Q: What was the largest planned rebellion of enslaved African people in the United States?
– Black History Questions and Answers Admin Team
A: While the German Coast Uprising is known as the largest rebellion of enslaved Blacks which took place within the United States of America, the Denmark Vesey Conspiracy is widely regarded as the largest planned revolt of enslaved people in U.S. history.
Dr. Junius P. Rodriguez, who has compiled several reference books on the history of slavery, writes of the Vesey Conspiracy:
The plot was believed to be the largest and best organized of all the slave rebellion plots that were detected in the antebellum era in the United States.
Junius Rodriguez in the Encyclopedia of Slave Resistance and Rebellion, Volume 1 (2007)
Indeed, it was.
As the plot was unraveled, it was estimated that over 9,000 enslaved African people across South Carolina were involved.
In the end, 131 arrests were made. Of these individuals, 67 were convicted, 26 were acquitted (11 of these were deported), and 48 were whipped then released as innocent; of those convicted, 35 were executed and 32 were deported.
Denmark Vesey was reputedly born in Africa or in the Caribbean around 1767. By all indications, he spent most of his childhood as a slave in Saint Thomas (one of the Virgin Islands). After working for a few months in Haiti, the young lad was brought to Charleston by a slave trader named Joseph Vesey around the year 1783.
As luck would have it, Vesey won the lottery 16 years later and used part of his earnings to purchase his freedom.
Through his carpentry business, Denmark was able to save up quite a lot of money.
However, no amount of funds he earned could free his wife or his children. Their master refused to sell them to Vesey.
Due to his wife’s condition as a slave, Denmark’s family and all of his future offspring were to be held in slavery forever.
Denmark Vesey harbored an intense hatred of White people. When he was not grilling them for their take on the enslavement of his Black brothers and sisters in the presence of his peers, he didn’t like to see them and he didn’t care to have them around. Vesey had known first-hand the horrors that Africans suffered on the Middle Passage. For two years, he sailed the Atlantic on ships owned by his master.
For two years, Denmark stared into the eyes of these shackled prisoners and saw his own accursed fate staring back at him…two years on a slave ship apparently burned the agony of the slave trade into Denmark’s memory.
When he looked in a mirror, he saw in his eyes the same anger, humiliation, and sadness that he had seen in the eyes of the slaves on the West African coast, on board Captain Vesey’s ship, and on the auction block.
Dr. Lillie J. Edwards in her book Denmark Vesey: Slave Revolt Leader (1990)
In time, he hatched a plan that would free not only his family, but thousands like them who had been kept under brutal oppression. Others joined him until his inner circle consisted of four men: Rolla Bennett, Ned Bennett, Jack Purcell, and Peter Poyas. They were later joined by a priest from Angola named Gullah Jack and another enslaved African – an Igbo named Monday Gell.
Various meetings were held at Vesey’s church, his house, and Monday Gell’s shop in the city.
Funds were raised in order to supply weapons and ammunition for the uprising.
After four whole years of careful planning, they were ready to strike.
Vesey had settled on the second Monday in July.
However, on May 30th, the plot was revealed to a slave-master by a “Mulatto” slave named George.
Upon learning further details from another slave named William, who George identified as a recruiter, the authorities called in the local militia and strengthened the city guard.
The date of attack was then moved up to the 16th of June. But by then, the situation had become desperate.
More arrests were made as key participants were hunted down.
A loyal band of 20 to 30 rebels had sailed into Charleston and as many as 1,000 Blacks were present in the city, but troops were seen patrolling the streets in great numbers.
Denmark recognized that they had lost their window of attack.
From around the 17th, he had hidden himself at the house of one of his wives and sent word to his followers that they should leave the city and wait for further instructions.
Five days later, on June 22nd, Denmark Vesey was captured.
When he was first held in prison, Denmark was expecting his fellow conspirator, Gullah Jack, to break him out.
However, Jack had also been betrayed by one of their own.
Two magistrates invited five White men to join them on the panel, which had been appointed to judge the case.
During the trial, Monday claimed to have enlisted 42 rebels. Peter confessed to have enlisted 600. He also asserted that he kept a list of all the people he and his company spoke to, which amounted to 9,000 names. These lists and other materials related to the planning of the rebellion were burned by the leaders as soon as they learned that they had been compromised. Due to the pact of secrecy that they had sworn to, the vast majority of their followers were spared.
Of the primary leaders, only Monday gave up the others. His confessions, initially in conversation with another prisoner, led to the arrests of 37 people. As a result of Monday’s compromise with the authorities, he was not among those who were sentenced to an execution.
Court records show that the city council oversaw the deportation of participants ‘out of the limits of the United States’ with assistance from the “owners.” These banishments were carried out after the convicts were imprisoned for a time in the Charleston workhouse. In some versions of these accounts, the court’s arrangement for the deportation of convicts was understood to mean that they would be transported to ‘their native homes,’ or literally, dropped off some place in Africa.
The threat posed by these rebels struck fear into the hearts of many White Southerners.
The insurrection threw the whole slavery question open to the public.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911) in “The Story of Denmark Vesey,” published in the June 1861 issue of The Atlantic
The South had not been in such a state of consternation since the conspiracy of Gabriel Prosser in 1800. Though he was born a whole year after these events transpired, Higginson, an abolitionist, was fated to witness those same fears.
More than a third of a century has passed since the incidents of this true story closed. It has not vanished from the memories of South Carolinians, though the printed pages which once told it have been gradually withdrawn from sight.
Until the actual uprising accomplished by Nat Turner nearly a decade later, Denmark’s project was the most ambitious plan of rebellion in American memory.
But even after the successes of Nat’s project, Higginson conceded that Denmark’s rebels reigned supreme:
The plot which they had laid was the most elaborate insurrectionary project ever formed by American slaves, and came the nearest to a terrible success.
In boldness of conception and thoroughness of organization there has been nothing to compare with it…
Careful measures were taken to discourage Southern slaves and their Northern sympathizers from learning the details of the rebellion.
But it was no use.
Denmark’s influence was such that Higginson himself was inspired to fund fellow abolitionist John Brown (1800-1859) to carry out yet another attempt at insurrection in what is now West Virginia.
South Carolina historian John Lofton (1919-1990) contended that Brown, too, was inspired by Vesey and that it was the trials of the conspirators under both of these leaders that ignited the deepest passions of White Southerners against Republican governance, leading to the secession of the South, the outbreak of the Civil War, and, ultimately, the end of slavery.
But Black America had only to expect a trampling of their freedoms in the immediate aftermath of these rebellions.
By Denmark’s own estimation, things had already been bad enough for his people in Charleston.
A number of policy changes were made in order to further restrict Black society all across South Carolina.
These changes affected just about every aspect of Black life, including business, education, communication, transportation, and fashion (yes, you read that right – fashion).
The fires of Denmark’s rebellion had been effectively extinguished at the moment of his execution on July 2, 1822.
In December of that same year, the Negro Seaman’s Act was passed, which made it a crime for free Blacks to enter the state.
Any Black person found on a vessel at Charleston’s harbor who was not originally from South Carolina would be arrested and thrown in jail until a fee was paid for their release upon the ship’s departure, after which they were to leave the state. Anyone who was responsible for their transportation would also be subject to a hefty fine of $1,000.
(It was of great concern to Black sailors that their fees were paid. By default, any Black prisoner left in jail for a certain period of time without being claimed by a White person, was to be sold into slavery.)
As a result of this law, Blacks who returned to the South, in order to reunite with their loved ones or to rescue friends and family members from slavery, risked being turned into slaves themselves. This was almost 30 years before the Federal government passed the Fugitive Slave Act, which effectively decided that any Black person who could not prove their freedom were to be considered a White person’s property.
Meanwhile, free Blacks who continued to reside in the state could not go out in public without a White person to accompany them.
Free Blacks were severely limited from hiring themselves out for work. The hiring-out of slaves was entirely forbidden.
Free Blacks had actually maintained schools in the city for the purpose of teaching their children. Suddenly, these were prohibited and showing a Black person how to read or write at any time or place became a state crime.
Black congregants had already been made to suffer the inconvenience of having a White watchman on scene at all times, who would call on the authorities whenever the Negroes got “too uppity.” The people considered this an invasion of privacy and was it so unnerving to them that they felt it expedient petitioned the government, though predictably unsuccessful, for the repeal of this mandate. Now, two years later, upon learning the extent to which Black church leaders were steeped in the Vesey conspiracy, the authorities made it a rule that that every religious gathering of Black persons – both inside and outside of the churches – had to be attended and supervised by at least one White man.
Finally, as stated before, new restrictions were introduced for the type of clothing that free Black persons could wear. From then on, only rough-cut materials were prescribed for the manufacture of their garments.
In order to enforce these regulations and to prepare for any future disturbances, an army of 150 men was maintained throughout the winter months.
– Omri Coke, Black Researchers United Admin Team
Read More on the topic of Black rebellions against slavery in the Americas here:
For more on the Vesey conspiracy, also check out both volumes of the Encyclopedia of Slave Resistance and Rebellion (2007) edited by Junius P. Rodriguez; Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience (1999) edited by Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.; and Denmark Vesey’s Revolt: The Slave Plot That Lit a Fuse to Fort Sumpter (2013) by John Lofton.
Perhaps the most succinct and illustrative of titles on the subject of the Denmark Vesey rebellion is Denmark Vesey: Slave Revolt Leader (1990) by Lillie J. Edwards. It is available for online checkouts through the Internet Archive here.
