Ante-bellum Slave Resistance Relative lack of massive ...

Ante-bellum Slave Resistance
Relative lack of massive rebellion:
--United States: rebellion rare

--Caribbean, Latin America: rebellions larger and more frequent

Reasons:
--most Afs. in the United States were outnumbered by whites

--Af. Ams. were separated from groups of Af. Ams. on other
plantations by longer distances

--physical geography did not provide as many unsettled,
mountainous, or swampy havens

--working conditions, however unpleasant, were not so harsh as on
Caribbean islands and in Latin America

--influx of young, male, rebellious Afs. with little to lose, not so
heavy in North Am.

--by middle of nineteenth cen. most slaves were living with and/or
caring for families

Actions and Ideology:

--most resistance to slavery was institutional—shoddy work,
feigned illnesses, broken tools, malingering, self-mutilation

--1800-1830 marked a period of the most thoroughly planned, and
most violent slave uprisings

--by 1830 Afs. considered a “troublesome property”

Outlandish:
--All African-born slaves
--communication problems
--resisted in groups

--reject institution outright

--run away and try to establish maroon communities

New Negroes:
--African-born

--field hands
--resisted as individuals
--run away and stay on outskirts of plantation, not to
freedom
--plantation only world they knew; couldn't pass for free

Assimilated:
--American-born
--of those who run away--artisans, skilled
--run as individuals
--running to freedom; can get anonymity in cities

--limits of American Revolution

Causes--Internal:
--freedom--a right to expect
--American Revolution

Causes--outside influences
--greater awareness of revolutionary activities in the Caribbean

revolt--Toussaint L’Ouverture:
--literate
--bi-racial slave

--gathered slaves and slaughtered whites on the island

--L’Ouverture aided by yellow fever and guerilla tactics

--January 1, 1804 former French slaves proclaimed the Republic
of Haiti

Before L’Ouverture:

Over 250 slave revolts and conspiracies in British North America
during the slave era

Hartford, Conn.: 1657
Newbury, Mass.: 1690
Queen’s County, NY: 1708
New York City: 1712
Stono, South Carolina: 1739
L’Ouverture: “There is your liberty!”

--contemporary observers of L’Ouverture: “military genius,” “He
disappears—he has flown—as if by magic.” “Now he reappears
again where he is least expected. He seems ubiquitous. One never
knows where hiss army is, what it subsists on, how he manages to
recruit it, in what mountain fastness he has hidden his supplies and
his treasury. He, on the other hand, seems perfectly informed
concerning everything that goes on in the enemy camp.” Antoine
Metral, French officer

Jean-Jacques Dessalines:

“War for war, crime for crime, atrocity for atrocity.”

Effect:

--stories of the nearby and horribly bloody uprising brought fear to
many a slave owner
--with the heaviest concentration of slaves in the country, South
Carolinians had much to fear

--spoke of the “cancer of revolution”

Gabriel’s plot (Richmond, Va.), 1800

--blacksmiths, weavers, carpenters, shoemakers moved about
with minimal restriction

--Haitian refugees

--slaves were recruited and themselves became recruited

--revolutionary rhetoric“I have nothing more to offer than what
General Washington would have had to offer, had he been taken
by the British and put to trial by them. I have adventured my life inn
endeavoring to obtain the liberty off my countrymen, and am a
willing sacrifice to their cause…”

“We are free, but the white people here won’t let us be so; and the
only way is to raise up and fight the whites.”

“He employed every stratagem to induce me to join him. He was in
the habit of reading to me all the passages in the newspapers that
related to St. Domingo, and apparently every pamphlet he could
lay his hands on that had any connection with slavery.”

Recruits Poyas, a ship carpenter:

--“take care not to mention [the plan] to those waiting men who
receive presents of old coats, etc., from their masters, or they’ll
betray us: I will speak to them.”

Gabriel’s goals:

--stun white leadership
--hoped hundreds of thousands of slaves would join the cause

Failure:
--a few slaves broke the silence

Consequences:
--Chesapeake antislavery societies decline
--Ended hope to abolish slavery in MD, VA, and NC
--Fears of race war, rebellions

White reaction:
--Va. enacted laws restricting movement of slaves and free Afs.
--Richmond established a Public Guard

Effect:

--highlighted the inconsistencies of the slave holders’ position
(Hammond,Fitzhugh)
--sparked other rebellions
--1811Charles Deslondes
--”a dangerous conspiracy” discovered in Lexington, Ky
--”spirit of rebellion is very obvious in this country” in 1829

Denmark Vesey’s conspiracy, 1821

--Denmark a product of the Caribbean slave system
--returned to original master b/c said he was “unsound and subject
to epileptic fits”

--served his master for 17 years in the Charleston, a bustling
seaport
--won lottery and bought his freedom
--Familiar with revolutionary rhetoric; Haitian revolts; French
Revolution; Missouri crisis

--held meetings with key free Af. Ams.
--set July 14 as the date, but on May 30 a house servant informed
his master of the plot

Consequences:

--destroyed AME church
--improved slave patrols
--outlawed slave assemblages
--banned teaching slaves to read

--black seaman jailed until ships ready to leave port
--increasingly suspicions of free African-Americans and white
Yankee visitors

Nat Turner’s Rebellion, Southampton County, Va., 1831

Nat Turner
--slave preacher and religious visionary
--conducted “the bloodiest revolt in Southern history”
--born a slave on the farm of Benjamin Turner