The Creole Rebellion: The Most Successful Slave Revolt in American History by Bruce Chadwick

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Creole Rebellion: The Most Successful Slave Revolt in American History by Bruce Chadwick John Harris The Creole Rebellion: The Most Successful Slave Revolt in American History. By Bruce Chadwick. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2022. Pp. xvi, 231. $27.95, ISBN 978-0-8263-6347-3.) The successful rebellion of the captives aboard the slave ship Creole in 1841 has long been overshadowed by the 1839 revolt on another slaver vessel, the Amistad, which resulted in a Supreme Court decision and, many years later, inspired a 1997 film directed by Steven Spielberg. But there are encouraging [End Page 357] signs for the lesser-known Creole freedom fighters. Ivan R. Dee published the first monograph on the revolt, The Creole Mutiny: A Tale of Revolt Aboard a Slave Ship by George and Willene Hendricks, in 2003. Bruce Chadwick’s The Creole Rebellion: The Most Successful Slave Revolt in American History is the fourth book on the subject. Chadwick’s narrative advances along three paths. The first is the story of the rebellion itself. A riveting opening chapter contains a blow-by-blow account of the revolt, which erupted midway through a voyage from Richmond to New Orleans. Chadwick focuses not only on the well-informed rebel leader, Madison Washington, a formerly free man who knew about the Amistad revolt, and his allies, but also on the stunned and desperate captain, the crew, and their family members on board. Chadwick also considers the motives of the 116 out of 135 captives who, fearing for their own lives, did not join the revolt. With the Creole in their hands at the cost of just one life (the slave trader John Hewell was killed in the struggle for the vessel), the rebels wisely forced the crew to reroute to the Bahamas, where the British had already abolished slavery. In Nassau, the enslaved people on board the Creole secured their freedom, and in 1842, a London court exonerated the mutineers. Sadly, we hear little more about Washington or his compatriots thereafter. An exploration of the lifeways of those who conducted “the most successful slave revolt in American history,” however tentative, would enrich the book. The arrival of the Creole in the Bahamas sets the stage for Chadwick’s second theme: diplomatic wrangling between the governments of Great Britain and the United States. The British argued that the former captives could not be forcibly returned to the United States; since British colonies did not recognize slavery, the people on the Creole were free, whatever their legal status elsewhere. Yet the United States, led by President John Tyler, a proslavery Virginian, demanded their return. White southerners supported Tyler, and many northerners, although lukewarm about slavery, were nonetheless angry with British authorities for disrespecting American shipping and American law. Chadwick argues that Tyler, the so-called accidental president who unexpectedly succeeded the ill-fated William Henry Harrison, was politically weak when the Creole episode occurred and used the incident to try to save his presidency and ignite his reelection bid. Tyler failed on all counts: the British never returned the rebels, and Tyler, who remained unpopular in both Whig and Democratic circles, withdrew from the race. The book’s third and most innovative theme is the bitter debate about slavery within the United States that the Creole incident generated. Abolitionists, a small and divided force, were energized. The incident brought fame to figures like abolitionist congressman Joshua R. Giddings of Ohio and gave a new lease on life to the aging John Quincy Adams, who used the incident to try to break the so-called gag rule against discussions of slavery in the House of Representatives. The proslavery response was fierce. As Tyler’s presidency was ending, he helped engineer the annexation of Texas as a slave state. Chadwick does not firmly establish how much this strategy had to do with the Creole incident. As in many parts of the book, the political intrigues of Washington, D.C., take over the narrative in his final chapters, and the Creole disappears. The book’s short epilogue struggles to offer an overarching thesis, [End Page 358] but Chadwick certainly convinces readers that the Creole rebellion fostered...