The U. Congress intervened and allowed Turner to reclaim his legislative seat in but he was not reelected in an election marred by fraud. Turner abandoned politics and moved to Savannah, Georgia where he served as pastor of St. Phillips AME Church. By the late s Turner became increasingly disillusioned with the inability of African Americans to achieve social justice in the United States. He proposed emigration back to Africa , an idea much discussed in the antebellum period but which all but disappeared during the Civil War and Reconstruction.
By Turner had become one of the leading advocates of emigration, particularly to Liberia. He founded two newspapers, The Voice of Missions and the Voice of the People to promote emigration. The couple moved to Baltimore and eventually had 14 children, but only two sons survived.
Turner joined the African Methodist Episcopalian church in , at 24, because he heard that within that church black men could become bishops.
He was taken under wing by Bishop Daniel Payne and pastored at two of his churches. Turner joined the lobbying effort to convince President Lincoln to enlist freedmen in the Union Army.
In , Lincoln acceded, and Turner became the first black chaplain. By some counts, he founded over one hundred churches. At the same time, he helped organize the Georgia Republican Party. In , he was elected state representative, but he and 14 other black representatives were expelled from the Georgia legislature after whites combined in an vote.
That rejection made Turner turn his back on the American political process. He turned his attention instead to developing the political potential of the black church. In , Turner rode a wave of populist popularity to become the first southern bishop elected in the AME Church. He would also prove to be the most controversial. He provoked white racists in print, and advocated a wholesale move of blacks back to Africa "to achieve our dignity and manhood.
He built alliances with Baptists. At the first Black Baptist convention, he gave the speech for which he would be forever known: "We have every right to believe that God is a Negro," he stated, proclaiming that a people needed to see their reflection in their deity.
Turner came close to becoming a national leader in the mold of Frederick Douglass or Booker T. When Turner was eight, he dreamed that he was standing in front of a large, racially diverse crowd who were looking to him for instruction.
As Turner later told author William Simmons:. I would study with all the intensity of my soul until overcome by sleep at night; then I would kneel down and pray, and ask the Lord to teach me what I was not able to understand myself, and as soon as I would fall asleep an angelic personage would appear with open book in hand and teach me how to pronounce every word that I failed in pronouncing while awake, and on each subsequent day the lessons given me in my dreams would be better understood than any other portions of the lessons.
After his mother remarried, the family moved to Abbeville, South Carolina, and Turner became a janitor at a law office. Turner interpreted their actions as an answer to prayer and poured himself into arithmetic, astronomy, geography, history, law, and theology. His conversion would come three years later in under the preaching of plantation missionary Samuel Leard.
In a letter to Leard, Turner recalled his conversion experience:. I joined the Church under Rev. Crowell, on probation, at Abbeville, in the latter part of , but soon went to cursing and getting drunk whenever I could get whisky, and was the worst boy at Abbeville Court House until you, at Sharon Camp Ground, in , so stunned me by your powerful preaching that I fell upon the ground, rolled in the dirt, foamed at the mouth, and agonized under conviction till Christ relieved me by his atoning blood.
Shortly after his conversion, Turner felt compelled to preach the gospel. His denomination affirmed his calling, licensing him first as an exhorter and sending him to lead prayer meetings among the enslaved people of Abbeville, South Carolina.
Two years later, the denomination granted Turner a license to preach. This move was uncharacteristic for the SMEC, a denomination which regularly licensed African Americans as exhorters but only rarely licensed them to preach. This status allowed Turner to move throughout the slave-holding South, preaching to both black and white audiences. Turner's preaching combined not only Scripture but also outside readings of classics, such as John Milton's Paradise Lost and the writings of popular theologian Thomas Dick.
Turner also remembered much of what he read and used it in his extemporaneously delivered sermons. Additionally, Turner presented his erudite sermons in a powerful and eloquently delivered oratory. At that time, impromptu speaking was widely seen a sign that one was lead and carried by the Holy Spirit in one's preaching.
One attendee challenged Turner to preach from a text that the guest would provide at random. Turner was also instrumental in a series of revivals in Athens, Georgia, during the spring of Paired with W. In the midst of the Civil War, Turner organized a lyceum at his church, where intellectuals and congregants debated important issues of the day such as war and other political matters.
Because his church within walking distance from Capitol Hill, Turner spent hours in its chambers, listening to debates and arguments on the floors of the House and Senate. As pastor of one of the largest black churches in Washington, DC, Turner quickly established himself as a leader in the black community.
He befriended several Republican elected officials and became a major supporter of the war effort. Who was it that laid the foundation of the great Reformation? Martin Luther, who lit the light of gospel truth alight that will never go out until the sun shall rise to set no more; and, long ere then, Democratic principles will have found their level in the regions of Pluto and of Prosperpine.
The honorable gentleman from Whitfield Mr. Now, he is recognized as a leader of the Democratic party in this House, and generally cooks victuals for them to eat; makes that remarkable declaration, and how are you, gentlemen on the other side of the House, because I am an officer, when one of your great lights says that I am not an officer?
If I am not permitted to occupy a seat here, for the purpose of representing my constituents, I want to know how white men can be permitted to do so. How can a white man represent a colored constituency, if a colored man cannot do it? Now, I want gentlemen to come down to cool, common sense. Is the created greater than the Creator? Is man greater than God?
It is very strange, if a white man can occupy on this floor a seat created by colored votes, and a black man cannot do it. Why, gentlemen, it is the most shortsighted reasoning in the world. A man can see better than that with half an eye; and even if he had no eye at all, he could forge one, as the Cyclops did, or punch one with his finger, which would enable him to see through that. It is said that Congress never gave us the right to hold office. I want to know, sir, if the Reconstruction measures did not base their action on the ground that no distinction should be made on account of race, color or previous condition?
Was not that the grand fulcrum on which they rested? And did not every reconstructed state have to reconstruct on the idea that no discrimination, in any sense of the term, should be made? There is not a man here who will dare say No. If Congress has simply given me a merely sufficient civil and political rights to make me a mere political slave for Democrats, or anybody else giving them the opportunity of jumping on my back in order to leap into political power I do not thank Congress for it.
Never, so help me God, shall I be a political slave. I am not now speaking for those colored men who sit with me in this House, nor do I say that they endorse my sentiments, but assisting Mr. Lincoln to take me out of servile slavery did not intend to put me and my race into political slavery. If they did, let them take away my ballot I do not want it, and shall not have it. I have been a slave long enough already. I tell you what I would be willing to do: I am willing that the question should be submitted to Congress for an explanation as to what was meant in the passage of their Reconstruction measures, and of the Constitutional Amendment.
Let the Democratic Party in this House pass a resolution giving this subject that direction, and I shall be content. I dare you, gentlemen, to do it. Come up to the question openly, whether it meant that the Negro might hold office, or whether it meant that he should merely have the right to vote.
If you are honest men, you will do it. If, however, you will not do that, I would make another proposition: Call together, again, the convention that framed the constitution under which we are acting; let them take a vote upon the subject, and I am willing to abide by their decision….
These colored men, who are unable to express themselves with all the clearness and dignity and force of rhetorical eloquence, are laughed at in derision by the Democracy of the country. It reminds me very much of the man who looked at himself in a mirror and, imagining that he was addressing another person, exclaimed: My God, how ugly you are! For myself, sir, I was raised in the cotton field of South Carolina, and in order to prepare myself for usefulness, as well to myself as to my race, I determined to devote my spare hours to study.
When the overseer retired at night to his comfortable couch, I sat and read and thought and studied, until I heard him blow his horn in the morning. He frequently told me, with an oath, that if he discovered me attempting to learn, that he would whip me to death, and I have no doubt he would have done so, if he had found an opportunity.
So far as I am personally concerned, no man in Georgia has been more conservative than I. I can assure you, however, Mr. But, Mr. Speaker, I do not regard this movement as a thrust at me. It is a thrust at the Bible a thrust at the God of the Universe, for making a man and not finishing him; it is simply calling the Great Jehovah a fool.
Why, sir, though we are not white, we have accomplished much. We have pioneered civilization here; we have built up your country; we have worked in your fields and garnered your harvests for two hundred and fifty years!
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