February 23, 2011 • 25 mins
In September of 1739, a slave rebellion shook the foundations of the colony in South Carolina. But how did it happen? Tune in to learn more about the factors leading to the Stono rebellion, as well as its long-term effects.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm de bling a chalk reboarding.
And not too long ago we talked about this really
amazing one thousand mile Escaped to Freedom by Ellen and
(00:22):
William Kraft, and it took place in it was It
involved cool disguises and really close calls and um, surprisingly
luxurious accommodations. Um. But one important thing to note about
it is that it took place at the tail end
of slavery in North America. And this time for this episode,
(00:43):
we're gonna go way way back to a time when
slavery was really changing and kind of, in my opinion
at least, kind of becoming more of what we think
of when we think of slavery, what we might have
learned in elementary school or high school. That period of
slavery between the American Revolution and the Civil War. Yeah,
(01:05):
it was really evolving in this particular time period that
we're going to talk about, and it was when whites
were becoming very uneasy about their growing minority status, especially
as slave uprisings were becoming more common, and the particular
instance that we're gonna talk about today, the Stoner Rebellion.
It was likely the most important of these pre American
(01:25):
Revolution uprisings. It was unsuccessful, but it was really bloody expensive,
and it really directly affected a lot of laws regarding
slavery in South Carolina at that time. Yeah, yet it's
scared people. It's scared the white people in South Carolina
a lot, and it made them enact legislation like you mentioned.
But um also just sort of changed their outlook on
(01:48):
slavery and how they thought about it. Um. And according
to unsp Rodriguez, who compiled the Encyclopedia Slave Resistance and Rebellion,
this two of all lume set of like every slave
rebellion and instance of resistance you can think of. He wrote, quote,
the stone O Rebellion had important consequences on the development
(02:10):
of slavery and what would become the United States, and briefly,
in September seventeen thirty nine, the future of slavery hung
in the balance. So I think that gives you a
pretty good sense of how significant this event, this rebellion was,
And um, yeah, it took place in seventeen thirty nine,
the morning of September nine, which was a Sunday. Yeah,
(02:32):
So just to set it up a little bit for
you here, the initial rebellion, it involved twenty African slaves
and they were led by a fairly recent arrival to
the colonies named Jemmy, who started the whole thing off
by breaking into a store on stone Oh River Bridge,
which was about twenty miles southwest of Charleston. And during
this break in, he killed the owner of the store,
(02:55):
Robert Bathurst, and his associate Mr Gibbs, or some of
the rebels did. Some of the rebels did correct, and
he placed their decapitated heads on the stores front porch. So, yeah,
pretty serious message they're sending there. Wasn't just kind of
a random act or theft. They did steal some guns
at the time, but I think that the heads on
(03:16):
the poles really sent the message. Definitely sends a strong message.
And and from there they started marching down the main
Southern road. And Okay, this is probably the first part
that's really caught you off guard. Maybe the decapitated heads
did it, but the Southern road that doesn't seem to
add up to how we normally think about slaves trying
to escape to freedom, but they were in fact bound
(03:38):
towards Georgia, which is exactly ironically exactly where the crafts
were fleeing from. So it seems the rebels plan was
to get to this growing maroon establishment that was in St. Augustine, Florida,
which of course at the time was in Spanish control,
and they were going to get there by way of
the Georgia coastline. But once they got the guns, they
(04:00):
didn't exactly hurry on their way down the coast. Quite
the contrary, they stopped and attacked stores and homes and
plantations and sort of raised their numbers too. More and
more slaves rebels are just people thinking they might be successful,
and they'd try to get out of town with them.
(04:21):
Joined up with the band. Yeah, they pretty much wreaked
havoc on along this journey of theirs. They spared a
few white people that they encountered, but a lot of
times when they met someone on the road, they would
just kind of take them out. So a lot of
the people who were spared were people who are kind
to slaves. So for example, an owner of the inn
who had known to be so was spared along the way.
(04:44):
Others were not though others were not a Mr. Godfrey
and his son and daughter, they were killed I think
in their homes, right, Yeah, And um, a lot of
slaves were joining up too. So um, it's not just
that they're coming into houses and and killing people, but
the slaves are are fleeing their plantations and homes and
joining this van. Um. But the occasionals they've did stop
(05:08):
and fight the band or try to protect his or
her own master. There are a few instances of that
we're going to talk about later, um, but one really
close running and I think one that really shook up
the South Carolinians later was that the Lieutenant Governor himself,
Lawrence Bull, had a very close call with the band
of rebels. He was nearly killed. Fortunately for him, I
(05:32):
guess he was on horseback and so he managed to escape.
But at that point he went on to seund the
alarm in nearby Grandville County. But meanwhile the group was
moving south. They were slowly progressing on towards their goal. Right,
so by the time they were at Jacksonburg Ferry on
Edisto River, there were about sixty two hundred of them,
(05:53):
but they didn't cross the river and just continue on
they stopped to dance and sing. That's probably the second
part that's really he made you take pause. And historians
have wondered why they did this, where they just too
tired to continue or something. Yeah, and it's been suggested
maybe they had um imbibed quite a bit by this
point and just wanted to stop in party, or maybe
(06:17):
there was another suggestion by the historian William Thornton that
dancing was a crucial wartime exercise, and we're going to
talk about that a little more later too, But it
was it was just something you would do. It was,
it was non negotiable. But stopping by the river to
dance and sing ended up being the band of slaves
undoing because the militia caught up with them during the
(06:39):
delay and attacked them in the open field. The rebels
were able to get off two volleys, but finally the
militia returned fire killed fourteen of them, and after that
the main rebel group that was left just scattered, and
probably about forty of them. It's it's hard to say,
just because things were dealt with so haphazardly on the field,
(07:01):
but probably about forty were captured, questioned and then immediately
killed and their decapitated heads were put on the mile
posts going towards Charleston to to send a message to
other would be rebels. So contemporary accounts of this event
say that this was sort of the end of it,
but that's not really the case. Some of the rebels
(07:23):
did reform and they continued traveling south, but they were
intercepted on the tenth, which was the next day, by
mounted troops. Others of them kept on going and a
second skirmish took place about a week later, and that
was thirty miles from the first battle at Jackson Urra Ferry.
After that a bunch of rebels dispersed again and they
were pretty much tracked down one by one. Yeah, but
(07:44):
some managed to stay in the field for a really
long time. I mean as late as December. That's when
one of the rebel leaders was apparently caught, uh not Jimmy.
People to don't know what happened to him, interestingly enough,
But all in all, if you get all the way
to December, about twenty whites were killed, probably about sixty
(08:05):
five Africans and African Americans. As we mentioned, because things
were so haphazard and the executions just sort of happened
on the field, there aren't really good records about it.
Plus we should note that there's only one primary source
for this story and then a few secondary accounts that
are contemporary to the story. So, uh, the information is
(08:27):
pretty patchy on something on an event that is so important.
So the question that we really have to ask ourselves though,
is why did the slaves revolt? And some of those
reasons are going to be pretty obvious here, as we
will find out in a minute. But it was a
question that was asked immediately after the revolt by the
white people involved to the white people in South Carolina,
(08:48):
and interestingly, they were not inclined to blame their own
cruelties so much as they were inclined to blame Spanish propaganda.
There was a great fear at this time because of
Spanish British tensions, that Spanish agents were lurking around and
um convincing slaves that they could flee to Florida and
(09:11):
and be free in these maroon colonies. So this was
a legitimate fear of plantation owners and slave owners at
the time. Yeah, and historians still debate about this a
lot too, about the kind of the reasons behind this
revolt and a couple of things they debate about our
whether the Stone oh rebels were actually more influenced by
the terrible conditions they faced in South Carolina, or whether
(09:33):
it had a lot more to do with the skills
and the experiences that they had pre enslavement when they
were living in Africa. And we're going to talk about
both because I think we both kind of agree that
there's really no reason why the tour can be have
to be mutually exclusive. I guess I should say, yeah,
I think so. I mean, I see no reason why
somebody wouldn't be influenced by his current conditions as well
(09:54):
as what he had known before he became a slave.
Um or you can have some mix. It's a rebellion
and there are lots of different people involved. But before
we get into all of that, and I guess to
sort of help explain some of the reasons why you
might be inclined to rebel being a South Carolinian slave,
I'm going to give you a little history of slavery
in South Carolina and the early To understand it, you
(10:18):
have to understand that the early settlers in the Carolina
Colony were bent on making money, they wanted to make
lots and lots of money in a really good way
to do that to set up a plantation system, in
this case, a plantation system based on rice cultivation. And
because a lot of the colonies earliest settlers came by
(10:40):
way of the West Indies, they had already seen what
a slave run plantation system looked like, which looked very
different from from some of the earlier American colonies right.
And their first slaves were actually Native Americans who are
purchased by Indian traders who would sell the losers of
intertribal wars that were going on. But after the Yamasi
(11:00):
War of seventeen fifteen, many of these tribes left the
Low country and that created a labor vacuum from the
plantation owners. So there was a marked increase in an
importation of slaves from Africa, specifically a lot of slaves
from the West region of Africa, where rice cultivation already thrived,
so they were familiar with that. They figured they had
(11:21):
an existing specialty already. So it doesn't take long, just
a few decades and South Carolina becomes one of the
wealthiest North American colonies. But there's a little issue here,
and that's the rice cultivation requires a lot of workers.
That's why they wanted to import slaves in the first
place for cheap labor. But it didn't take that long
(11:43):
for blacks to outnumber whites or to to get pretty
close to it. One example, here, in seventeen forty there
were thirty nine thousand blacks in South Carolina, probably fifty
percent of which had arrived from Africa in the past decade.
So it's not just um a racial imbalance at this
(12:04):
point that the white South Carolinians are fearing. It's that
it's a racial imbalance not with African Americans and whites,
but with Africans and whites, right, And this set up
sort of an interesting dichotomy, I guess, in their relationship.
According to Perry L. Kyles, who wrote an article for
the Journal of African American History about the issue, all
(12:26):
white people had to kind of buy into this collective identity,
so to speak, which subjugated slaves, and it created a
particularly harsh slave system which had already been made worse
by climate and disease in the area ice cultivation and
any terrible thing to be doing so you weren't English
or Scotch. At this point, you were just white, yeah,
which is something that stands out, I'd say, in in
(12:49):
this time, certainly well before the American Revolution, and this distinction,
this you you aren't from wherever your European ancestry is them,
You're just white, was kind of illustrated in legislation of
the time too. In seventeen thirty seven, South Carolina's Assembly
passed the Patrol Act, which required all white males to
(13:12):
police slaves, and then in January sev thirty nine they
passed the Security Act, which went a step further and
required that all white males armed themselves on Sunday, which
we should not. Sunday was a day when slaves were
granted a little more freedom to do work for themselves,
you know, do their own farming, try to save up
some money or something, and could move around a bit more.
(13:35):
So it's thought necessary, I gotta keep your guns on
you in church on Sunday. Uh. The big fear, though,
was not just the slaves and not just this racial imbalance,
but that the Spanish were lurking around and might lure
slaves the way and promised them freedom. And it was
potentially a legitimate concern because in seventeen twenty three slaves
(13:58):
had escaped and made it all the way to St. Augustine.
But the fears of Spanish influence were only part of it.
There's also the customs and experiences that some of the
Stono rebels brought from Africa, which would have allowed the
Spanish to be so influential in the first place, and
there are some reasons for that. So I don't know, Sarah,
I think maybe can you set this part up a
little bit. Yeah. I read an article by John kay
(14:21):
Thornton in American Historical Review, and it's interesting because it's
actually referenced in a lot of other places. But he
has an argument that the Stono Rebels, at least some
of them, maybe some of the leaders especially, were definitely
influenced by experiences in customs from Africa. And one of
his points is that many of the rebels were probably
(14:43):
recent arrivals, and they weren't recent rivals from Angola, which
is what the surviving primary source tells us, but instead
from Congo. It gets a little confusing because I think
the area where they're from is Angola today. But that's
beside the point. Another issue that he mentions is because
(15:03):
the former Kingdom of Congo had voluntarily converted to Christianity
back in four so a really long time before this,
most of its people were Roman Catholic, so there might
have been some issues there Christians sort of resenting the
fact that they're enslaved by other Christians, and um, maybe
a little affinity with the Roman Catholic Spanish too. And
(15:25):
a third point is that there was potentially some language
in common because a lot of people from Congo, or
at least some people from Congo, would have understood Portuguese
because Portuguese was in fact the language that dominated trade
there and was taught in schools for the upper classes. Um,
if some of these slaves did have familiarity with Portuguese,
(15:49):
they might have been able to understand some of the
Spanish they heard and some of the stories they heard
about freedom in Florida. And then finally, this wasn't a
potential motivator, but more are like a possible explanation for things. Wait,
the way things went down was a small band of
rebels supposedly handled firearms very well. What this meant was
(16:09):
that while the expertise could have been picked up in
the colonies, it's very likely that it could have come
from experience and fighting in Congolese militia. Yeah, there were
quite a lot of civil wars in Congo in the
decades before this, and it's possible that some of the
slaves who participated in this rebellion were at one point
(16:30):
the on the losing side of of battles back in Congo.
But they had some militia experience. They knew how to
carry a gun. They used flags and drums, and this
also helps explain the rebels using banners and drums and
and dancing and dancing these You know, it's it's circumstantial,
(16:50):
but I think it's an interesting thing to look at,
especially when there is so little written written record here
to to consider these things. But whatever the reasons for rebelling,
once the slaves did rebel, they were they were marked.
I mean, they were done for because to the white
South Carolinians success, the success of the slaves could have
(17:13):
meant like further revolts. It could have meant this spreading
throughout the colonies and up ending the entire slave system.
I mean that might be going a little far. But
they had to shut this down. They knew it was
a huge, huge threat to the way of life that
was making them so wealthy. So they didn't just hunt
the rebels down all the way through the month of December,
(17:35):
but they passed laws that further subjugated blacks in South Carolina.
So even though they didn't have a lot of rights
to start out with, and you would think it would
be impossible to kind of further reduce those, they they
did just that. And it was partly the aftermath that
made Rodriguez call the Stonor Rebellion the single most important
African slave revolt in the history of what would become
(17:57):
the United States. And I should just know this guy
has written or edited a lot of books on slavery,
including this whole encyclopedia, So I feel like that's a
pretty strong statement. Yeah, it's saying something if he says
that it was a major revolt. Um a few examples
of things that they did. In November seventeen thirty nine,
the General Assembly decided to strengthen the Patrol Act of
(18:18):
seventeen thirty seven, which meant that militia would now be
in charge of the patrols instead of just the slave
owners every white man. And then in May of seventeen forty,
the Assembly passed the Negro Act, and it wasn't like
the South Carolina slaves, as we mentioned, had a lot
of freedom to start out with, but now they were
not allowed to grow their own food, they couldn't assemble
(18:42):
in groups, they were not allowed to earn their own money,
they were not allowed to learn to read, and just
really reinforce the existing slave code. So policies that had
been in place before, restrictions that they had had, they
really enforced them now. I think in the beginning we
talked about how it was evolving a little bit, and
before there some restricts in place that they just were
(19:02):
a little bit slack about. I guess they were there,
but not everyone observed them. You could, you could enforce.
A master could enforce the restrictions as he's soft fit.
I guess that's the point. To make up the previous
slave code had been built up piecemeal over decades and decades.
At this point, suddenly there are universal laws about how
(19:23):
you're supposed to to to treat your slaves. But it
wasn't just changes to the slave code though. The Assembly
also decided that the slave population needed to be less
African and more African American um because it seemed like
the recent imports were more prone to rebellion, at least
(19:45):
at least from their personal experience. So in April seventeen
forty they passed a duty bill which levied attacks of
a hundred pounds per head on slaves entering after July
seventeen forty one. But a really interest thing about this bill.
It wasn't just set up to discourage importing slaves from Africa.
(20:07):
The plan was to use all of the money for
the tax to fund this account that would ultimately draw
poor white Protestants to South Carolina. So you would really
change your ratio. You're you're importing fewer slaves and then
bringing more white people to South Carolina. I think it's
very bizarre. But not all the changes were based in
(20:31):
legislation either. Some of them were just the way people
thought about handling their slaves and and dealing with these
huge communities that lived right outside their door. Yeah, they
made these attempts to kind of fracture the slave community,
so they would reward informers. For example, you could tell
on somebody, and that was seen as something good to
(20:54):
do to your master. For example, thirty slaves were rewarded
for their loyalty during the rebellion. One in particular, named July,
he was actually freed. Yeah. Most of them, though, didn't
get rewards that were quite on that level. Um, there's
a there's a document you can read about. I guess
the other thirty or at least a few of them
(21:14):
just getting suits of clothes and new shoes and stuff,
and that was like the big reward for not participating
or saving their master's lives. Makes me wonder what July did.
But we'll get free. But I guess till I just
got lucky because it sounds like the other ones did
pretty much the same thing. But um, it's interesting though
you think all of these these changes would have a
(21:37):
long term effect on how planters related to slavery, you know,
like maybe they would swear off imported slaves for a
long time if they really thought that this was a
serious problem. But it doesn't take long at all for
them to go back to importing slaves again. It increased
after seventeen forty four, and by the American Revolution, the
(21:58):
black population in South Carolina was almost double the white population,
which I think is an astounding statistic and clearly shows
that they were the white planners were definitely more interested
in making money than these perceived security threats. Things were
a little different though, with the passing of the Negro Act,
(22:19):
more slaves started to take up means of passive, less
obvious resistance. So actions that for a lot of us,
I think are more familiar. They characterized the next hundred
years or so of slavery in America, and I think
they're probably what more like what we associate with today.
Like I mentioned when we were just starting out this episode,
but the things you learn about in your high school
(22:41):
history class, the slowdowns, poisoning, UM, breaking equipment, that sort
of thing, uh, sort of war what we associate with
slavery between the Revolution and the Civil War. But I
think it's interesting that this rebellion might have played a
little part in establishing that system UM, that that we're
(23:01):
more familiar with. Yeah, it's a kind of a grim tale,
but one that's necessary if you want to understand kind
of the whole history of labor, story of slavery. Definitely,
UM And I think because it is so grim, it
brings us to a slightly happier listener. Meal. So this
(23:22):
message is from Tia in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and she wrote,
I just finished listening to your podcast on the Crafts
Escaped to Freedom, and I couldn't help but be awe struck.
It made me want to learn a little bit more
about the couple, and after some initial digging, I read
that on their flight from Boston to England, they first
came through Halifax, Nova Scotia, where I live. They traveled
(23:45):
by land to Halifax and then by sea to England.
As a proud Hallegonian, perhaps I'm exactly sure how you
folks pronounced that. Gonna go with Hallegonian, though, it was
very happy to see that our city played a small
part in this amazing story. Although not totally surprised as
a major report at the time, Halifax, Nova Scotia and
(24:06):
the Maritimes in general often played an important part in
many slaves escape to freedom, so that was interesting. We
we actually did run into the fact that they escaped
through Halifax. Didn't get into all the details about how
they got to England, but um, it's definitely worth sharing
with you guys, and and thank you for sharing it
(24:26):
so dicinctly with us. Heia. She also suggested that if
we want to do a little more Canadian history, as
we always come back to Canadian history. Um. She suggests
the Halifax explosion of nineteen seventeen, which I think the
anniversary of that came up not too long ago. Um.
We follow the Nova Scotia Archives on Twitter and they
(24:48):
put together a pretty interesting exhibit on the explosion that
we were checking out not too long ago. To check
that out too. Yeah, but you can follow us on
Twitter if you want to send us messages and stuff.
We're at Missed in History. UM. We're also on Facebook
and you can send us your emails and comments UM
(25:08):
at history podcast at how stuff works dot com. And
if you want to learn a little bit more about
a topic that came along a little later in black history,
you can check out an article called how the Emancipation
Proclamation worked on our website by visiting our homepage at
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(25:31):
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Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm de bling a chalk reboarding.
And not too long ago we talked about this really
amazing one thousand mile Escaped to Freedom by Ellen and
(00:22):
William Kraft, and it took place in it was It
involved cool disguises and really close calls and um, surprisingly
luxurious accommodations. Um. But one important thing to note about
it is that it took place at the tail end
of slavery in North America. And this time for this episode,
(00:43):
we're gonna go way way back to a time when
slavery was really changing and kind of, in my opinion
at least, kind of becoming more of what we think
of when we think of slavery, what we might have
learned in elementary school or high school. That period of
slavery between the American Revolution and the Civil War. Yeah,
(01:05):
it was really evolving in this particular time period that
we're going to talk about, and it was when whites
were becoming very uneasy about their growing minority status, especially
as slave uprisings were becoming more common, and the particular
instance that we're gonna talk about today, the Stoner Rebellion.
It was likely the most important of these pre American
(01:25):
Revolution uprisings. It was unsuccessful, but it was really bloody expensive,
and it really directly affected a lot of laws regarding
slavery in South Carolina at that time. Yeah, yet it's
scared people. It's scared the white people in South Carolina
a lot, and it made them enact legislation like you mentioned.
But um also just sort of changed their outlook on
(01:48):
slavery and how they thought about it. Um. And according
to unsp Rodriguez, who compiled the Encyclopedia Slave Resistance and Rebellion,
this two of all lume set of like every slave
rebellion and instance of resistance you can think of. He wrote, quote,
the stone O Rebellion had important consequences on the development
(02:10):
of slavery and what would become the United States, and briefly,
in September seventeen thirty nine, the future of slavery hung
in the balance. So I think that gives you a
pretty good sense of how significant this event, this rebellion was,
And um, yeah, it took place in seventeen thirty nine,
the morning of September nine, which was a Sunday. Yeah,
(02:32):
So just to set it up a little bit for
you here, the initial rebellion, it involved twenty African slaves
and they were led by a fairly recent arrival to
the colonies named Jemmy, who started the whole thing off
by breaking into a store on stone Oh River Bridge,
which was about twenty miles southwest of Charleston. And during
this break in, he killed the owner of the store,
(02:55):
Robert Bathurst, and his associate Mr Gibbs, or some of
the rebels did. Some of the rebels did correct, and
he placed their decapitated heads on the stores front porch. So, yeah,
pretty serious message they're sending there. Wasn't just kind of
a random act or theft. They did steal some guns
at the time, but I think that the heads on
(03:16):
the poles really sent the message. Definitely sends a strong message.
And and from there they started marching down the main
Southern road. And Okay, this is probably the first part
that's really caught you off guard. Maybe the decapitated heads
did it, but the Southern road that doesn't seem to
add up to how we normally think about slaves trying
to escape to freedom, but they were in fact bound
(03:38):
towards Georgia, which is exactly ironically exactly where the crafts
were fleeing from. So it seems the rebels plan was
to get to this growing maroon establishment that was in St. Augustine, Florida,
which of course at the time was in Spanish control,
and they were going to get there by way of
the Georgia coastline. But once they got the guns, they
(04:00):
didn't exactly hurry on their way down the coast. Quite
the contrary, they stopped and attacked stores and homes and
plantations and sort of raised their numbers too. More and
more slaves rebels are just people thinking they might be successful,
and they'd try to get out of town with them.
(04:21):
Joined up with the band. Yeah, they pretty much wreaked
havoc on along this journey of theirs. They spared a
few white people that they encountered, but a lot of
times when they met someone on the road, they would
just kind of take them out. So a lot of
the people who were spared were people who are kind
to slaves. So for example, an owner of the inn
who had known to be so was spared along the way.
(04:44):
Others were not though others were not a Mr. Godfrey
and his son and daughter, they were killed I think
in their homes, right, Yeah, And um, a lot of
slaves were joining up too. So um, it's not just
that they're coming into houses and and killing people, but
the slaves are are fleeing their plantations and homes and
joining this van. Um. But the occasionals they've did stop
(05:08):
and fight the band or try to protect his or
her own master. There are a few instances of that
we're going to talk about later, um, but one really
close running and I think one that really shook up
the South Carolinians later was that the Lieutenant Governor himself,
Lawrence Bull, had a very close call with the band
of rebels. He was nearly killed. Fortunately for him, I
(05:32):
guess he was on horseback and so he managed to escape.
But at that point he went on to seund the
alarm in nearby Grandville County. But meanwhile the group was
moving south. They were slowly progressing on towards their goal. Right,
so by the time they were at Jacksonburg Ferry on
Edisto River, there were about sixty two hundred of them,
(05:53):
but they didn't cross the river and just continue on
they stopped to dance and sing. That's probably the second
part that's really he made you take pause. And historians
have wondered why they did this, where they just too
tired to continue or something. Yeah, and it's been suggested
maybe they had um imbibed quite a bit by this
point and just wanted to stop in party, or maybe
(06:17):
there was another suggestion by the historian William Thornton that
dancing was a crucial wartime exercise, and we're going to
talk about that a little more later too, But it
was it was just something you would do. It was,
it was non negotiable. But stopping by the river to
dance and sing ended up being the band of slaves
undoing because the militia caught up with them during the
(06:39):
delay and attacked them in the open field. The rebels
were able to get off two volleys, but finally the
militia returned fire killed fourteen of them, and after that
the main rebel group that was left just scattered, and
probably about forty of them. It's it's hard to say,
just because things were dealt with so haphazardly on the field,
(07:01):
but probably about forty were captured, questioned and then immediately
killed and their decapitated heads were put on the mile
posts going towards Charleston to to send a message to
other would be rebels. So contemporary accounts of this event
say that this was sort of the end of it,
but that's not really the case. Some of the rebels
(07:23):
did reform and they continued traveling south, but they were
intercepted on the tenth, which was the next day, by
mounted troops. Others of them kept on going and a
second skirmish took place about a week later, and that
was thirty miles from the first battle at Jackson Urra Ferry.
After that a bunch of rebels dispersed again and they
were pretty much tracked down one by one. Yeah, but
(07:44):
some managed to stay in the field for a really
long time. I mean as late as December. That's when
one of the rebel leaders was apparently caught, uh not Jimmy.
People to don't know what happened to him, interestingly enough,
But all in all, if you get all the way
to December, about twenty whites were killed, probably about sixty
(08:05):
five Africans and African Americans. As we mentioned, because things
were so haphazard and the executions just sort of happened
on the field, there aren't really good records about it.
Plus we should note that there's only one primary source
for this story and then a few secondary accounts that
are contemporary to the story. So, uh, the information is
(08:27):
pretty patchy on something on an event that is so important.
So the question that we really have to ask ourselves though,
is why did the slaves revolt? And some of those
reasons are going to be pretty obvious here, as we
will find out in a minute. But it was a
question that was asked immediately after the revolt by the
white people involved to the white people in South Carolina,
(08:48):
and interestingly, they were not inclined to blame their own
cruelties so much as they were inclined to blame Spanish propaganda.
There was a great fear at this time because of
Spanish British tensions, that Spanish agents were lurking around and
um convincing slaves that they could flee to Florida and
(09:11):
and be free in these maroon colonies. So this was
a legitimate fear of plantation owners and slave owners at
the time. Yeah, and historians still debate about this a
lot too, about the kind of the reasons behind this
revolt and a couple of things they debate about our
whether the Stone oh rebels were actually more influenced by
the terrible conditions they faced in South Carolina, or whether
(09:33):
it had a lot more to do with the skills
and the experiences that they had pre enslavement when they
were living in Africa. And we're going to talk about
both because I think we both kind of agree that
there's really no reason why the tour can be have
to be mutually exclusive. I guess I should say, yeah,
I think so. I mean, I see no reason why
somebody wouldn't be influenced by his current conditions as well
(09:54):
as what he had known before he became a slave.
Um or you can have some mix. It's a rebellion
and there are lots of different people involved. But before
we get into all of that, and I guess to
sort of help explain some of the reasons why you
might be inclined to rebel being a South Carolinian slave,
I'm going to give you a little history of slavery
in South Carolina and the early To understand it, you
(10:18):
have to understand that the early settlers in the Carolina
Colony were bent on making money, they wanted to make
lots and lots of money in a really good way
to do that to set up a plantation system, in
this case, a plantation system based on rice cultivation. And
because a lot of the colonies earliest settlers came by
(10:40):
way of the West Indies, they had already seen what
a slave run plantation system looked like, which looked very
different from from some of the earlier American colonies right.
And their first slaves were actually Native Americans who are
purchased by Indian traders who would sell the losers of
intertribal wars that were going on. But after the Yamasi
(11:00):
War of seventeen fifteen, many of these tribes left the
Low country and that created a labor vacuum from the
plantation owners. So there was a marked increase in an
importation of slaves from Africa, specifically a lot of slaves
from the West region of Africa, where rice cultivation already thrived,
so they were familiar with that. They figured they had
(11:21):
an existing specialty already. So it doesn't take long, just
a few decades and South Carolina becomes one of the
wealthiest North American colonies. But there's a little issue here,
and that's the rice cultivation requires a lot of workers.
That's why they wanted to import slaves in the first
place for cheap labor. But it didn't take that long
(11:43):
for blacks to outnumber whites or to to get pretty
close to it. One example, here, in seventeen forty there
were thirty nine thousand blacks in South Carolina, probably fifty
percent of which had arrived from Africa in the past decade.
So it's not just um a racial imbalance at this
(12:04):
point that the white South Carolinians are fearing. It's that
it's a racial imbalance not with African Americans and whites,
but with Africans and whites, right, And this set up
sort of an interesting dichotomy, I guess, in their relationship.
According to Perry L. Kyles, who wrote an article for
the Journal of African American History about the issue, all
(12:26):
white people had to kind of buy into this collective identity,
so to speak, which subjugated slaves, and it created a
particularly harsh slave system which had already been made worse
by climate and disease in the area ice cultivation and
any terrible thing to be doing so you weren't English
or Scotch. At this point, you were just white, yeah,
which is something that stands out, I'd say, in in
(12:49):
this time, certainly well before the American Revolution, and this distinction,
this you you aren't from wherever your European ancestry is them,
You're just white, was kind of illustrated in legislation of
the time too. In seventeen thirty seven, South Carolina's Assembly
passed the Patrol Act, which required all white males to
(13:12):
police slaves, and then in January sev thirty nine they
passed the Security Act, which went a step further and
required that all white males armed themselves on Sunday, which
we should not. Sunday was a day when slaves were
granted a little more freedom to do work for themselves,
you know, do their own farming, try to save up
some money or something, and could move around a bit more.
(13:35):
So it's thought necessary, I gotta keep your guns on
you in church on Sunday. Uh. The big fear, though,
was not just the slaves and not just this racial imbalance,
but that the Spanish were lurking around and might lure
slaves the way and promised them freedom. And it was
potentially a legitimate concern because in seventeen twenty three slaves
(13:58):
had escaped and made it all the way to St. Augustine.
But the fears of Spanish influence were only part of it.
There's also the customs and experiences that some of the
Stono rebels brought from Africa, which would have allowed the
Spanish to be so influential in the first place, and
there are some reasons for that. So I don't know, Sarah,
I think maybe can you set this part up a
little bit. Yeah. I read an article by John kay
(14:21):
Thornton in American Historical Review, and it's interesting because it's
actually referenced in a lot of other places. But he
has an argument that the Stono Rebels, at least some
of them, maybe some of the leaders especially, were definitely
influenced by experiences in customs from Africa. And one of
his points is that many of the rebels were probably
(14:43):
recent arrivals, and they weren't recent rivals from Angola, which
is what the surviving primary source tells us, but instead
from Congo. It gets a little confusing because I think
the area where they're from is Angola today. But that's
beside the point. Another issue that he mentions is because
(15:03):
the former Kingdom of Congo had voluntarily converted to Christianity
back in four so a really long time before this,
most of its people were Roman Catholic, so there might
have been some issues there Christians sort of resenting the
fact that they're enslaved by other Christians, and um, maybe
a little affinity with the Roman Catholic Spanish too. And
(15:25):
a third point is that there was potentially some language
in common because a lot of people from Congo, or
at least some people from Congo, would have understood Portuguese
because Portuguese was in fact the language that dominated trade
there and was taught in schools for the upper classes. Um,
if some of these slaves did have familiarity with Portuguese,
(15:49):
they might have been able to understand some of the
Spanish they heard and some of the stories they heard
about freedom in Florida. And then finally, this wasn't a
potential motivator, but more are like a possible explanation for things. Wait,
the way things went down was a small band of
rebels supposedly handled firearms very well. What this meant was
(16:09):
that while the expertise could have been picked up in
the colonies, it's very likely that it could have come
from experience and fighting in Congolese militia. Yeah, there were
quite a lot of civil wars in Congo in the
decades before this, and it's possible that some of the
slaves who participated in this rebellion were at one point
(16:30):
the on the losing side of of battles back in Congo.
But they had some militia experience. They knew how to
carry a gun. They used flags and drums, and this
also helps explain the rebels using banners and drums and
and dancing and dancing these You know, it's it's circumstantial,
(16:50):
but I think it's an interesting thing to look at,
especially when there is so little written written record here
to to consider these things. But whatever the reasons for rebelling,
once the slaves did rebel, they were they were marked.
I mean, they were done for because to the white
South Carolinians success, the success of the slaves could have
(17:13):
meant like further revolts. It could have meant this spreading
throughout the colonies and up ending the entire slave system.
I mean that might be going a little far. But
they had to shut this down. They knew it was
a huge, huge threat to the way of life that
was making them so wealthy. So they didn't just hunt
the rebels down all the way through the month of December,
(17:35):
but they passed laws that further subjugated blacks in South Carolina.
So even though they didn't have a lot of rights
to start out with, and you would think it would
be impossible to kind of further reduce those, they they
did just that. And it was partly the aftermath that
made Rodriguez call the Stonor Rebellion the single most important
African slave revolt in the history of what would become
(17:57):
the United States. And I should just know this guy
has written or edited a lot of books on slavery,
including this whole encyclopedia, So I feel like that's a
pretty strong statement. Yeah, it's saying something if he says
that it was a major revolt. Um a few examples
of things that they did. In November seventeen thirty nine,
the General Assembly decided to strengthen the Patrol Act of
(18:18):
seventeen thirty seven, which meant that militia would now be
in charge of the patrols instead of just the slave
owners every white man. And then in May of seventeen forty,
the Assembly passed the Negro Act, and it wasn't like
the South Carolina slaves, as we mentioned, had a lot
of freedom to start out with, but now they were
not allowed to grow their own food, they couldn't assemble
(18:42):
in groups, they were not allowed to earn their own money,
they were not allowed to learn to read, and just
really reinforce the existing slave code. So policies that had
been in place before, restrictions that they had had, they
really enforced them now. I think in the beginning we
talked about how it was evolving a little bit, and
before there some restricts in place that they just were
(19:02):
a little bit slack about. I guess they were there,
but not everyone observed them. You could, you could enforce.
A master could enforce the restrictions as he's soft fit.
I guess that's the point. To make up the previous
slave code had been built up piecemeal over decades and decades.
At this point, suddenly there are universal laws about how
(19:23):
you're supposed to to to treat your slaves. But it
wasn't just changes to the slave code though. The Assembly
also decided that the slave population needed to be less
African and more African American um because it seemed like
the recent imports were more prone to rebellion, at least
(19:45):
at least from their personal experience. So in April seventeen
forty they passed a duty bill which levied attacks of
a hundred pounds per head on slaves entering after July
seventeen forty one. But a really interest thing about this bill.
It wasn't just set up to discourage importing slaves from Africa.
(20:07):
The plan was to use all of the money for
the tax to fund this account that would ultimately draw
poor white Protestants to South Carolina. So you would really
change your ratio. You're you're importing fewer slaves and then
bringing more white people to South Carolina. I think it's
very bizarre. But not all the changes were based in
(20:31):
legislation either. Some of them were just the way people
thought about handling their slaves and and dealing with these
huge communities that lived right outside their door. Yeah, they
made these attempts to kind of fracture the slave community,
so they would reward informers. For example, you could tell
on somebody, and that was seen as something good to
(20:54):
do to your master. For example, thirty slaves were rewarded
for their loyalty during the rebellion. One in particular, named July,
he was actually freed. Yeah. Most of them, though, didn't
get rewards that were quite on that level. Um, there's
a there's a document you can read about. I guess
the other thirty or at least a few of them
(21:14):
just getting suits of clothes and new shoes and stuff,
and that was like the big reward for not participating
or saving their master's lives. Makes me wonder what July did.
But we'll get free. But I guess till I just
got lucky because it sounds like the other ones did
pretty much the same thing. But um, it's interesting though
you think all of these these changes would have a
(21:37):
long term effect on how planters related to slavery, you know,
like maybe they would swear off imported slaves for a
long time if they really thought that this was a
serious problem. But it doesn't take long at all for
them to go back to importing slaves again. It increased
after seventeen forty four, and by the American Revolution, the
(21:58):
black population in South Carolina was almost double the white population,
which I think is an astounding statistic and clearly shows
that they were the white planners were definitely more interested
in making money than these perceived security threats. Things were
a little different though, with the passing of the Negro Act,
(22:19):
more slaves started to take up means of passive, less
obvious resistance. So actions that for a lot of us,
I think are more familiar. They characterized the next hundred
years or so of slavery in America, and I think
they're probably what more like what we associate with today.
Like I mentioned when we were just starting out this episode,
but the things you learn about in your high school
(22:41):
history class, the slowdowns, poisoning, UM, breaking equipment, that sort
of thing, uh, sort of war what we associate with
slavery between the Revolution and the Civil War. But I
think it's interesting that this rebellion might have played a
little part in establishing that system UM, that that we're
(23:01):
more familiar with. Yeah, it's a kind of a grim tale,
but one that's necessary if you want to understand kind
of the whole history of labor, story of slavery. Definitely,
UM And I think because it is so grim, it
brings us to a slightly happier listener. Meal. So this
(23:22):
message is from Tia in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and she wrote,
I just finished listening to your podcast on the Crafts
Escaped to Freedom, and I couldn't help but be awe struck.
It made me want to learn a little bit more
about the couple, and after some initial digging, I read
that on their flight from Boston to England, they first
came through Halifax, Nova Scotia, where I live. They traveled
(23:45):
by land to Halifax and then by sea to England.
As a proud Hallegonian, perhaps I'm exactly sure how you
folks pronounced that. Gonna go with Hallegonian, though, it was
very happy to see that our city played a small
part in this amazing story. Although not totally surprised as
a major report at the time, Halifax, Nova Scotia and
(24:06):
the Maritimes in general often played an important part in
many slaves escape to freedom, so that was interesting. We
we actually did run into the fact that they escaped
through Halifax. Didn't get into all the details about how
they got to England, but um, it's definitely worth sharing
with you guys, and and thank you for sharing it
(24:26):
so dicinctly with us. Heia. She also suggested that if
we want to do a little more Canadian history, as
we always come back to Canadian history. Um. She suggests
the Halifax explosion of nineteen seventeen, which I think the
anniversary of that came up not too long ago. Um.
We follow the Nova Scotia Archives on Twitter and they
(24:48):
put together a pretty interesting exhibit on the explosion that
we were checking out not too long ago. To check
that out too. Yeah, but you can follow us on
Twitter if you want to send us messages and stuff.
We're at Missed in History. UM. We're also on Facebook
and you can send us your emails and comments UM
(25:08):
at history podcast at how stuff works dot com. And
if you want to learn a little bit more about
a topic that came along a little later in black history,
you can check out an article called how the Emancipation
Proclamation worked on our website by visiting our homepage at
www dot how stuff works dot com. We're more on
(25:31):
this and thousands of other topics. Visit how stuff works
dot com to learn more about the podcast, click on
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