Slave Resistance Research Articles

Slave revolts and conspiracies in seventeenth-century Barbados

For the somewhat more than two centuries that constituted the slave period in Barbados, the island experienced only one actual slave uprising. This erupted on the night of Easter Sunday on April 14, 1 8 1 6, but it lasted no more than a day or two. Prior to the 1 8 1 6 uprising, the last recorded serious alarm of Barbados's whites concerning the possibility of an insurrection occurred in late 1 70 1 . During the latter half of the 1 7th century, however, white fears of possible rebellion were common, several serious alarms occurred, and in 1675 and 1692 major insurrectionary plots were discovered before the plans could be realized. Some or most of these plots and alleged plots are often noted in modern works of scholarship treating the early history of the British West Indies or its slave revolts, but they are usually only briefly mentioned or, at best, only cursorily described. Moreover, with occasional major exceptions, scholars who have written at length about slave resistance and rebellion in the British Caribbean have tended to emphasize actual uprisings, rather than aborted plots or conspiracies, and the 17th century has generally

John A. Quitman and His Slaves: Reconciling Slave Resistance with the Proslavery Defense

John A. Quitman and His Slaves: Reconciling Slave Resistance with the Proslavery Defense

Black Arson in Albany, New York

The fondness for freedom, it has been well documented, prompted men and women in servitude, whether indentured or chattel, blacks or whites, to vent grievances and frustrated hopes in a variety of behavior, ranging from malingering and thievery to arson, flight, and insurrection. In years following American independence there were no revolts involving large numbers of Negroes, but quiet gave way to uneasiness and threats in 1792-especially in Virginia, where news of slave rising in St. Domingo caused rumbles of apprehension. It has been reasonably asserted (Jordan, 1969: 391-392) that the typical pattern [of slave rebelliousness] in 1790's was some fire and much That is, slave resistance was usually manifested by few numbers and spontaneous outbursts on part of individuals or small groups. An incident in upper Hudson Valley in autumn of 1793 seems to confirm this generalized assessment, but at Albany there was a considerable amount of fire with smoke. And this occurrence is as remarkable for its setting as for its particular development. The great Albany fire of 1793 has been mentioned (Jordan, 1969: 392) as an illustration of how Slaves sometimes turned to arson: . . . fire . . . was set by Negroes who for some reason held a grudge against their owner;

Flight and Rebellion: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth-Century Virginia

Flight and Rebellion: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth-Century Virginia

A Pro-Slavery Crusade: The Agitation to Reopen the African Slave Trade (review)

BOOK REVIEWS83 good companion volume to Constance McLaughlin Green's The Secret City. Yet, in terms of its title and its appearance in the Urban Life in America Series, edited by Richard C. Wade, it is a monograph of limited value, for unfortunately the rich social, economic, and cultural life of the freeman is largely neglected. Richard R. Duncan Georgetown University A Pro-Slavery Crusade: The Agitation to Reopen the African SZace Trade. By Ronald T. Takaki (New York: Free Press, 1971. Pp. x, 276. $7.95.) This interesting volume is the first book on the southern effort to reopen the African slave trade in the 1850's. Professor Takaki traces the effort from Leónidas W. Spratt's call for the reopening in 1853 to Spratt's anguished cry for still another "revolution" after the Confederate Constitution outlawed the trade. Contrary to the usual view that reopening was the work of a few ineffective extremists, Takaki contends that the movement was relatively widespread, and resulted from an internal crisis in the South, a crisis based in part on the recognition that southerners themselves doubted the morality of slavery. The reopening agitation, Takaki claims, was a revolution by young men who were revealing their concern with southern guilt over the slavery question, concern with gaining enough population to compete economically and politically, fear of class conflict if slaves were not made available to more whites, fear of slave revolts, and the feeling that slavery would die without expansion . These young men would convince the guilt-ridden South that both slavery and the African trade were correct. If slavery was right, how could the African trade be wrong? In the process they would also heal southern divisions, bring about secession, and create a triumphant southern civilization. While Takaki's account is fascinating, one is left with several nagging doubts. A profile analysis of reopening advocates was used to help understand the extremism of the 1850's, but the author analyzed biographical data for only ninety-seven men. The occupational analysis included only fifty-four names. The claim that agitators were youthful is based on the ages of forty-one advocates and nineteen opponents. Surely the ages of hundreds of advocates and opponents could be ascertained . It may be also that in making his argument Takaki has overemphasized the number involved, exaggerated the moral dilemma, and enlarged the slaveowners' fear of white non-owners. Furthermore, both opponents and advocates were so variously motivated it is difficult to determine whether the reopening agitation indicated anything other than that a few extremists for different reasons wished to reopen the trade. Some advocates hoped the agitation would bring secession; others believed reopening would preserve the union. Some secession- 84CIVIL WAR HISTORY ists advocated reopening; others opposed it. While some southerners believed that importing Africans would increase slave resistance others believed that reopening would increase the slave owning population and thereby militate against slave revolts. The entire population would be more watchful. Some advocated reopening because they believed it right; others did so because they were trying to rid themselves of their own personal doubts about the morality of slavery. Finally , the agitators themselves were divided. The reopening agitation perhaps further aggravated rather than healed southern divisions. Despite some minor questions Takaki's well-written study is an interesting and useful chronicle of the failure of the agitation for the reopening of the African slave trade. Joe M. Richardson Florida State University Kirby Smith's Confederacy: The Trans-Mississippi South 1861-1865. By Robert L. Kerby. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972, Pp. vin, 529. $12.95.) In recent years the Trans-Mississippi Department of the Confederacy has received renewed attention from scholars, journalists, local historians , and buffs, perhaps, because while forming a part of the overall conflict, things seemed so different beyond the great river. Society was more rough and tumble, the violence more brutal, the scene distinctly more frontier-like than in the Cis-Mississippi. Kerby now joins Stephen Oates, Albert Castel, and Robert E. Shalhope, among others, in an intensive examination of men and events in what he terms that vital but "never more than peripheral theater of operations, . . ." Kirby Smith's section...

Kirby Smith's Confederacy: The Trans-Mississippi South 1861-1865 (review)

84CIVIL WAR HISTORY ists advocated reopening; others opposed it. While some southerners believed that importing Africans would increase slave resistance others believed that reopening would increase the slave owning population and thereby militate against slave revolts. The entire population would be more watchful. Some advocated reopening because they believed it right; others did so because they were trying to rid themselves of their own personal doubts about the morality of slavery. Finally , the agitators themselves were divided. The reopening agitation perhaps further aggravated rather than healed southern divisions. Despite some minor questions Takaki's well-written study is an interesting and useful chronicle of the failure of the agitation for the reopening of the African slave trade. Joe M. Richardson Florida State University Kirby Smith's Confederacy: The Trans-Mississippi South 1861-1865. By Robert L. Kerby. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972, Pp. vin, 529. $12.95.) In recent years the Trans-Mississippi Department of the Confederacy has received renewed attention from scholars, journalists, local historians , and buffs, perhaps, because while forming a part of the overall conflict, things seemed so different beyond the great river. Society was more rough and tumble, the violence more brutal, the scene distinctly more frontier-like than in the Cis-Mississippi. Kerby now joins Stephen Oates, Albert Castel, and Robert E. Shalhope, among others, in an intensive examination of men and events in what he terms that vital but "never more than peripheral theater of operations, . . ." Kirby Smith's section of the Confederacy. Kerby contends that after the fall of Vicksburg the area of the Confederacy including Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, western Louisiana, and the Indian Territory by necessity became self-sufficient and forced to preserve itself without support from the remainder of the Confederate states. Kirby Smith effectively combined military and civil administration and came to symbolize the section's stalwart but futile effort to stave off inevitable defeat resulting from battlefield events east of the Mississippi. Seeking to provide a case study of a segment of American society which yielded everything in pursuit of an unattainable military victory, Kerby suggests that the story of the Trans-Mississippi adds some new dimensions to the history of the Confederacy and serves to illumine and complement the familiar history of the wartime South. Important and certain to stimulate discussion are Kerby's five impressions which emerge from his ambitious project. First, he feels that southern strategists miscalculated in using the great river as a departmental boundary, thereby hampering communications and administration of forces on both sides of the stream, while the Federals never made this mistake. Secondly, the author claims that the section's econ- book reviews85 omy remained viable until the end of the war, despite severe dislocations . Third, he sees disintegration of morale during the last months of the conflict directly causing the breakup of the war effort in Kirby Smith's area rather than battlefield defeats or economic inadequacies. Fourth, Kerby suggests the need for some modification of the notion that states' rights undermined the achievement of Confederate national independence. Apparently state governments west of the river all but abdicated authority to Confederate representatives and if anything, this weakened the citizenry's faith in their own states' rights rhetoric. Finally, Kerby thinks that: "If any generalization may be made upon the basis of evidence taken from the history of the Confederate Southwest , it seems that the high tide of Confederate aspirations began ebbing away during the first months of the Civil War." The first chapter is too long, the book might profit from illustrations and a bibliographic essay rather than list, but good maps are included and the footnotes seem to indicate exploration in width and depth. Perhaps Kerby's contribution assumes significant proportions because he has undertaken so much within one volume. He has unshackled Civil War history from unilateral consideration of battles, leaders, political events, economics, or social customs. He has packaged all of these together in a fashion which may seem diffusive, yet possibly more indicative of how wartime situations really were than the neatly blown conclusions and polished images of older accounts. B. Franklin Cooling U.S. Army Military History Research Collection Carlisle Barracks An Englishman in the...

Flight and Rebellion: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth-Century Virginia

Flight and Rebellion: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth-Century Virginia

Flight and Rebellion: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth-Century Virginia

Flight and Rebellion: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth-Century Virginia

Flight and Rebellion: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth-Century Virginia.

Flight and Rebellion: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth-Century Virginia.

Stanley Feldstein, and Introduction by Thomas P. Govan, Once a Slave: The Slaves' View of SlaveryGerald W. Mullin, Flight and Rebellion: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth-Century Virginia

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsStanley Feldstein, and Introduction by Thomas P. Govan, Once a Slave: The Slaves' View of Slavery Gerald W. Mullin, Flight and Rebellion: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth-Century VirginiaRobert McColleyRobert McColley Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 57, Number 4October 1972 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2716990 Journal History This article was published in The Journal of Negro History (1916-2001), which is continued by The Journal of African American History (2002-present). Copyright 1972 The Association for the Study of African American Life and HistoryPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Resistance to Slavery

The issues involved in study of to slavery are badly in need of clarification. The problem, one would suppose, is not whether plantation slave was happy with his lot but whether he actively resisted it. But even this initial clarification does not come easily. Too many writers have assumed that problem of resistance consists mainly of deciding whether slaves were docile or discontented and whether their masters were cruel or kind. In this respect and in others, as Stanley Elkins noted several years ago, discussion of slavery has locked itself into terms of an old debate.1 The proslavery stereotype of contented slave, which was taken over without much conceptual refinement by U. B. Phillips and others, has been attacked by recent historians in language much same as that employed by abolitionists more than a hundred years ago, according to which slaves hated bondage and longed to be free. That they had no understanding of freedom, Kenneth Stampp argues, ... is hard to believe. A few pages later, and without any intervening evidence, Stampp progresses from this cautious thought to a fullblown statement of case for resistance. Slave resistance, whether bold and persistent or mild and sporadic, created for all slaveholders a serious problem of discipline. He concludes, in a burst of rhetoric, that the record of slave resistance forms a chapter in story of endless struggle to give dignity to human life.2 It should be apparent that traditional terms of reference, on either side of dispute, are not sufficiently precise to serve as instruments of analysis. One of faults of Phillips' work is his consistent failure to distinguish between cruelty and coercion. By compiling instances of kindness and benevolence of masters, Phillips proved to his own satisfaction that slavery was a mild and permissive institution, primary function of which was not so much to produce a marketable surplus as to ease accommodation of lower race into culture of higher. The critics of Phillips have tried to meet him on his own ground. Where he compiled lists of indul

Negro Slave Control and Resistance in Colonial Mexico, 1519-1650

Negro Slave Control and Resistance in Colonial Mexico, 1519-1650

Negro Slave Control and Resistance in Colonial Mexico, 1519-1650

NzEGRO resistance to enslavement was an integral feature of the history of African slavery in the Americas. Studies in the past few decades in the United States and Latin America have successfully refuted if not entirely erased the once accepted notions of Negro docility and acquieseence in slavery.' These works have provided a most convincing panorama of slave mutinies,insurrections, clandestine conspiracies, and individual escapes. Repeated evidence of more subtle forms of resistance-for example, suicide and voluntary abortion and infanticide-reveals further the determined refusal of many slaves to accept their position, and their reluctance to bear children in slavery.2 Such resistance occurred in varying degrees wherever Europeans established Negro slavery in the New World, primarily in the southern United States, the Antilles, the Pacific and Caribbean coasts of Central and South America, and northeastern Brazil. Although most studies have been restricted to these regions, there is a considerable body of evidence to indicate that Negro slave resistance was also present in colonial Mexico. Recently, and primarily through the efforts of Gonzalo Aguirre Beltran, we have gained substantial information concerning the number and role of Africans in Mexico.3 It is now fairly certain that in