American Negro Slavery Part 39

Some of the whites were descendants of the original freebooters, and retained the temperament of their forbears; others were immigrant fortune seekers. The white women were less than half as numerous as the men, and black or yellow concubines were common subst.i.tutes for wives. The colony was the French equivalent of Jamaica, but more prosperous and more self-willed and self-indulgent. Its whites were impatient of outside control, and resolute that the slaves be ruled with iron hand and that the colored freemen be kept pa.s.sive.

A plentiful discontent with bureaucracy and commercial restraint under the old regime caused the planters to welcome the early news of reform projects in France and to demand representation in the coming States General. But the rapid progress of radical republicanism in that a.s.sembly threw most of these into a royalist reaction, though the poorer whites tended still to endorse the Revolution. But now the agitations of the _Amis des Noirs_ at Paris dismayed all the white islanders, while on the other hand the National a.s.sembly's "Declaration of the Rights of Man," together with its decrees granting political equality in somewhat ambiguous form to free persons of color, prompted risings in 1791 among the colored freemen in the northern part of the colony and among the slaves in the center and south.

When reports of these reached Paris, the new Legislative a.s.sembly revoked the former measures by a decree of September 24, 1791, transferring all control over negro status to the colonial a.s.semblies. Upon receiving news of this the mulattoes and blacks, with the courage of despair, spread ruin in every district. The whites, driven into the few fortified places, begged succor from France; but the Jacobins, who were now in control at Paris, had a programme of their own. By a decree of April 4, 1792, the Legislative a.s.sembly granted full political equality to colored freemen and provided for the dispatch of Republican commissioners to establish the new regime.

The administration of the colony by these functionaries was a travesty.

Most of the surviving whites emigrated to Cuba and the American continent, carrying such of their slaves as they could command. The free colored people, who at first welcomed the commissioners, unexpectedly turned against them because of a decree of August 29, 1793, abolishing slavery.

At this juncture Great Britain, then at war with the French Republic, intervened by sending an army to capture the colony. Most of the colored freemen and the remaining whites rallied to the flag of these invaders; but the slaves, now commanded by the famous Toussaint L'Ouverture, resisted them effectually, while yellow fever decimated their ranks and paralyzed their energies. By 1795 the two colored elements, the mulattoes who had improvised a government on a slaveholding basis in the south, and the negroes who dominated the north, each had the other alone as an active enemy; and by the close of the century the mulattoes were either destroyed or driven into exile; and Toussaint, while still acknowledging a nominal allegiance to France, was virtual monarch of San Domingo. The peace of Amiens at length permitted Bonaparte to send an army against the "Black Napoleon." Toussaint soon capitulated, and in violation of the amnesty granted him was sent to his death in a French dungeon. But pestilence again aided the blacks, and the war was still raging when the breach of the peace in Europe brought a British squadron to blockade and capture the remnant of the French army. The new black leader, Dessalines, now proclaimed the colony's independence, renaming it Hayti, and in 1804 he crowned himself emperor. In the following year any further conflict with the local whites was obviated by the systematic ma.s.sacre of their small residue. In the other French islands the developments, while on a much smaller scale, were a.n.a.logous.[46]

[Footnote 46: T. Lothrop Stoddard, _The French Revolution in San Domingo_ (Boston, 1914).]

In the Northern colonies the only signal disturbances were those of 1712 and 1741 at New York, both of which were more notable for the frenzy of the public than for the formidableness of the menace. Anxiety had been recurrent among the whites, particularly since the founding of a mission school by Elias Neau in 1704 as an agent of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. The plot was brewed by some Coromantee and Paw Paw negroes who had procured the services of a conjuror to make them invulnerable; and it may have been joined by several Spanish or Portuguese Indians or mestizoes who had been captured at sea and unwarrantably, as they contended, reduced to slavery. The rebels to the number of twenty-three provided themselves with guns, hatchets, knives and swords, and chose the dark of the moon in the small hours of an April night to set a house afire and slaughter the citizens as they flocked thither. But their gunfire caused the governor to send soldiers from the Battery with such speed that only nine whites had been killed and several others wounded when the plotters were routed. Six of these killed themselves to escape capture; but when the woods were beaten and the town searched next day and an emergency court sat upon the cases, more captives were capitally sentenced than the whole conspiracy had comprised. The prosecuting officer, indeed, hounded one of the prisoners through three trials, to win a final conviction after two acquittals. The maxim that no one may twice be put in jeopardy for the same offense evidently did not apply to slaves in that colony. Of those convicted one was broken on the wheel, another hanged alive in chains; nineteen more were executed on the gallows or at the stake, one of these being sentenced "to be burned with a slow fire, that he may continue in torment for eight or ten hours and continue burning in said fire until he be dead and consumed to ashes"; and several others were saved only by the royal governor's reprieve and the queen's eventual pardon. Such animosity was exhibited by the citizens toward the "catechetical school" that for some time its teacher hardly dared show himself on the streets. The furor gradually subsided, however, and Mr. Neau continued his work for a dozen years longer, and others carried it on after his death.[47]

[Footnote 47: E.B. O'Callaghan ed., _Doc.u.ments Relative to the Colonial History of New York_, V, 341, 342, 346, 356, 357, 371; _New York Genealogical and Biographical Record_, XXI, 162, 163; New Orleans _Daily Delta_, April 1, 1849; J.A. Doyle, _English Colonies in America_ (New York, 1907), V, pp. 258, 259.]

The commotion of 1741 was a panic among the whites of high and low degree, prompted in sequel to a robbery and a series of fires by the disclosures of Mary Burton, a young white servant concerning her master John Hughson, and the confessions of Margaret Kerry, a young white woman of many aliases but most commonly called Peggy, who was an inmate of Hughson's disreputable house and a prost.i.tute to negro slaves. When Mary testified under duress that Hughson was not only a habitual recipient of stolen goods from the negroes but was the head of a conspiracy among them which had already effected the burning of many houses and was planning a general revolt, the supreme court of the colony began a labor of some six months' duration in bringing the alleged plot to light and punishing the alleged plotters.[48]

Hughson and his wife and the infamous Peggy were promptly hanged, and likewise John Ury who was convicted of being a Catholic priest as well as a conspirator; and twenty-nine negroes were sent with similar speed either to the gallows or the stake, while eighty others were deported. Some of the slaves made confessions after conviction in the hope of saving their lives; and these, dubious as they were, furnished the chief corroborations of detail which the increasingly fluent testimony of Mary Burton received.

Some of the confessions, however, were of no avail to those who made them.

Quack and Cuffee, for example, terror-stricken at the stake, made somewhat stereotyped revelations; but the desire of the officials to stay the execution with a view to definite reprieve was thwarted by their fear of tumult by the throng of resentful spectators. After a staggering number of sentences had been executed the star witness raised doubts against herself by her endless implications, "for as matters were then likely to turn out there was no guessing where or when there would be an end of impeachments."[49] At length she named as cognizant of the plot several persons "of known credit, fortune and reputations, and of religious principles superior to a suspicion of being concerned in such detestable practices; at which the judges were very much astonished."[50] This farcical extreme at length persuaded even the obsessed magistrates to stop the tragic proceedings.

[Footnote 48: Daniel Horsmanden, one of the magistrates who sat in these trials, published in 1744 the _Journal of the Proceedings in the Detection of the Conspiracy formed by some white people in conjunction with negro and other slaves for burning the city of New York in America, and murdering the Inhabitants_; and this, reprinted under the t.i.tle, _The New York Conspiracy, or a History of the Negro Plot_ (New York, 1810), is the chief source of knowledge in the premises. See also the contemporary letters of Lieutenant-Governor Clarke in E.B. O'Callaghan, ed., _Doc.u.ments Relative to the Colonial History of New York_, VI, 186, 197, 198, 201-203.]

[Footnote 49: _Ibid_., pp. 96-100.]

[Footnote 50: _Ibid_., pp. 370-372.]

In New Jersey in 1734 a slave at Raritan when jailed for drunkenness and insolence professed to reveal a plot for insurrection, whereupon he and a fellow slave were capitally convicted. One of them escaped before execution, but the other was hanged.[51] In Pennsylvania as late as 1803 a negro plot at York was detected after nearly a dozen houses had been burnt and half as many attempts had been made to cause a general conflagration.

Many negroes were arrested; others outside made preparations to release them by force; and for several days a reign of terror prevailed. Upon the restoration of quiet, twenty of the prisoners were punished for arson.[52]

[Footnote 51: MS. transcript in the New York Public Library from the New York _Gazette_, Mch. 18, 1734.]

[Footnote 52: E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, pp. 152, 153.]

In the Southern colonies there were no outbreaks in the seventeenth century and but two discoveries of plots, it seems, both in Virginia. The first of these, 1663, in which indented white servants and negro slaves in Gloucester County were said to be jointly involved, was betrayed by one of the servants. The colonial a.s.sembly showed its gratification not only by freeing the informer and giving him five thousand pounds of tobacco but by resolving in commemoration of "so transcendant a favour as the preserving all we have from so utter ruin," "that the 13th. of September be annually kept holy, being the day those villains intended to put the plot in execution."[53] The other plot, of slaves alone, in the "Northern Neck" of the colony in 1687, appears to have been of no more than local concern.[54]

The punishments meted out on either occasion are unknown.

[Footnote 53: Hening, _Virginia Statutes at Large_, II, 204.]

[Footnote 54: J.C. Ballagh, _History of Slavery in Virginia_ (Baltimore, 1902), p. 79.]

The eighteenth century, with its multiplication of slaves, saw somewhat more frequent plots in its early decades. The discovery of one in Isle of Wight County, Virginia, in 1709 brought thirty-nine lashes to each of three slaves and fifty lashes to a free negro found to be cognizant, and presumably more drastic punishments to two other slaves who were held as ringleaders to await the governor's order. Still another slave who at least for the time being escaped the clutches of the law was proclaimed an outlaw.[55] The discovery of another plot in Gloucester and Middles.e.x Counties of the same colony in 1723 prompted the a.s.sembly to provide for the deportation to the West Indies of seven slave partic.i.p.ants.[56]

[Footnote 55: _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, I, 129, 130.]

[Footnote 56: _Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, 1712-1726_, p. 36.]

In South Carolina, although depredations by runaways gave acute uneasiness in 1711 and thereabouts, no conspiracy was discovered until 1720 when some of the partic.i.p.ants were burnt, some hanged and some banished.[57] Matters were then quiet again until 1739 when on a September Sunday a score of Angola blacks with one Jonny as their leader broke open a store, supplied themselves with arms, and laid their course at once for Florida where they had been told by Spanish emissaries welcome and liberty awaited them.

Marching to the beat of drums, slaughtering with ease the whites they came upon, and drawing black recruits to several times their initial number, on the Pon Pon road that day the rebels covered ten prosperous miles. But when at evening they halted to celebrate their exploits with dancing and plundered rum they were set upon by the whites whom couriers had collected.

Several were killed in the onslaught, and a few more were captured on the spot. Most of the rest fled back to their cabins, but a squad of ten made their way thirty miles farther on the route to Florida and sold their lives in battle when overtaken. Of those captured on the field or in their quarters some were shot but none were tortured. The toll of lives lost numbered twenty-one whites and forty-four[58] blacks.

[Footnote 57: Letter of June 24, 1720, among the MS. transcripts in the state capitol at Columbia of doc.u.ments in the British Public Record Office.]

[Footnote 58: _Gentleman's Magazine_, X, 127; South Carolina Historical Society _Collections_, II, 270; Alexander Hewatt, _Historical Account of South Carolina and Georgia_ (London, 1779), II, 72, 73. Joshua Coffin in his _Account of Some of the Princ.i.p.al Slave Insurrections_ (New York, 1860) listed a revolt at Savannah, Ga., in 1728. But Savannah was not founded until 1733, and it contained virtually no negroes prior to 1750.]

Following this and the New York panic of two years later, there was remarkable quiet in race relations in general for a full half century. It was not indeed until the spread of the amazing news from San Domingo and the influx thence of white refugees and their slaves that a new series of disturbances began on the continent. At Norfolk in 1792 some negroes were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy but were promptly discharged for lack of evidence;[59] and close by at Portsmouth in the next year there were such savage clashes between the newly come French blacks and those of the Virginia stock that citizens were alarmed for their own safety.[60] In Louisiana an uprising on the plantation of Julien Poydras in Pointe Coupee Parish in 1796 brought the execution of a dozen or two negroes and sentences to prison of several whites convicted as their accomplices;[61]

and as late as 1811 an outbreak in St. Charles and St. James Parishes was traced in part to San Domingo slaves.[62]

[Footnote 59: _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, V, 540, 541, 546.]

[Footnote 60: _Ibid_., VI, 490, letter of a citizen who had just found four strange negroes hanging from the branches of a tree near his door.]

[Footnote 61: C.C. Robin, _Voyages_ (Paris, 1806), II, 244 ff.; E.P.

Puckett, "Free Negroes in Louisiana" (MS.).]

[Footnote 62: M Puckett, _op. cit. Le Moniteur de la Louisiane_ (New Orleans), Feb. 11, 1811, has mention of the manumission of a mulatto slave at this time on the ground of his recent valiant defence of his master's house against attacking insurgents.]

Gabriel's rising in the vicinity of Richmond, however, eclipsed all other such events on the continent in this period. Although this affair was of prodigious current interest its details were largely obscured by the secrecy maintained by the court and the legislature in their dealings with it. Reports in the newspapers of the time were copious enough but were vague except as to the capture of the leading partic.i.p.ants; and the reminiscent journalism of after years was romantic to the point of absurdity. It is fairly clear, however, that Gabriel and other slaves on Thomas H. Prosser's plantation, which lay several miles distant from Richmond, began to brew the conspiracy as early as June, 1800, and enlisted some hundreds of confederates, perhaps more than a thousand, before September 1, the date fixed for its maturity. Many of these were doubtless residents of Richmond, and some it was said lived as far away as Norfolk.

The few muskets procured were supplemented by cutla.s.ses made from scythe blades and by plantation implements of other sorts; but the plan of onslaught contemplated a speedy increase of this armament. From a rendezvous six miles from Richmond eleven hundred men in three columns under designated officers were to march upon the city simultaneously, one to seize the penitentiary which then served also as the state a.r.s.enal, another to take the powder magazine in another quarter of the town, and the third to begin a general slaughter with such weapons as were already at hand.

Things progressed with very little hitch until the very eve of the day set. But then two things occurred, either of which happening alone would probably have foiled the project. On the one hand a slave on Moseley Sheppard's plantation informed his master of the plot; on the other hand there fell such a deluge of rain that the swelling of the streams kept most of the conspirators from reaching the rendezvous. Meanwhile couriers had roused the city, and the rebels a.s.sembled could only disperse. Scores of them were taken, including eventually Gabriel himself who eluded pursuit for several weeks and sailed to Norfolk as a stowaway. The magistrates, of course, had busy sessions, but the number of death sentences was less than might have been expected. Those executed comprised Gabriel and five other Prosser slaves along with nineteen more belonging to other masters; and ten others, in scattered ownership, were deported. To provide for a more general riddance of suspected negroes the legislature made secret overtures to the federal government looking to the creation of a territorial reservation to receive such colonists; but for the time being this came to naught. The legislature furthermore created a permanent guard for the capitol, and it liberated at the state's expense Tom and Pharaoh, slaves of the Sheppard family, as reward for their services in helping to foil the plot.[63]

[Footnote 63: T.W. Higginson, "Gabriel's Defeat," in the _Atlantic Monthly_, X, 337-345, reprinted in the same author's _Travellers and Outlaws_ (Boston, 1889), pp. 185-214; J.C. Ballagh, _History of Slavery in Virginia_, p. 92; J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_, p. 65; MS.

vouchers in the Virginia State Library recording public payments for convicted slaves.]

Set on edge by Gabriel's exploit, citizens far and wide were abnormally alert for some time thereafter; and perhaps the slaves here and there were unusually restive. Whether the one or the other of these conditions was most responsible, revelations and rumors were for several years conspicuously numerous. In 1802 there were capital convictions of fourteen insurgent or conspiring slaves in six scattered counties of Virginia;[64]

and panicky reports of uprisings were sent out from Hartford and Bertie Counties, North Carolina.[65] In July, 1804, the mayor of Savannah received from Augusta "information highly important to the safety, peace and security" of his town, and issued appropriate orders to the local militia.[66] Among rumors flying about South Carolina in this period, one on a December day in 1805 telling of risings above and below Columbia led to the planting of cannon before the state house there and to the instruction of the night patrols to seize every negro found at large. An over-zealous patrolman thereupon shot a slave who was peacefully following his own master, and was indicted next day for murder. The peaceful pa.s.sing of the night brought a subsidence of the panic with the coming of day.[67]

[Footnote 64: Vouchers as above.]

[Footnote 65: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, June 26, 1802.]

[Footnote 66: Thomas Gamble, Jr., _History of the City Government of Savannah_ [Savannah, 1900], p. 68.]

[Footnote 67: "Diary of Edward Hooker," in the American Historical a.s.sociation _Report_ for 1896, pp. 881, 882.]

In Virginia, again, there were disturbing rumors at one place or another every year or two from 1809 to 1814,[68] but no occurrence of tangible character until the Boxley plot of 1816 in Spottsylvania and Louisa Counties. George Boxley, the white proprietor of a country store, was a visionary somewhat of John Brown's type. Partic.i.p.ating in the religious gatherings of the negroes and telling them that a little white bird had brought him a holy message to deliver his fellowmen from bondage, he enlisted many blacks in his project for insurrection. But before the plot was ripe it was betrayed by a slave woman, and several negroes were arrested. Boxley thereupon marched with a dozen followers on a Quixotic errand of release, but on the road the blacks fell away, and he, after some time in hiding, surrendered himself. Six of the negroes after conviction were hanged and a like number transported; but Boxley himself broke jail and escaped.[69]

[Footnote 68: _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, X, 62, 63, 97, 368.]

[Footnote 69: _Ibid_., X, 433-436; _Louisiana Gazette_ (New Orleans), Apr.

18 and 24 (Reprinting a report from the _Virginia Herald_ of Mch. 9), and July 12, 1816; MS. Vouchers in the Virginia State Library recording public payments for convicted slaves.]

In the lower South a plot at Camden, South Carolina, in 1816[70] and another at Augusta, Georgia,[71] three years afterward had like plans of setting houses afire at night and then attacking other quarters of the respective towns when the white men had left their homes defenceless. Both plots were betrayed, and several partic.i.p.ants in each were executed.

These conspiracies were eclipsed in turn by the elaborate Vesey plot at Charleston in 1822, which, for the variety of the negro types involved, the methods of persuasion used by the leading spirits and the sobriety of the whites on the occasion is one of the most notable of such episodes on record.

[Footnote 70: [Edwin C. Holland], _A Refutation of the Calumnies circulated against the Southern and Western States, with historical notes of insurrections_ (Charleston, 1822), pp. 75-77; H.T. Cook, _Life and Legacy of David R. Williams_, p. 131; H.M. Henry, _Police Control of the Slave in South Carolina_, pp. 151, 152.]

[Footnote 71: News item from Augusta in the _Louisiana Courier_ (New Orleans), June 15, 1819.]