Harvery Wish uses a quote from a "Lady of Charleston" circa 1822 to assist with his opening paragraph. The woman is speaking to an associate about the Denmark Vesey attempted slave revolt. The lady of Charleston writes "Last evening, twenty-five hundred of our citizens were under arms to guard our property and our lives. But it is a subject not to be mentioned; and unless you hear of it, elsewhere, say nothing about it." Mr. Wish acknowledges that the fear and trepidation that held most slave owners in perpetual fear, now have become an obstacle in the proper documentation of the historical slave insurrections. Mr. Vesey was a slave brought from the Caribbean to the United States, he was able to purchase his freedom. Knowing that no man was truly free as long as slavery existed, he began to form a plot for a slave insurrection that preceded Nat Turners ambitious rebellion by nine years.

The American Slave industry was no stranger to the horrors of the slave acting on his natural desire for freedom. The entire island of Haiti became the first slave free state in the Caribbean when Toussaint L'ouverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines successfully lead their fellow enslaved men and women in the Haitian Revolution. The Hatian Revolution would be the tip of the iceberg for most slave run plantations. Virginia being one of the primary states for the slave trade industry saw more than any other state before the 1800's. By the time the United States outlawed the importation of news slaves in 1808, the South was in the full grips of slave rebellion paranoia.

Most plots and insurrections ended violently for the participants: poor whites, clergy, abolitionist and most unfortunate, the slaves themselves. By 1859, the United States was at the brink of Civil War and Slavery was a primary issue. John Browns raid on Harpers Ferry was the final straw. The relations between Northerners and Southerners on the issue of slavery was an all out war even prior to the Civil War itself.

It is interesting to note the irony of the situation that the white slave owners subjected themselves to. To say that the average slave owner became one hundred percent reliant on the slaves themselves is an understatement. Unfortunately the image that many southerners attempted to paint in regards to the character of the black man and woman are based on the same sociopath based fear that engulfed half of the United States land mass. We now know that African slaves and their offspring new freedom and justice from the very beginning. "No doubt many blacks made the adjustments to slavery but the romantic picture of careless abandon and contentment fails to be convincing". Mr Wish would add "The struggle of the black man and woman for liberty, beginning in those dark days on the slave ship, was far from sporadic in nature, but an ever-recurrent battle waged everywhere with desperate courage against the bonds of his and her master"

An interesting book to read on the idea of the slave rebellions is titled "The Confessions of Nat Turner" by William Syron.


American Slave Insurrections Before 1861 an essay by Harvey Wish. published in The Journal of Negro History (July 1937).