Q: What was the largest actual rebellion of enslaved African people in the United States?
– Black History Questions and Answers Admin Team
A: The largest revolt of enslaved Blacks both in the United States and in North American history was that of Charles Deslondes in Louisiana on January 8, 1811.
Deslondes, the free son of an enslaved Black woman and her White enslaver, led 200 to 500 revolutionaries from St. John the Baptist Parish towards New Orleans 30 miles to the east. The rebellion was quelled two days later when the group was cornered by the military and a local militia.
Over 100 of the insurgents were killed or later executed. Their heads were placed on spikes and displayed along a stretch of land where they had traveled as a warning to other slaves.
Although the insurgents had only taken the lives of two or three White persons and focused their rampage on the destruction of plantation property, this revolt was greater, by the volume of its participants, than the Chesapeake Rebellion of 1730, which involved about 200 enslaved Africans, and the Stono Rebellion of 1739, which involved 60 African rebels and claimed the lives of 25 South Carolina colonists.
What made this event so peculiar among revolts is the great diversity of the organizers and participants both in terms of their African roots and their positions in the social hierarchy.
The 11 leaders of the revolt originated from different ethnic groups. Deslondes himself was a slave driver on his master’s plantation and he was not the only one.
Harvard historian Daniel Rasmussen presents two years of his research on this revolt in his book American Uprising: The Untold Story of America’s Largest Slave Revolt (2011). In summarizing his greatest findings, he had this to say:
My biggest surprise as I dug through the sources was…just how close they came to conquering New Orleans and establishing a Black republic on the shores of the Mississippi.
Daniel Rasmussen as quoted on Nola.com
All this is evident in the letters of enslavers and politicians of that time. Yet, the German Coast Uprising of 1811 is largely unknown today and has received very little attention outside of academic circles.
– Omri Coke, Black Researchers United Admin Team
Read More about Black rebellions against the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade here:
