Fragile Freedom

He had escaped, he was free.   Most, if not all, in his position, would have kept running, and not looked back. They would have fled to the Northern Free States, or perhaps British North America, to try and start a new life there, just out of reach of their slave master. That was what his father had done before him when the boy was still too young to remember him. Not young Nat Turner though. After a month in the wilderness, he would return to his master by his own free will. Later, he would explain to Thomas Ruffin Gray, a lawyer who frequently represented slaves, and who'd go on to write “The Confessions of Nat Turner”, “the Spirit appeared to me and said I had my wishes directed to the things of this world, and not to the kingdom of heaven, and that I should return to the service of my earthly master.”   In many senses, though Turner was different than his brothers and sisters in bondage, something that was recognized early on in his life. Though a slave, his first master, Benjamin Turner, would let him be