1800-1831
SLAVE REVOLTS IN THE U.S.
Like the self-liberated enslaved people who fought against French colonial rule in what is now Haiti, enslaved people in the U.S launched revolts that, while unsuccessful, were important forces in the long fight for freedom. Among those efforts:
Denmark Vesey was an early 19th century free Black man and community leader in Charleston, South Carolina, who was accused and convicted of planning a major slave revolt in the summer of 1822. Although the alleged plot was discovered before it could be realized, its potential scale stoked the fears of the antebellum planter class and led to increased restrictions on both enslaved people and free Blacks.
Vesey allegedly used his substantial influence among the Black community to plan the revolt. According to the accusations, Vesey and his followers planned to kill slaveholders in Charleston, liberate the enslaved people, and sail to the newly independent Black republic of Haiti for refuge. By some contemporary accounts, the revolt would have involved thousands of enslaved people in the city as well as others who lived on nearby plantations.
Gabriel Prosser was an African blacksmith enslaved by the Prosser family, which is how he attained his surname. He planned a large slave rebellion in the Richmond, Virginia, area in the summer of 1800. Information regarding the revolt, which came to be known as “Gabriel’s Rebellion,” was leaked prior to its execution, and he and 25 followers were hanged.
Prosser’s planned uprising was notable not because of its results, since the rebellion was quelled before it could begin; it was significant because of the potential for mass chaos and widespread violence that it revealed. There were other slave rebellions, but, as Susan DeFord notes in her February 6, 2000 article “Gabriel’s Rebellion” in the Washington Post, this one “most directly confronted” the Founding Fathers “with the chasm between the ideal of liberty and their messy accommodations to slavery.”
The Southampton Insurrection, also known as Nat Turner‘s Rebellion, was a rebellion of enslaved Virginians that took place in Southampton County, Virginia, in August 1831. Led by Nat Turner, the rebels killed between 55 and 65 people, at least 51 of whom were white. The rebellion was effectively suppressed within a few days at Belmont Plantation on the morning of August 23, but Turner survived in hiding for more than two months afterward.
There was widespread fear among the white population in the aftermath of the rebellion. Militia and mobs killed approximately 120 enslaved people and free Blacks in retaliation. The Commonwealth of Virginia later executed 56 enslaved people accused of participating in the rebellion, including Turner himself; many Black people who had not participated were also persecuted in the frenzy.
Because Turner had been educated and was a preacher, state legislatures subsequently passed new laws prohibiting the education of enslaved people and free Black people, restricting rights of assembly and other civil liberties for free Black people and requiring white ministers to be present at all worship services.
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