"An Agitated and Anxious Society": Charleston and the Lowcountry in the era of Denmark Vesey

Abstract

"An Agitated and Anxious Society":Charleston and the Lowcountry in the era of Denmark Vesey Lacy Ford (bio) Douglas R. Egerton and Robert L. Paquette, eds. The Denmark Vesey Affair: A Documentary History. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2017. xxv + 812 pp. $150.00. The editors of this lengthy volume have done the heavy lifting needed to compile all the known extant sources related to the Denmark Vesey insurrection scare in Charleston in 1822. Covering a broad geographic territory and several decades of chronology with careful attention to detail, the editors have brought both familiar and obscure sources together systematically and with insight. This volume will prove a boon to future studies of the Vesey scare and the scholars doing those studies will greatly appreciate the richness and convenience offered by this impressive volume. For this herculean labor, Paquette and Egerton deserve bountiful kudos for their efforts and for the considerable expertise they brought to this project. This compilation continues a period, now stretching toward two decades, of reinvigorated and sometimes contentious debate over the nature of the Vesey scare (and it is important to remember that it was just that: a scare). Both long and short-term views of the Vesey scare can tell us much about how both white and blacks (enslaved and free) viewed the institution of slavery both before and after the incident. For that reason, as well as many others, this massive compilation of sources provides a window into the world of the antebellum South that has intrigued scholars for many decades. What this collection cannot do—indeed it is doubtful that evidence will ever surface that will—is answer all the questions that have been debated for over a half century, and argued with renewed intensity during the past two decades, concerning the scope and intent of the rebellion allegedly simmering in Charleston in 1822. It appears that almost all whites in Charleston at the time of the scare, regardless of the nuances of their views on slavery or their political allegiances, believed that some sort of insurrection had been plotted, discovered, and forestalled. But whites disagreed sharply over the scope [End Page 36] and intent of the "conspiracy" afoot and the degree of danger it posed to the established society and commerce of the port city. Incumbent Governor Thomas Bennett, owner of Charleston's largest rice mill and former mayor (intendant) of the city, and his brother-in-law, U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Johnson, a Charlestonian and staunch Jeffersonian Republican, aggressively advanced a position, stated publicly by Bennett, that the public mind "was agitated by a variety of rumors, calculated to produce great excitement and alarm." The so-called Vesey court, a body that conducted much of the investigation, ran proceedings they called "trials." According to Bennett, the Vesey court later convicted and executed or banished many slave rebels, encouraged a "general impression … of a very extensive conspiracy," and "greatly magnified" the threat of what in reality was a very immature plot, which, "as soon as discovered … ceased to be dangerous." Bennett insisted that "the scheme has not been general nor alarmingly extensive."1 Bennett and Johnson's view, however, remained that of a small minority. A large majority of white Charlestonians embraced the view of the incumbent Charleston intendant James Hamilton and his allies on the Vesey court. Hamilton, a scion of the Lowcountry rice aristocracy, painted a dark picture of a bloodbath narrowly avoided by bold and timely action by city and state authorities, and of a relentless investigation that carefully and impartially followed every lead to its end. "There is nothing you are bad enough to do," Hamilton warned Charleston's enslaved majority and anyone else who sympathized with the alleged rebellion, "that we are not powerful enough to punish."2 The Court's official report concluded that the thwarted plot was wide-ranging, meticulously planned, and capable of much destruction and bloodshed. The Vesey conspiracy, the Court concluded, was a plot whose sophistication and scope justified the swift and severe actions of the Court. "By the timely discovery of the plot," the Report concluded, "South Carolina has been rescued from the most horrible catastrophe with which it...