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One child survivor of American slavery retold "his parents' stories about slaves sometimes killing the bloodhounds that some whites kept for tracking runaways"[1] (Richard Ansdell, The Hunted Slaves, 1862, National Museum of African American History and Culture)

Slave rebellions and slave resistance were means of opposing the system of chattel slavery in the United States from 1776 to 1865. According to Herbert Aptheker, "there were few phases of ante-bellum Southern life and history that were not in some way influenced by the fear of, or the actual outbreak of, militant concerted slave action."[2] Slave rebellions in the United States were small and diffuse compared with those in other slave economies in part due to "the conditions that tipped the balance of power against southern slaves—their numerical disadvantage, their creole composition, their dispersal in relatively small units among resident whites—were precisely the same conditions that limited their communal potential."[3]: 597  As such, "Confrontation in the Old South characteristically took the form of an individual slave's open resistance to plantation authorities,"[3]: 599 or other individual or small-group actions, such as slaves opportunistically killing slave traders in hopes of avoiding forced migration away from friends and family.[4][5]

List of slave rebellions in the United States

Historians in the 20th century identified 250 to 311 slave uprisings in U.S. and colonial history.[6] Those after 1776 include:

List of slave-ship mutinies in the United States

There are four known mutinies on vessels involved in the coastwise slave trade: Decatur (1826), Governor Strong (1826), Lafayette (1829), and the Creole (1841).[11]

Escape

The most common forms of resistance was self-emancipation—escaping an enslaver's control either temporarily or permanently.[3]: 600  The legal condition of fugitive slaves in the United States was a major hot-button political issue in antebellum America. In the years immediately prior to the American Civil War, collective escape actions called stampedes became increasingly common.[12]

See also: Fugitive slave laws in the United States and Fugitive slave advertisements in the United States

Non-violent resistance

Resistance took many forms; as one historian, George P. Rawick, wrote, "While from sunup to sundown the American slave worked for another and was harshly exploited, from sundown to sunup he lived for himself and created the behavioral and institutional basis which prevented him from becoming the absolute victim."[3]: 579 

There is evidence that some enslaved people in the United States "added back doors to their dwellings that provided access to an open space shielded by the dwellings on all sides."[13]

Nat Turner's Rebellion

Main article: Nat Turner's Rebellion
Discovery of Nat Turner [in 1831], an 1881 wood-engraving by William Henry Shelton [d]

In 1831, Nat Turner, a literate slave who claimed to have spiritual visions, organized a slave rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia; it was sometimes called the Southampton Insurrection. Turner and his followers killed nearly sixty white inhabitants, mostly women and children. Many of the men in the area were attending a religious event in North Carolina.[14] Eventually Turner was captured with 17 other rebels, who were subdued by the militia.[14] Turner and his followers were hanged, and Turner's body was flayed. In a frenzy of fear and retaliation, the militia killed more than 100 slaves who had not been involved in the rebellion. Planters whipped hundreds of innocent slaves to ensure resistance was quelled.[14]

This rebellion prompted Virginia and other slave states to pass more restrictions on slaves and free people of color, controlling their movement and requiring more white supervision of gatherings. In 1835, North Carolina withdrew the franchise for free people of color, and they lost their vote.

See also

References

  1. ^ Jones, Kelly Houston (2012). ""A Rough, Saucy Set of Hands to Manage": Slave Resistance in Arkansas". The Arkansas Historical Quarterly. 71 (1): 1–21. ISSN 0004-1823.
  2. ^ Aptheker, Herbert (1993), American Negro Slave Revolts (50th Anniversary ed.), New York: International Publishers, p. 368, ISBN 978-0717806058
  3. ^ a b c d Kolchin, Peter (December 1983). "Reevaluating the Antebellum Slave Community: A Comparative Perspective". The Journal of American History. 70 (3): 579. doi:10.2307/1903484.
  4. ^ "Awful Tragedy". The Louisville Daily Courier. 1848-02-21. p. 3. Retrieved 2024-01-22.
  5. ^ Bouton, Christopher H. (2016). Against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth: physical confrontations between slaves and whites in antebellum Virginia, 1801–1860 (Thesis). University of Delaware. ProQuest 10156550. pages viii, 62–64 Free access icon
  6. ^ Gates, Henry Louis (January 12, 2013). "The Five Greatest Slave Rebellions in the United States | African American History Blog | The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross". The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross. WTTW. Retrieved October 11, 2016.
  7. ^ Rasmussen, Daniel (2011). American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt. HarperCollins. p. 288. ISBN 978-0061995217.
  8. ^ J.B. Bird. "The slave rebellion the country tried to forget". John Horse. Retrieved October 4, 2013.
  9. ^ "Unidentified Young Man". World Digital Library. 1839–1840. Retrieved July 28, 2013.
  10. ^ "Slave Revolt of 1842 | The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture". www.okhistory.org.
  11. ^ Williams, Jennie K. (2020-04-02). "Trouble the water: The Baltimore to New Orleans coastwise slave trade, 1820–1860". Slavery & Abolition. 41 (2): 275–303. doi:10.1080/0144039X.2019.1660509. ISSN 0144-039X. S2CID 203494471.
  12. ^ "About the Project | Slave Stampedes on the Southern Borderlands". Retrieved 2023-08-31.
  13. ^ Singleton, Theresa A. (1995). "The Archaeology of Slavery in North America". Annual Review of Anthropology. 24: 119–140. ISSN 0084-6570.
  14. ^ a b c Foner, Eric (2009). Give Me Liberty. London: Seagull Edition. pp. 406–407.

Further reading

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_rebellion_and_resistance_in_the_United_States