The slave uprising known
as the Stono Rebellion was a significant event in American history and was a
catalyst for new changes and perspective insight regarding the colonial slave
system moving forward from the event. The revolt was the largest of its kind on
a mainland British colony and resulted in new policies being passed that would mandate
every aspect of a slave’s life as well as his master and the residents of the
locality to which he was bound. The cause of this insurrection was not a singular
one, but a combination of motives that encouraged slaves to call for liberty by
any means necessary as they charged southward to freedom from their
plantations. The promise of sovereignty in Spanish Florida and the intrinsic
desire to escape from the sadistically oppressive institution of colonial
slavery were the most pressing reasons for the uprising, however, closer
evaluations of the history and origins of the enslaved people and the social
and cultural climate of the South Carolina colony must be done in order to
sufficiently create theses on the core triggers of the rebellion and how much
of an impact these eventually defeated dissenters had on American history.
Editor
Mark M. Smith has compiled a collection of documents and research related to
the topic that attempts to approach the Stono Rebellion with all possible factors
and implications in mind. The sources about the event lack much definite
objective insight due to the majority of these sources being second-hand
accounts given by upper-class whites. Given this challenge, Smith and any
historian addressing this event, must employ rational historical methodology
and attempt to create a narrative of the Stono Rebellion that is impartial and one
that takes into consideration the elements of time, culture and socioeconomic
contexts.
A true understanding of the nature of the Carolina
colonies must be reached when evaluating any moments of crisis that took place
during the age of American colonialism. With Carolina being a proprietary
colony, its main purpose was to generate as much sustainable revenue as quickly
as possible. Once established, droves of generally rich planters, mostly of
Caribbean plantation wealth, migrated to the colony and attempted to recreate
the success they had seen in tropical islands such as Barbados, which had now
been depleted of available land and resources for further expansion. After
failed attempts at cultivating crops that had flourished in island climates,
planters gradually shifted to forced human labor to supply the need for
innovation and exhaustive manpower. Eventually the rise of the rice planation
would ensue and thus the need for manual labor and knowledge of rice production
in the form of imported enslaved Africans. This new cash crop required
specifically nuanced procedures in its cultivation from tilling to harvest that
had been practiced for centuries on the African continent. Rice cultivation,
before expansive mechanization, also needed a large workforce providing for the
construction of necessary infrastructure and for intense, backbreaking manual
labor. The growing success of rice
culture and the concurrently growing need for African labor created a colony of
a substantially black population with concentrations especially in the coastal
areas. These starkly different ethnic groups and the element of enslavement and
subservience created rising tensions that only escalated as slave codes for
control became stricter and the African’s basic desire for freedom swelled.
From the founding of the Carolina colonies, run-away
slaves had always remained an issue for planters. Slaves escaped from their
confinement and live in hiding in maroon societies or take the risk of
attempting to seek refuge in an Indian community. Both of these options were
the less than ideal in providing for the Africans’ prolonged security or their
ability to live in a proper civil social system. Carolinians placed bounties on
runaways and the threat of capture for the maroons and betrayal for the blacks
that had runaway to Indian communities was always probable. However, by 1738,
Spanish settlers and former enslaved Africans established Fort Mosé that, along
with serving as a military stronghold near San Augustin, acted as a sanctuary
for run-away slaves who were recognized as freedmen if they could reach its
territory. This Spanish-Floridian safe haven appealed heavily to the enslaved
Africans in Carolinas and an escape to Fort Mosé would have been the goal of
the slaves involved in the Stono Rebellion had they not been compromised. Spain’s
significant disruption of Carolina’s slave system is widely regarded by as the
main cause of the Stono Rebellion with colonists at the time and historians
since theorizing infiltrators being sent northward convincing slaves to rebel
and subsequently escape to Florida.
Accounts from a Georgia trustee member, Colonel William
Stephens, exposed historians to the common belief in the months preceding the
Rebellion of the existence of Spanish spies at work inspiring slaves to rise
against their masters, thus creating a white society plagued with fear and
distrust of strangers. Stephen’s journal recounts the seizure and interrogation
of a suspicious individual in Georgia by magistrates regarding his true origin
and intention for being in the colony.
After eventually revealing to be from Old Spain, the individual was arrested
and relegated to “no better that a Spy”, and committed to the Colonial guard.
Upon the call to war with Spain from England and notice to assign guards for
the diversion of Spanish infiltration, Stephens and his associates further justified
fearfulness of the Spaniard due to their probable involvement in the corruption
of British colonial slaves.
Imperial tensions as the cause for the Rebellion are
further cited through Smith’s investigation as is shown through his inclusion
of an account from an unidentified source from October of 1739. African slave
alliance to the Spanish through religion and language are also expressed in
this account; theories that add further depth to the intentions of the rebels.
The author writes of multiple Spaniards being taken under arrest for “strolling
around Carolina”, reinforcing the fear of infiltration as cited in other
sources. The writer also expresses the belief that the Africans were mostly
brought from the Kingdom of Angola where the Portuguese language was highly
prevalent thus somehow making the Africans allies to the Spanish speakers. He
also writes that many of the slaves were Roman Catholic, the presiding religion
of the Spanish. South Carolina’s Lieutenant Governor William
Bull, who provides the only true firsthand account of the Stono Rebellion,
directly associates the uprising with encouragement from Spain’s declaration of
San Augustin being a safe haven.
In addition to individuals and politicians blaming Spain for the insurrection,
South Carolina’s official report of the Stono Rebellion states that, “…the
Negroes would not have made this Insurrection had they not depended on St.
Augustine for a Place of Reception afterwards was very certain; and that the
Spaniards had a Hand in prompting them to this particular Action there was but
little Room to doubt…”.
Smith includes a 1930s interview from a descendent of the
alleged leader of the Rebellion and notes the faults that could come from using
such a far removed individual as a historical source. George Cato’s account is
comprised of stories passed down through generations in an oral format and can
be used to provide some insight into the more cultural and even individualistic
nature of the rebels from a black perspective. Cato speaks of his
great-great-grandfather commanding the army of rebels and always being a man
willing to die for what he felt was right. He also described the Cato of the
Rebellion as one who would risk his life for the benefit of others and who was
not abused like other slaves, which may have been why he was chosen as leader.
Cato puts some blame on the rebels being drunk to their eventual downfall but
depicts them as marching unbroken to their executions. This interview details particular event of the battle in the same likeness as
other accounts so some reliability could come from it. It also reveals the
traits of masculinity and resiliency aligned with the rebels that had not been
expounded upon before in other white sources.
Along with individual accounts from the studied time
period, Smith draws sources from contemporary historical interpretations. Duke
University professor Peter H. Wood offered one of these interpretations, which
has been regarded as the first modern historical account of the Stono
Rebellion; in 1974. Wood evaluates the impact that the Rebellion and others
like it would have on white colonial society, describing the event as one that
“awakened the attention of the most unthinking”.
The ever-present threat of armed black rebels arming themselves and going on a
rampageous slaughter of white men, women and children now hung over the head of
many in the colonies. Wood also describes the Rebellion as a significant moment
in history due to its organized resistance to slavery. Before Stono, slave
resistance took the forms of unplanned incidents of opposition and escape. The
Rebellion, however, was an event with some premeditation that resulted in the
murder of at least sixty whites and would serve as precedent to larger, more
impactful episodes of black defiance. The impact of the Rebellion can be shown
through legislative evidence in the form of 1749’s “Act for the Better
Ordering”, or the “Negro Act”. South Carolina’s General Assembly redefined slave
codes and imposed new regulations for the behavior of both white and black
inhabitants including restricting freedoms once had by slaves and identifying
allowable amounts of physical punishment that a master could impose on his
slaves. Slaves were restricted to their plantations unless accompanied by a white
person, barred from acquiring alcohol, legally own a firearm and could no
longer assemble with other slaves unaccompanied. Per the Negro Act, however,
whites were fined for providing services to slaves, working slaves on Sundays,
or allow their slaves to barter for any goods or commodities.
Peter H.
Wood also details the spread of fear during this time period as planters around
the area would relocate with their families to safer locations and the General
Assembly constantly patrolling the Stono area. There were also rewards
available to Indians and blacks who aligned against rebel slaves. The suppression of the initial Stono rebels did not stop the occurrences of
further slave revolts as slaves banded together to strike or aggressively resist
their masters for years after the Rebellion. Slaves in Berkeley banded together
“in defiance” 100-250 strong. The Settlers hastily responded to reports of
uprising throughout other colonies including in the North in 1741. The fear of armed revolt by the large mass of enslaved blacks led South
Carolina’s Assembly to begin penalizing masters who could have enhanced the
slave revolts with excessive abuse and unwarranted hard labor.
New sanctions for both races represented the desperation of the settlers in
preventing uprisings. One significant policy was the requirement of one white
man to be present to account for every 10 blacks at any given time in order to
associate for the drastically high population of blacks as a result of rice
culture. However, most of these new impositions and sanctions were ignored and
broken in secrecy. There was no true system to account for every slave or
citizen within the colony nor could the amount of slave labor be reduced if the
colony wanted to maintain its flourishing agricultural profiting.
Another
perspective of why the Stono Rebellion occurred comes from historians who
attribute the tactics and strategic characteristics of the rebels to their
African heritage. One of those historians is John K. Thornton who, in 1991, drew
from his studies of Western and Central African customs to interpret why the
slaves rebelled and how they more than likely carried out their plans. Thornton
dispels the idea of the slaves coming primarily from “The Kingdom of Angola”
and offers Kongo as the most likely source of Britain’s slaves based on studies
of the Royal African Company’s practices. Thornton also takes into account war tactics of the rebels and compares them to
that of the Kongolese and, more importantly, the fact that most slaves captured
in Africa were captured during battle or in a war. Thornton also notes that Kongolese fighters
would have been exposed to modern guns by this time period and how well the
enslaved rebels fought with their guns when on attack. The rebels also marched
in formation under banners and beat drums calling for battle much like armies
and militias in Africa. Thornton speculates that the Stono rebels were either
trained militants, observed militant operations in Africa, or had tactics
passed down from Kongolese relatives. He introduces a deep dynamic into not only the Stono Rebellion but other early
uprisings of African slaves throughout British territories as well. The
cultural differences that existed throughout the vast nation of Africa, with
its vast array of tribes and regional interests, are often scarcely taken into
account when examining the sociological factors that affect the behavior of
migrated Africans; instead, they are frequently maligned as a collective of
culturally lost individuals in need of white direction.
Mark M. Smith, the book’s editor,
offers his own interpretation of the reasons for the Stono Rebellion’s
occurrence. He draws from his collection of reliable sources to base his understanding
on, but forms a thesis based on religious significance that should be looked at
more closely. Smith takes Thornton’s Kongolese thesis and takes into account
the importance of Afro-Catholicism practiced in that region and perhaps the
Stono rebel’s recognition of their faith. He attributes the weekend that the
rebels chose to attack, the September 9th, as their acknowledgment of
the Day of Nativity of the Virgin Mary on the 8th. The chosen date for the slaves revolt and the iconography of marching under
white banners, a color closely aligned with the Virgin Mary, may indicate a
deeper purpose for going against their oppressors and enemies to the true faith
as opposed to only representing Kongolese battle flags. Beating of drums is
also associated with Holy Saturdays and Mary in the Kongo. This theory can not be easily proven, but its legitimacy would further align
the rebels heritage with that of the people of Kongo and add another dynamic to
their motives and the confidence they exhibited as told through multiple
sources; religious faith.
Smith’s
collection is done in a way that multiple voices and interpretations can be
evaluated and opportunities for the reader to deduce his own opinions are
prevalent. Most effectively, the author provides factual historical evidence of
the state of the Colony in the 18th century to supplement for a lack
of firsthand accounts on the actual event. Associating specific cultural
customs and traditions further strengthens the Smith’s notion of the Stono
Rebellion being a deeply rooted and significant moment in American history with
effects that far surpassed fearfully drawn “Negro Acts” and imposed sanctions. In
my opinion, John K, Thornton’s introduction of African heritage and cultural
ties playing a larger role in the revolt that is the most effective argument
presented in this collection of historical analysis. The slaves could not be
assimilated into British colonial culture because they were bound to
subservient roles and not considered as equals to the Europeans. Therefore, the
slaves held on to their African traditions more so than the colonists would
recognize their own heritages because it is what kept the Africans in a state
of solidarity amongst each other. Their only defense in states of oppression
was to turn to what they knew and thus evidence of African strategy and
behavior was exhibited in the uprising. The
Stono Rebellion should be seen as a representation of the universal need for
freedom and self-determination and the spirit exhibited in a select few in a
given generation to challenge injustices and spark a revolution. I believe that
when interpreting moments such as the Stono Rebellion, it is of most importance
to study the social, political and economic climate of the region studied.
Rather than overemphasizing leaders or scrutinizing specific details of a
moment of crisis, the question of why those causing the crisis feel that their
only option is to revolt must be answered. Proprietary colonies such as South
Carolina were not governed or mandated with future generations in mind nor was
the importance for civic cohesion among all inhabitants of the land ever truly
exhibited. There can be no prolonged periods of peace in an area where members
of its population feel that they have no access to justice.
