The Stono Rebellion - Tajae Pryce

         

         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 9^th, as their acknowledgment of the Day of Nativity of the Virgin Mary on the 8^th. 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 18^th 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.