Denmark Vesey: The Buried History of America's Largest Slave Rebellion and the Man Who Led It

In 1822, Denmark Vesey, a Caribbean-born free Negro from Charleston, South Carolina, led the largest attempted slave revolt in U.S. history with over 9,000 blacks. Although it failed--thanks to the confessions of a house slave to his master--and Vesey was executed, his heroic attempt continues to be a source of pride for African Americans. David Robertson's well-researched book chronicles Vesey's life as a slave in Haiti, his move to Charleston, his fluency in English, Creole, and French, and his skillful use of Christian teachings (and possibly Islamic ones, as well) to inspire the slaves to rebel. "He was a black man of great physical presence, strength, and intellect," Robertson writes, "linguistically fluent and politically facile enough to mold various African ethnic and religious groups into one unified force." Using court testimony from Vesey's trial and historical archives, Robertson unveils the stark and violent climate of antebellum life in 18th-century America, bringing to life a hero who fought for the same principles upon which the democratic nation in which he was made a slave was founded. --Eugene Holley Jr. From Publishers Weekly Much is already known about Denmark Vesey, who purchased his freedom from slavery in 1800 with money he won in a lottery. Yet his apparently sudden transformation from successful free black carpenter and property owner to the organizer of "the most elaborate and well-planned slave insurrection in U.S. history," in 1822, still fuels lingering curiosity. Evoking the atmosphere of material wealth enjoyed by antebellum South Carolina whites, Robertson reveals their fear at being surrounded by a black slave population whose labor made their comfort possible but who outnumbered them four to one. Drawing on the correspondence and memoirs of whites and their descendantsAbut not of blacksARobertson addresses his central question: "Why were individual freedom and prosperity not enough for Denmark Vesey?" The author's answer, which links Vesey's dissatisfaction (and that of the thousands of slaves who were reputedly ready to join him in arms) to the spiritual autonomy he achieved through the African Methodist Episcopal Church, is persuasive. Furthermore, Robertson identifies Vesey as a spiritual and political leader whose views were a precursor to modern Black Theology. Based on the word of a slave informant, Vesey and more than 20 slaves were hanged as insurrectionists in the summer of 1822, despite little physical evidence. Robertson's well-researched narrative and smooth style make this an intellilgent analysis of, as well as a worthy tribute to, his subject. Photos not seen by PW. (Aug.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal Robertson's carefully considered revisionist work tells the story of Denmark Vesey, a slave who purchased his own freedom and after 22 years organized what would have been (had he not been betrayed by informers) the most elaborate and well-planned slave rebellion in United States history. Through his appeal to negritude and religion, with himself as the black Messiah, VeseyAby then almost 60 years oldArecruited about 9000 slaves and black freedmen in a failed attempt to seize the arsenal and ships at Charleston harbor, burn the city, and murder the entire white population. Robertson (Booth: A Novel) discusses the aftermath of the attempted slave revolt and analyzes its national, social, and political consequences. Charleston eventually became the most fortified city in the nation. This well-written and meticulously researched biography sheds new light on various aspects of Vesey's attempted revolt, providing excellent notes for each chapter, a brief biography of each of those executed with Vesey in 1822, but unfortunately no bibliography. Nevertheless, the author has succeeded in putting together a very interesting and useful biography, the first in decades. -AEdward G. McCormack, Univ. of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast Lib., Long Beach Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus Reviews A fascinating historical detective story about an abortive 1822 slave insurrection in Charleston, S.C. Little survives in the historical record about Denmark Vesey, the free black who masterminded what could have been the most devastating uprising in American history. We dont know where this former slave (he bought his freedom and became a prosperous carpenter) was born, the site of his execution and grave, or even what he looked like. In fact, nearly all copies of the chief record of the event, an official report of his trial, were confiscated and burned, being considered too dangerous for slaves to see. Just rumors of the plot terrified Charlestonians, for Vesey and his recruits intended to assassinate the governor and other high elected state officials, torch the city, murder the entire white population, including children, and escape to either Haiti or Africa. The plot was exposed, and by the end of the summer Vesey (who never confessed) and 76 followers were either executed or imprisoned. Despite its failure, the revolt had major consequences. John C. Calhoun, then secretary of war, began building up Charlestons defenses until by the start of the Civil War it was the most heavily fortified city in the US. Robertson, a novelist (Booth, 1998) and biographer (Sly and Able: A Political Biography of James F. Byrnes, 1994), deftly teases out tantalizing clues from the testimony without pushing his speculation too far. The books most intriguing aspect is his depiction of Vesey (who may have been a Muslim) as a forerunner of Malcolm X in his haughty charisma, his advocacy of black economic independence and Africanism, and his insistence on doing ``everything that is necessary'' to strike at the whites he held responsible for his peoples degradation. Robertsons thoughtful chronicle restores to the record a powerful figure whose story continues to challenge Americas vision of itself as a place of equality and harmony. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Praise for David Robertson's Denmark Vesey"A fascinating historical detective story . . . Robertson deftly teases out tantalizing clues without pushing his speculation too far . . . [His] thoughtful chronicle restores to the record a powerful figure whose story continues to challenge America's vision of itself as a place of equality and harmony."--Kirkus Reviews"This book is truly something new . . . Robertson is a dogged seeker of truth with a fertile imagination . . . He disinters the secret of those who needed to bury Vesey's outrage and thereby deflect the light from their outrageous treatment of people they made slaves."--Booklist"Robertson's well-researched narrative and smooth style make this an intelligent analysis of, as well as a worthy tribute to, his subject."--Publishers Weekly From the Inside Flap On July 2, 1822, Denmark Vesey and five co-conspirators were hanged in a desolate marsh outside of Charleston, South Carolina. They had been betrayed by black informers during their attempt to set in motion the largest slave rebellion in the history of the United States--an effort astonishing in its level of organization and support. Nine thousand armed slaves and free blacks were to converge on Charleston, set the city aflame, seize the government arsenal, and then murder the entire white population of the city, sparing only the ship captains who would carry Vesey and his followers to Haiti or Africa.The attempted revolt was a significant episode in American history, yet it, and its leader, have been all but forgotten. In this balanced and gracefully written biography of Vesey--the first in many decades--David Robertson gives us a profile of this extraordinary man. He shows how, by preaching a doctrine of negritude combined with various religious elements, Vesey was able to attract large numbers of blacks to a messianic crusade for freedom. Robertson details the aftermath of the failed revolt, analyzes its social and political consequences, and articulates the essential, disturbing questions it poses to a racially and ethnically pluralistic society today. Praise for David Robertson's Denmark Vesey"A fascinating historical detective story . . . Robertson deftly teases out tantalizing clues without pushing his speculation too far . . . [His] thoughtful chronicle restores to the record a powerful figure whose story continues to challenge America's vision of itself as a place of equality and harmony."--Kirkus Reviews"This book is truly something new . . . Robertson is a dogged seeker of truth with a fertile imagination . . . He disinters the secret of those who needed to bury Vesey's outrage and thereby deflect the light from their outrageous treatment of people they made slaves."--Booklist"Robertson's well-researched narrative and smooth style make this an intelligent analysis of, as well as a worthy tribute to, his subject."--Publishers Weekly David Robertson is the author of a biography of James F. Byrnes and Booth: A Novel . He lives in La France, South Carolina. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. From Chapter OneA black slave stepped upon the ground that would later be the district of Charleston. In early April 1670, the 220-ton frigate Carolina, six months out from the island of Barbados, entered the waters forming what is now Charleston Harbor. The ship sailed up a shallow river to a point overlooked by a heavily wooded bluff, and there about twenty white Barbadians disembarked as part of the first permanent English-speaking settlement in South Carolina. Although no one recorded the name, the Barbadians had brought with them a black slave to work the new colony.xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0Slavery thus was present from the beginning in South Carolina, uniquely among the North American colonies, where in all other cases it was introduced only after their founding. And for the next two centuries, South Carolina would maintain its preeminence. From the arrival of the white men from Barbados in the seventeenth century to the U.S. prohibition of slave importation in 1807, over one-fourth of all African slaves brought and sold into the United States--at least 132,918 people--entered through Charleston or one of South Carolina's lesser ports. Hence, among the current African-American population of the United States in the late twentieth century, roughly one in four has an ancestor who was sold as a slave at Charleston.xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0There is no reason to think these figures would have displeased the men from Barbados as the Carolina found slippage between the trees at the riverbank. They had come to South Carolina intending to grow rich on a slave economy, just as had their fathers on the small island they had left.xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0Barbados, a piece of "sixpence throwne down" upon a sailor's map of the eastern Caribbean, as one contemporary chronicler described it, was at the time of the Carolina settlement the most densely populated, the richest, and the most lethal of the English colonies in the New World. Established less than fifty years before the Carolina expedition, Barbados also was the first English colony to introduce the gang-labor system of black slavery into the New World. Rather than encouraging the immigration of a free peasantry, the early settlers chose to import African slaves to work the sugar fields which they were clearing on this once rain-forested Caribbean island. Barbadians, as this first generation of Englishmen called themselves, became known throughout the Caribbean as hard masters. They imposed their will upon their new African laborers by frequent floggings, brandings, and mutilations; and by thus coercing large gangs of slaves to repeat monotonously the same task for ten or eleven hours--slashing the sugarcane with curved knives, grinding the canes between heavy stones, then boiling out the dark molasses to produce crystallized white sugar--the Barbadians became rich.xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0By mid-century, Barbados was contributing nearly half of the refined sugar sent to the European market, and it had become the first English settlement to have formed a plantation ruling class. Within two generations, this island with a population in 1660 of forty thousand blacks and whites had produced a planter elite of about sixty-two families who controlled local politics, held the most arable land, and owned the most slaves. Practically all the European visitors to the island in the seventeenth century remarked upon the display of wealth and extravagant consumption of the Barbadian elite--behavior to be repeated, as several scholars of the South have noted, by their South Carolina descendants into the lifetime of Denmark Vesey. There was to be in common between these two ruling classes in the Caribbean and in South Carolina that same show of finery, sometimes even to the point of ostentatiousness, evident in both their choice of clothing and their lavishly furnished country estates; there was to be that same easy munificence among the ruling males in bestowing honorary militia titles upon one another, such as "Captain" or "Major." And there also was to be transported to Carolina that same unhesitating brutality, and an absolute conviction that slavery represented the most profitable economic system yet known to Western man.xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0The slave-generated wealth of Barbados came at an appalling cost in African lives. Throughout the seventeenth century, the island had one of the highest mortality rates for blacks in the Western Hemisphere, and, whether from disease, malnutrition, or torture, more died annually than were imported to work the great sugar plantations. Unlike their English contemporaries in Massachusetts, Barbadians seldom looked inward to their consciences, and so long as the supply of African slaves seemed illimitable, their economy appeared untroubled. What concerned the masters was the lack of arable land on which to expand their slave economy. Barbados is only 21 miles long and 14 miles wide, and with practically all of it under cultivation and concentrated within a few families, economic advancement, particularly for younger men, was limited. Accordingly, a group declaring themselves the Corporation of Barbados Adventurers wrote to England on August 12, 1663, offering to establish a colony in the unsettled lands south of Virginia, an area that had become known as "Carolina in ye West Indies."xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0The Barbadians promised the eight royal proprietors to expect not only "the aptness of the people here"for establishing a new plantation economy in North America but also a "number of there negroes and other servants fitt for such labor." For six years, the proprietors and the Adventurers negotiated their terms, but ultimately the Barbadian proposal financially enticed the English proprietors. A mainland colony could be supplied and populated much more cheaply from the existing plantations at Barbados than from Europe; accordingly, the proprietors ceded to the Corporation of Barbados Adventurers the exclusive right to settle Carolina with grants of 150 acres to each Adventurer, with an additional 150 acres granted him for each servant transported. The philosopher John Locke, secretary to one of the proprietors, devised an elaborate constitution for the new colonists, a copy of which the Barbadian Adventurers carried with them. Among other stipulations, it promised religious freedom to all residents of the colony, whether black or white. In late 1669, three ships carrying colonists sailed from Barbados, of which only one, the Carolina, bearing its black slave with an unrecorded name, succeeded in reaching the new colony on the South Atlantic coast. Read more