Slave Revolts
Photo Essay
As long as there have been slaves in North America, there has been slave resistance. Nearly all the uprisings ended in death, yet revolts continued through the last days of the "peculiar institution"—a stark testament to the despair wrought by a life sentence of forced servitude. Given the grave retribution meted out for even the most minor transgressions (for example, reading), nearly any act of self-improvement may be seen as a form of rebellion. Accordingly, untold numbers of slaves engaged in acts of resistance in attempt to improve their dismal lot. Organized, armed insurrections, however, were much rarer. So ubiquitous was the pall of the slave system—a system sanctioned and enforced by the state—that nearly every facet of daily life conspired against the would-be free man.
Notably, some of the first major slave insurrections took place in New York City, not in the South. This may have been due to the high density of blacks in the urban center; likewise, South Carolina, site of the Stono Rebellion (1739) and Denmark Vesey Conspiracy (1822), among other large-scale revolts, contained perhaps the highest percentage of blacks on the North American continent. After the Revolutionary War, however, New York began dismantling its slave economy, inching imperfectly toward the republic described in the Declaration of Independence. In contrast, the ex-colonies of the South became increasingly dependent on the benefits conferred by a slave economy and the measures that ensured its subsistence. Militias, slave-catching dogs, and legal statutes criminalizing noncompliance with human bondage made slave owners ever more powerful and their slaves ever more desperate.
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The following entries have been selected to help guide readers who want to learn more about African Americans abroad. (Access to the following articles is available only to subscribers.)
Subject Entries
- Amistad Mutiny
- New York Slave Revolt of 1712
- Denmark Vesey Conspiracy
- Gabriel Prosser Conspiracy
- Haitian Revolution
- Slave Rebellions and Insurrections
- Slave Rebellions in the United States
- Slavery in the United States
- Uprisings and Rebellions
Biographies
Primary Source Documents
- Act providing for the payment of slaves killed and executed on account of the late insurrection in this Territory and for other purposes (1811)
- Confession of Solomon Prosser (1800)
- Fear of Insurrection, from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)
- Letter from Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, Regarding Slave Insurrections (1800)
- Recollections of the John Brown Raid by a Virginian Who Witnessed the Fight (1883)
- Description of a Slave Uprising at Sea (1732)
