Slave Violence

Abstract

This chapter examines how acts of physical violence remained the ultimate demonstration of discontent with the institution of slavery. Violence could result in the destruction of human lives but might simply entail destroying property. Large-scale rebellion certainly constituted the ultimate in violence against whites; yet, not unlike the southern experience generally, individual acts of violence perpetrated by slaves against whites represented the typical and most frequent such action in Florida. Acts of physical violence perpetrated on whites by captive laborers may have been seen less frequently than nonviolent forms of resistance in Florida, but the possibility of slave-perpetrated violence persistently sent chills through and often wreaked panic in Florida′s white community during the territorial and early statehood periods.