every 10 or 15 feet — although irregularly dispersed. I gathered from the leaves some particles, which appeared to have been clear blood, uncombined with any thing else; others seemed to be finely pulverised muscle and blood mixed, and others composed of muscular fibre and adipose matter interspersed, one portion of which I found an oily exudation issuing from, caused by the heat of the sun. As to the quantity which fell, I can get no very satisfactory account, so as to make a probable statement; but that it did fall in a shower over the space above mentioned, and that it is an animal matter are facts unquestioned by me — both from my own observation and from the statements of the gentlemen before named, who are both men of unquestionable veracity.
Mr. Chandler and his neighbors have great confidence in the veracity of his boy, who witnessed the falling of the matter. I forbear any further comments at present. I would only add, that I have sent all the matter I could collect to Dr. Gerard Troost, of Nashville, who will, no doubt, exhibit it to any person who may call on him, where they may examine for themselves, and give the philosophical cause if they please.”
- W.S. Sayle, “From the Lebanon Chronicle. REMARKABLE OCCURRENCE.” The Hagarstown Mail, 10 September 1841, also “From the Charleston Mercury, BLOOD AND THUNDER.” The Floridian, 18 September 1841
“It seems to be taken for granted that this matter, whatever it be, ‘rained down;’ but the only witnesses of this fact are some Negroes, whose authority in Scientific matters we should regard with some grains of allowance. We are inclined to believe that the story is mainly indebted for its marvelousness to the anxiety of Tennessee not to be outdone in matters of this sort by Down-East, where squids and felt hats, to say nothing of men, women and children, may be found upon the surface of the ground in great abundance immediately after a shower.”
- The Log Cabin, September 1841
“A very curious freak of nature took place in Wilson county last week. A little red cloud spread itself over a portion of the land, some two hundred yards wide and near a mile in length, poured down a thick, hazy shower of something more nearly resembling blood and meat, in a putrified state, than any thing else. It scared the negroes at work in a tobacco field dreadfully. The stench of the shower, which was very offensive, set them to vomiting, and its unnatural appearance to scampering at the top of their speed.
We saw, this week, at Nashville, many gentlemen from Wilson county, of the highest intelligence and respectability, who informed us that the shower was as we have described it. They said that as many as five hundred persons were upon the ground, last Sabbath, examining the clotted blood and putrified meat that had been ‘rained down.’ The stench was still almost intolerable.”
- “Murfreesboro,’ Tenn. August 28. A SHOWER OF BLOOD!” Raleigh Register and North-Carolina Gazette, 7 September 1841
“Mr. Editor: — The singular phenomenon which took place a few days ago in the vicinity of Lebanon, in Wilson county, has attracted much attention, and has already been noticed in many of our newspapers. As on all similar occasions, this phenomenon has already undergone many alterations and improvements, and before the news of it has crossed the Allegheny mountains, it will perhaps be said that the town of Lebanon was destroyed by a shower of blood that fell from Heaven to punish the inhabitants for their wickedness, who, nevertheless, are not more wicked than the inhabitants of Nashville.”
- Dr. Gerard Troost
“It is stated in the Post of Boston, that several worthies in the vicinity of that learned city, have construed the mysterious shower into a judgment from Heaven, designed to warn the slave-holding states of the iniquity of their traffic in flesh and blood; others regard it as the presage of a most terrible war; but a third party connect it in some inexplicable way with the fulfilment of certain prophecies of the Revelations.”
- “The Shower of Blood,” Wisconsin Enquirer, 10 September 1841
“The so-called shower of flesh and blood in Lebanon, Tennessee, in 1841 caused considerable fright in North Carolina and the report was circulated that similar showers had taken place in this State. The phenomenon was explained as being the discharge of a reddish fluid by a species of butterfly on emerging from the chrysalis state; but the terror which had taken hold of the popular mind was not allayed by so simple an explanation.”
- Guion Griffis Johnson, “Ante-Bellum North Carolina: A Social History,” 1937 p. 50
“From the numerous inquiries that were made, and from remarks contained in the newspapers, it seemed to be expected that I should investigate this very singular phenomenon, and endeavor to ascertain its real nature and character. To satisfy, therefore, the curiosity of my friends (as well as my own) I went to Lebanon and conversed with all those that were in the vicinity of the phenomenon, and had visited the spot on the same day, perhaps one or two hours after it took place; from all these testimonies and from ocular inspection of the collected matter, I found that the facts communicated in the letter of an intelligent physician, Doctor Sayle, of Lebanon, addressed to me…are substantially correct.”
- Dr. Gerard Troost
“You will doubtless have had by the time this reaches you a notion of the falling of flesh & blood as a shower of rain some 5 miles N.E. from Lebanon, having heard much on the subject Dr. Edward & myself visited the place on yesterday & after viewing the ground & getting some specimens we proceeded to Lebanon, where we found Dr. Troost who had been there a day or so.”
[…]
“Had it happened in a town it would have driven the citizens from their houses so offensive was it. It fell at the extreme back side of a very out of the way field in a Tobacco patch…in which 3 or 4 negroes were at work, I conversed with the negroes they say the cloud had a red appearance…and made a noise similar to very large drops of rain at a little distance.”
- Walter B. Morris, from a letter to his brother Eastin, 24 August 1841
“It seems to me that the fall of the specimens collected at Lebanon is easily explained: we are acquainted from experience, with the effect and power of the wind. — Our forests everywhere exhibit the devastations of the winds, called hurricanes. The destruction of the town of Charlotte, in a neighboring county, is still fresh in our memories. Articles taken up by the wind in that town were transported 10 or 20 miles. There are other winds called whirlwinds, which have the power of raising up materials into the air, and transporting them to great distances. Such a wind may have taken up part of an animal, which was in a state of decomposition, and have brought it in contact with an electric cloud, in which it was kept in a state approaching to a partial fluidity or viscosity. In this case the cloud, which was seen by the negroes, as well as the state in which the materials were is accounted for.”
- Dr. Gerard Troost
NOVEMBER 1841 — PRESENT
“Our readers probably recollect the ‘shower of blood’ marvel in Tennessee the past summer. Professor Troost, of Nashville, entered into a very learned analysis of the ‘bloody substance,’ and accounted for the phenomenon philosophically. He saw, smelled and tasted the wonder!
It turns out that the whole was a regular ‘nigger trick.’ The master on the plantation had suddenly become religious and superstitious. He joined the church, whereupon his shrewd negroes supposed that they could frighten him so that he would set them free. They procured a quantity of beef’s liver, and sprinkled the tobacco plants with blood and liver to suit, raised a cry and put for the house as if the ‘old boy’ had been at their heels. The trick worked well, all except the freedom part. They found their christian master held on to them like ‘death to a dead nigger.’”
- “Another Hoax Explained,” Huron Reflector 9 November 1841
“The negroes, we have been informed, have since confessed, that this ‘flesh and blood’ storm, like the enchantment of Dulcinea, by Sancho Panza, was a thing got up for their own amusement. The process was to scatter the putrefying carcass of a hog over the tobacco patch, particles of which, in the laboratory of our learned and excellent friend, Prof. Troost, were easily enough recognized as animal.”
[…]
“Our rationale of this shower, in the October number of this journal, was not satisfactory to our Lebanon friends, who declare that in adopting the rumor of the negroes’ having fabricated it, we are the party ‘hoaxed.’ The negroes it seems have not admitted their agency in concocting the shower, as we were informed they had done. Our friends, at the place where the matter was found, are confident that it must have fallen from above, and was a veritable shower…The only matter about which we have had doubts was the fact of the descent of this flesh and blood from above.
- Lunsford P. Yandell, M.D., The Western Journal of Medicine and Surgery, Vol. IV, pp. 320, 485–86
“Years passed, and the prophetic visions of Nat Turner were fulfilled on the soil of Virginia. It did indeed rain blood; the very leaves of the trees dripped blood; but the work was done, the yoke was broken, and the oppressed went free. An old negress who stood and saw the confederate prisoners being carried for safe keeping into the former slave pens, said grimly, “Well, de Lord am slow, but He am sure!”
- Harriet Beecher Stowe, “The Life of Abraham Lincoln,” pp. 84–85
“The late shower of flesh in Kentucky is not a new wrinkle, as some suppose. In this county many years ago, at the time of Nat’s insurrection, there was a shower of blood, drops of which remained on the clover blossoms for several days, and at the time scientists suggested that the wind had rifled some slaughter house, and the supersitious that it denoted bloodshed, war, etc.”
- “County Items.” The Alexandria Gazette, Volume 77, Number 71, 28 March 1876
[Zeus] poured bloody drops earthwards,honoring his own [beloved] son, whom Patroklos was soon to destroy in fertile Troy far from his homeland
Homer, The Iliad, 16.459, tr. Richmond Lattimore
“Blood commands powers for both pollution and cleansing in beliefs and rites. There are taboos against blood’s presence (such as kosher butchery, Greek asylum), demands for blood’s presence as in live animal sacrifices, limited human bloodletting (e.g. brotherhood rites), and, in some situations, bloody human sacrifice. One type of blood ritual, a blood offering that is not a prelude to eating, Greek sphagia, occurs in three situations: at purifications, just before battle, and at burials of the dead. We note that two of these three situations for archaic generic blood offerings apply to the ‘bloody drops’ that Zeus poured out for Sarpedon…Homer has Zeus merge human pre-battle propitiary blood rituals and post-battle burial blood rituals with human grieving to express anthropomorphic parental agony.”
“Zeus’ poured drops represent his personal loss and all bloodshed, a synecdoche for war’s wasted vitality. This image implies both tears and blood libations, as it elides the vast differences between them.”
“A grim image — the bloody drops — conveys a broad sympathy…Zeus is the god of pity in the Iliad, the paradigm of bereavement. No ‘cold blooded’ god would assert, ‘Mortals matter to me, especially when [or because] they die.’”
- Donald Lateiner, “Pouring Bloody Drops (Iliad 16.459): The Grief of Zeus,” Colby Quarterly, Volume 38, Issue 1, March 2002 pp. 46–47, 50, 61
“Blood is the flower and bloom of life. From ‘blood’ we have bloedsian, bledsian and bletsian — all Anglo-Saxon — and bletsian has in Middle English been softened down into blessen or bless. So that to ‘bless’ originally meant to consecrate by blood…In nearly all creeds of antiquity a blood rite was used to make a life bond between man and man, and man and God. In the covenant sacrifice of Exodus, Moses sprinkled half of the blood on the altar; the rest he sprinkled on the people. The fundamental idea of sacrifice and blood sprinkling was not…that of a sacred tribute, but of a communion between the god and his worshippers. Similarly among other early nations and among savage peoples of our own day, the blood rite possessed and possesses a mysterious force.”
- “Bless and Blood. They Are from the Same Root and Originally Meant the Same Thing,” Marshfield Times, 23 September 1892
“A small group gathered last week in a hotel suite on the outskirts of Gary, Indiana. The nine formally dressed guests joined hands while standing around a table holding only a white box. Reverend John Jackson of Trinity United Church of Christ started the prayer.
“Eternal God, we are gathered here today to honor you, and to honor the legendary liberator, emancipator of the enslaved, and revolutionary of righteous, the Reverend Nathaniel Turner.”
The gathering’s 83-year-old host, Richard Gordon Hatcher, who served as Gary’s mayor from 1968 to 1987, planned the event at which a skull alleged to be Turner’s was turned over to his descendants. The guests of honor, Shanna Batten Aguirre and Shelly Lucas Wood, both descendants of Turner, flew in from Washington, D.C., to accept the remains.
“‘The legacy of Nat Turner has had enduring impact, not simply upon our family, but upon American history,’ Aguirre said. ‘Certainly, this fragile fragment holds enormous emotional value for me, for my family. But it is of immeasurable value because it is a poignant reminder of the price of freedom. In a very tangible way, it asserts the humanity of people who were systemically dehumanized. Its incredible existence demands acknowledgment that, yes, this black life mattered.’”
- Justin Fornal, “Exclusive: Inside the Quest to Return Nat Turner’s Skull to His Family,” nationalgeographic.com, 7 October 2016
POST SCRIPT
Researching and writing this piece led me into a warren of coincidence, if not synchronicity. Reported rains of blood, almost unheard of now, were fairly common in antiquity and through the 19th-Century. Although metaphoric in the Homeric idiom, they were generally regarded as real events, traceable as far back as Plutarch. What is remarkable is how fixed they were in the minds of the people in this story — from Nat Turner, otherwise far more versed in the Christian bible (where blood rains do not appear), to William Lloyd Garrison, who, extraordinarily, used a metaphor of bloody rain to describe the insurrection before Turner was even captured. Neither Harriet Beecher Stowe nor her politically opposite number, the pseudonymous contributer to the Charleston Mercury, were in any doubt about the power and prophecy of Turner’s blood rain. The people of his neighborhood believed the event was real, remembering dried bloody drops on the clover blossoms.
Turner’s interpretation of this event — as the blood of Christ returned, throwing off the yoke of redeemer; as Turner’s own monstrous ordination to begin his “great work” — may have been entirely his own. But in death he was received by the whites of Southampton county as a martyr, if not a saint. They disassembled him physically, keeping parts of his body as relics. The only religion that could beatify Nat Turner in this way is the church of unfettered capitalism, with chattel slavery as its central tenet.
Of course, we can never be sure what Nat Turner thought. It’s difficult to know if his Confessions is an authentic document. The man who published the pamphlet, lawyer Thomas Ruffin Gray, used it as evidence against Turner, and profited from its publication. (Gray has been called Turner’s lawyer, which is not true: William C. Parker was “allowed the sum of ten dollars as a fee” by the Court for defending Nat Turner.) Moreover, Gray was part of the white militia who initially confronted the insurgents on 22 August. But Christopher Tomlins, in “The Confessions of Nat Turner: A Paratextual Analysis,” gives compelling argument into the survival of at least a part of Nat Turner’s authentic voice:
“The two parts of the confession narrative, either side of the bridging paragraph, are quite distinct in textual appearance, in punctuation, grammar, and syntax. The form of Pages 7–11 [which contain the account of the “bloody dew”] is discontinuous, staccato, and non-linear.”
“The untidy syntax and ungrammatical composition suggest haste in writing from notes taken verbatim as the narrator spoke, with explicitly recorded clarifications (the interrogatories, the interjection, the footnote).” In other words, a record of an actual interview with the living Nathanial Turner.
Not having such access to the voices of E.M. Chandler’s slaves (except indirectly, through Dr. Troost and Walter Morris), we cannot know if they were “celebrating” the ten year anniversary of Turner’s insurrection, although the timing was almost exact. No one proximal to the scene of the event, however, doubted their version of the story — that the matter rained down. And here Homer is with us again.
Their master’s given name was Achilles, corrupted to Ekillus, an important character in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. In the latter, the shade of the dead hero regrets his former life of glory:
Oh shining Odysseus, never try to console me for dying. I would rather follow the plow as thrall to another man, one with no land allotted to him and not much to live on, than be a king over all the perished dead.
- Odyssey 11.473, tr. Richard Lattimore
Even the name Achilles is resonant with our story. In its etymology, there is an argument that “Akhil(l)eús is a shortened form of Akhí-lāu̯os,” meaning, essentially, one “whose men have grief.”
The name was resonant with Mr. Chandler as well: In the census of 1850, he is listed as having a four-year-old son named Akillas.
It’s unsurprising that the Tennessee event was eventually dismissed as a hoax, given the skepticism of the scientific spectator community as well as the anxieties of the Southern ownership class, given chronic fears of another slave insurrection. It’s worth noting, in both the Turner and Tennessee case, that the slave owners were deemed “too indulgent,” and paid for their weakness — fatally in the former, and by reputation in the latter.
And here we have another tie to the ancient narrative: in non-Homeric legend, Achilles’ mother Thetis dipped her infant son in the river Styx, making him invulnerable — except where she held him, by his heel. According to the proponents of the hoax explanation, Ekillus M. Chandler, who had “great confidence in the veracity of his boy,” was likewise vulnerable.
Let us visit that “extreme back side of a very out of the way field in a Tobacco patch,” worked by slaves whose names are lost to us. Let us picture, in our minds, a small red cloud scudding quickly from east to west, loosing a “thick, hazy shower” before disappearing entirely. As ridiculous as this sounds, the description of this event — in area, duration, and circumstance — is the most consistent part of the over two dozen reported rains of blood in America during this terrible century. The people on whom the matter fell, and their reactions and sundry explanations, are maximally diverse. I allow the possibility of the phenomenon being real, in some part because the people’s minds were prepared for it, in myth and imagination. Like the earnest Dr. Sayle, I express this with some diffidence, knowing that I will “subject myself to the incredulity of the public.” Suffice to say that there are more of these stories to come. Any idea that blood rains are the province of the disempowered is demonstrably false.
A more likely explanation, I suppose, is that these showers never happened. Nat Turner predetermined his own destiny, and the Tennessee slaves hoaxed a fearful and gullible white population. With this in mind, imagine these nameless black men, following the plow as thralls to another man, “with no land allotted to [them] and not much to live on,” as small dark shapes, dwarfed by the great green field, flinging blood and tissue and fat into the air over an area almost a half square mile. Their dance was an ecstatic ritual expressing communion, and bereavement. In accordance with the Greek sphagia, it might have served as a pre-battle offering. In this scenario, the matter would have rained down, indeed, but only the distance from which the men’s reach exceeded their grasp. In their actions, and probably in their minds, Nat Turner — so conspicuous in his absence — lived on.
Much of the Nat Turner material can be found at the marvelous Nat Turner Project site.
