Stono Rebellion
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1739 Stono Rebellion |
The Stono Rebellion (sometimes called Cato's Conspiracy or Cato's Rebellion) is one of the earliest known organized acts of rebellion against slavery in the Americas. On September 9, 1739 South Carolina slaves gathered at the Stono River (for which the rebellion is named) to plan an armed march for freedom.
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[edit] Causes
Several factors may have convinced the slaves that a rebellion might successfully lead to freedom. A yellow fever epidemic had weakened the power of slaveholders, there was talk of a war between Britain and Spain, and accounts of slaves who had obtained their freedom by escaping to Spanish-controlled Florida gave the Carolinian slaves hope. Lastly, it has been suggested that the slaves organized their revolt to take place before September 29, when the Security Act of 1739 (which required all white males to carry arms on Sundays) would take effect. Jemmy, the leader of the revolt, was a literate slave described as Angolan, which likely meant he was from the Kongo Empire in Central Africa. He and the other slaves who led the rebellion may have realized that if they did not act to seek their freedom before September 29, they might not get another chance.
[edit] The events of the revolt
On September 9, 1739, twenty African American Carolinians led by Jemmy, an Angolan slave, met near the Stono River, twenty miles southwest of Charleston. They marched down the roadway with a banner that read "Liberty!"--they chanted the same word in unison. At the Stono Bridge they seized weapons from a store and killed the two storekeepers. They raised a flag and proceeded towards St. Augustine. On the way, they gathered more recruits, their number now close to 100. They burned the houses of slave owners. South Carolina's Lieutenant Governor, William Bull, and four of his friends ran in to the group on horseback. The Lieutenant Governor fled and warned other slave-holders. They rallied a mob of plantation owners and slave-holders to seek out Jemmy and his freedom-seeking followers.
Late that afternoon, planters on horseback caught up with the group now numbering sixty to one hundred slaves. Twenty white Carolinians and forty of the slaves were killed before the rebellion was suppressed. The captured slaves were then decapitated though some also managed to escape.
[edit] Aftermath
That same year there was another uprising in Georgia, and the next year another took place in South Carolina, probably inspired by the Stono Rebellion - at the time, colonial officials believed as much. The Stono Rebellion resulted in a 10 year moratorium on slave imports through Charleston and enacted a harsher slave code, which banned earning money and education for slaves.
[edit] Further reading
- Wood, Peter. Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion. New York: Norton, 1974.
- Rodriguez, Junius P., ed. Encyclopedia of Slave Resistance and Rebellion. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2006.
