On 'Bookwatch': Another look at Civil War

There is a new battle about the Civil War.

Whose side are you on?

Today’s conflict is not another one between the North and the South. It is a big difference of opinion here in North Carolina about how to mark the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War.

Some people want to do it the way we did it in the 1960s. Back then we celebrated the bravery of the Confederate soldiers and their gallant struggle for the “Lost Cause.” But today, many people, maybe most of them, insist that a proper remembrance of those times must include attention to the real causes of the war, to the Union sympathizers in North Carolina, and, of course, to the experience of free and enslaved blacks during those times.

Wherever side you take on this question, you should not miss the opportunity to hear Sharon Ewell Foster on UNC-TV’s “North Carolina Bookwatch” this afternoon at 5:30. She argues that it is not nearly enough for us to open up and expand our remembrance of the Civil War.

She says we have to go further back in time to get to the real origins of the Civil War conflict, back at least to the Nat Turner rebellion of 1831, when slaves rose up, terrorized and killed a group slave owners. It was an event that stunned the country and pushed the South towards a strident defense of slavery that divided the country.

Foster says, “This is American history. As we commemorate the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, most know little about the antebellum work of the abolitionists, even fewer have heard of Nat Turner and his revolt, even fewer know the truth. It’s time the truth was told.”

Foster’s new book, “The Resurrection of Nat Turner Part One: The Witnesses,” is fiction, but it is based on her groundbreaking historical research in Southampton County, Va., where the rebellion took place, just across the North Carolina line.

She tells her fictional story through the voices and experiences of Turner, his owners, other slaves and slave owners. She tries to show the challenges faced by slave owners, some of whom were so poor they could barely put food on their own tables, much less care for their slaves.

In one very poignant scene, an older enslaved woman rescues her cruel mistress from certain death by the Turner rebels. She had raised that now-cruel woman from childhood and still loved her for the little girl she had once been.

Foster’s research in Southampton County found a number of errors in William Styron’s novel, “The Confessions of Nat Turner,” and other popular history versions of Turner’s rebellion and trial. For instance, the basic historical record of Turner was the original “Confessions of Nat Turner” written in 1831 by Thomas Gray, who claimed to be Turner’s attorney. Foster found that Gray was not Turner’s attorney and that Turner never confessed or pleaded guilty.

“My literary journey,” says Foster, “has been to find the real Nat Turner, a peaceful and devout man prior to the revolt, not the one created for the press.”

“The Resurrection of Nat Turner” forces its readers to wrestle with the question of whether Turner was a terrorist, an early version of Osama bin Laden, or a hero of an unsuccessful, but justifiable, effort to liberate slaves from a brutal and indefensible system … or something else, even more complicated.

Whatever you think about Nat Turner, the Civil War, or the battle about how to observe the war’s anniversary, don’t miss the chance to hear more from Sharon Ewell Foster on “North Carolina Bookwatch this afternoon.”