American slave
southern Virginia or the Carolina lowlands.
rebellions
SIMON WENDT
Slaves who resorted to militant resistance in
North America initially sought to win little
more than their freedom. In the wake of the
American and French Revolutions, however,
an increasing number of slave rebels became
determined not only to liberate themselves
but to overthrow the institution of slavery
itself. Compared with slave revolts in Brazil
and the Caribbean, slave revolts in the United
States were relatively rare, small, and gener-
ally unsuccessful. Yet militant slave resistance
was of significant symbolic value, fueling the
abolitionist movement that contributed to
the end of slavery in 1865.
Slave resistance began as early as the first
African men, women, and children were
forced onto slave ships bound for North
America. On several occasions, Africans
unsuccessfully attempted to overpower the
white ship crews that sought to sell them into
slavery in the New World. Others refused
to eat or drowned themselves during the
Middle Passage across the Atlantic to escape
bondage. Once in the British colonies, many
enslaved men and women showed their oppo-
sition through subtle forms of subversion,
such as breaking tools or feigning illness.
But the most common form of resistance
was running away. Until the late eighteenth
century, Africans in North America fre-
quently made collective efforts to escape.
Some of them formed so-called maroon
communities – maroon deriving from the
Spanish word cimarrón, which meant “fierce”
or “wild.” These small settlements were in
The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest, Edited by Immanuel Ness.
© 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2009 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781405198073.wbierp0036
inaccessible regions such as the swamps of
Compared with similar efforts in Brazil and
the Caribbean, however, American maroon
communities were small and rarely survived
more than a few years, with the exception
of Florida, a Spanish colony that remained a
refuge for runaways until the 1820s. Unlike
Brazil, whose vast mountainous interior
offered numerous opportunities to elude
white captors, the British colonies in North
America offered few of those inaccessible
areas, and by the eve of the American Revolu-
tion, white settlers and farmers had destroyed
most of such natural refuges. In Jamaica,
where similar safe havens continued to exist
throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, some of the island’s maroon com-
munities were so powerful that the British
colonial government negotiated treaties with
their leaders.
Conspiracies and rebellions were the most
militant form of slave resistance in British
North America. Prior to the late eighteenth
century, however, the small number of slave
rebels that resorted to such militant actions
only sought to secure their freedom, not
to overthrow the institution of slavery. In
New York and the Chesapeake area, several
insurrectionary plots, developed mostly by
recent arrivals from Africa, were discovered
in the periods 1710 to 1722 and 1729 to
1741. The two largest rebellions were the New
York City insurrection of 1712 and the Stono
Rebellion of 1739, which took place near
Charleston, South Carolina. In New York
City 27 Africans put fire to an outbuilding
and killed or wounded 15 white men. During
the Stono Rebellion, about 20 slaves secured
guns and ammunition, rallied 80 other
bondsmen, and raided several plantations.
2 AMERICAN SLAVE REBELLIONS
By the time they stopped to celebrate their
victory, they had killed more than 30 whites.
Despite the initial success of some rebellions,
most conspiracies were discovered before
slaves were able to put their plans into action,
and white retaliation was swift and brutal. In
New York City, for instance, 21 slave rebels
were executed. In Charleston, white planters
eventually confronted the small slave army
and killed 44 insurgents. In the aftermath of
revolts and conspiracies, white authorities
put tight security measures into place to
discourage further unrest.
The American and French Revolutions
marked a major turning point in the history
of slave rebellions in the Americas. The ideas
that revolutionaries used to justify their
opposition to traditional hierarchies of power
in Great Britain and France – chief among
them notions of natural human rights and
universal liberty – influenced generations
of slave rebels in North America and the
Caribbean, who seized on those concepts to
seek not just their freedom but an end to the
institution of slavery itself. In 1791 in the
French colony of Saint Domingue (modern
Haiti), the French Revolution inspired the
only successful insurrection in the history
of slavery, leading to the founding of a black
nation-state and becoming a symbol of free-
dom for enslaved men and women across the
Atlantic world. Led by black rebel leader Tou-
ssaint L’Ouverture, almost 100,000 Haitian
slaves and their free black allies defeated
the large and well-trained armies of Spain,
Britain, and France in a bloody struggle that
lasted until 1804, when Haiti gained its inde-
pendence. What came to be known as the
Haitian Revolution was a fearful reminder
for white planters in North America and
the Caribbean that their slaves were neither
content with their fate nor hesitant to use
force to fight for their freedom.
Most of the slave revolts and conspiracies
that took place in the United States in the
nineteenth century were similarly inspired
by the ideals of the Revolutionary Era. Many
black militants viewed the events in Haiti as
an additional encouragement to take mil-
itant action. In 1800, enslaved blacksmith
Gabriel Prosser planned a massive revolt in
Richmond, Virginia, hoping to rally other
slaves to take control of the state. But shortly
before the rebellion was to begin, fellow slaves
revealed the plan to white authorities. Gabriel,
his followers, and other suspects were quickly
rounded up and executed. Eleven years later,
almost two hundred slave rebels under the
leadership of Haiti native Charles Deslondes
rose up near New Orleans, Louisiana. The
small army raided and burned several plan-
tations but killed only three people. A large
contingent of white militiamen, slaveholders,
and US soldiers eventually quelled the revolt,
killing 66 rebels and capturing Deslondes and
20 of his followers. Quickly tried and found
guilty of rebellion, the survivors were exe-
cuted, and their severed heads were publicly
displayed to intimidate the slave population.
Like the Haitian Revolution, the conspiracies
of Gabriel and Deslondes terrified Southern
white slaveholders, who sought to protect
themselves by further restricting the ability of
slaves and free blacks to associate with each
other and by increasing the number of slave
patrols.
Denmark Vesey, a free black carpenter,
who in 1822 was discovered to have planned
a large slave revolt in Charleston, South Car-
olina, was also influenced by the revolutions
of the late nineteenth century. Vesey planned
to lead a slave army on Charleston on July
14, the same day on which French Revolu-
tionaries had stormed the Bastille in 1789.
Vesey had also visited Haiti when working
as a sailor and hoped that the newly inde-
pendent nation would support his attempt
to overthrow slavery in South Carolina. As
in the case of other conspiracies, however, a
house servant alerted his master before the

revolution could take place. Local authorities
quickly detained Gabriel and seized more
than one hundred suspects in the following
weeks. During public trials, 71 slaves were
found guilty. Thirty-five rebels, including
Gabriel, were put to death.
But not all of the slave rebellions in the
United States aimed to spark an anti-slavery
revolution. The 1831 rebellion of Nat Turner
in Southampton County, Virginia, was the
most violent one in US history, killing 59
people, including women and children, but
it was inspired by its leader’s religious con-
victions rather than by notions of human
rights and universal liberty. Turner, who was
a privileged and literate slave, became a lay
preacher in the 1820s and became convinced
that God expected him to lead his people to
freedom through violence. As in the past,
however, white militiamen quickly put down
the revolt. In the following weeks, fearful
white planters murdered more than one
hundred black suspects. After a public trial,
white authorities executed Turner, who had
eluded his captors for more than two months,
and almost twenty of his followers.
In 1839, in two separate maritime slave
revolts, a few slave insurgents finally managed
to gain their freedom. A group of Africans
that had been recaptured by US authorities
in June 1839 after bringing the Spanish slave
ship Amistad under their control was even-
tually freed by the US Supreme Court. A
similar revolt took place a few weeks later on
the American slave ship Creole. A group of
135 slaves subdued the white crew and man-
aged to sail to the British Bahamas, where
they gained their freedom under British
law. Although rumors of slave conspiracies
continued to swirl among Southern planters
in the following decades, the Turner revolt
remained the last major slave rebellion in
North America.
Compared with other slave societies, the
United States experienced few and relatively
AMERICAN SLAVE REBELLIONS 3
small slave revolts in the nineteenth century.
By contrast, numerous massive slave revolts
erupted during this period in Cuba, Barba-
dos, Jamaica, and Brazil. In 1812, thousands
of Cuban slaves and their free black allies
joined together in the massive Aponte upris-
ing that was intended to end slavery and
bring about Cuban independence. As in
the United States, however, swift retaliation
and subsequent security measures silenced
slave opposition until 1844, when another
large-scale conspiracy was discovered. Four
years after the Aponte conspiracy, a large
slave revolt enveloped the island of Barba-
dos, where hundreds of cane fields went
up in flames before militias defeated the
insurgents. In late 1831 almost 60,000 slaves
rose up in Jamaica, burning hundreds of
plantations and battling militias and British
troops for several weeks before their revolt
was brutally crushed. Between 1807 and 1835
Brazil also experienced waves of conspira-
cies and revolts. The largest rebellion took
place in 1835 in the city of Salvador, where
Muslim Africans led an unsuccessful attack
against white city authorities to secure their
freedom.
There are several reasons for the compar-
atively small number of slave rebellions in
the United States. Caribbean and Brazilian
slaves greatly outnumbered the white pop-
ulation and lived on large plantations with
little supervision. By contrast, American
slaves tended to be a minority and lived on
smaller estates that were closely watched and
managed by their vigilant owners. Similarly
important, the end of the slave trade in the
United States in 1809 halted the importa-
tion of single African men, who were at
the forefront of almost all slave rebellions
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
US-born slaves with families tended to be less
militant than native Africans, since they had
more to lose than single bondsmen. The lack
of large natural refuges further diminished
4 AMERICAN SLAVE REBELLIONS
chances of success for slave rebels in the
United States.
Though generally unsuccessful, slave rebel-
lions in the United States became important
symbols of heroic militancy for many African
Americans and contributed to the radical-
ization of the Abolitionist movement. Until
the 1830s, most black and white abolitionists
called for gradual abolition, were committed
to non-violence, and sought to use moral sua-
sion to convince Americans of the sinfulness
of slavery. But the persistent refusal of white
Southerners to consider emancipation, waves
of anti-abolitionist violence in the North, and
the slave revolts of the 1820s and 1830s led
a growing number of anti-slavery activists
such as William Lloyd Garrison and Fred-
erick Douglass to support both immediate
abolition and more forceful action to make it
a reality. Most of them sought to encourage
slaves to run away, supporting the activities of
the Underground Railroad, a secret network
of activists that helped slaves to escape to
the northern United States or to Canada. A
few, like black abolitionist David Walker in
his 1829 pamphlet An Appeal to the Colored
Citizens of the World, called for the violent
overthrow of the Southern slave regime. In
1859, white abolitionist John Brown and
a small band of 17 armed black and white
men heeded Walker’s appeal, raiding a fed-
eral arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, to
initiate a massive slave revolt across the
South. But the poorly planned attack was
nipped in the bud by white authorities.
During the battle with US marines that
ensued after the invaders were discovered,
Brown was captured and several of his com-
rades were killed. Virginia tried Brown for
treason and executed him in December
1859. Brown’s attack exacerbated the ten-
sions between the North and the South,
culminating in the American Civil War and
eventually leading to the end of slavery after
the defeat of the Southern Confederacy in
1865.
SEE ALSO: Gabriel’s Rebellion; Haiti, Revolu-
tionary Revolts, 1790s; Nat Turner Rebellion;
Vesey’s Rebellion
REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS
Aptheker, H. (1943) American Negro Slave Revolts.
New York: Columbia University Press.
Bergad, L. W. (2007) The Comparative Histories of
Slavery in Brazil, Cuba, and the United States.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dillon, M. L. (1990) Slavery Attacked: South-
ern Slaves and Their Allies, 1619–1865. Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
Genovese, E. D. (1979) From Rebellion to Revolu-
tion: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making
of the Modern World. Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press.
Price, R., (Ed.) (1979) Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave
Communities in the Americas. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press.
Rucker, W. C. (2006) The River Flows On: Black
Resistance, Culture, and Identity Formation in
Early America. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press.