by Noel Rae
But although the uprising was prevented, “so true were they in observing their pledge of secrecy to each other” that it took a while to round up the leading conspirators. However, some were less true than others, notably Charles Drayton, who after being sentenced to hang was “overwhelmed with terror and guilt,” and let it be known that he was “prepared to make the most ample declarations.” Monday Gell also turned state’s evidence after being sentenced, and it was largely on the basis of their testimony that 131 people were arrested. Of these 67 were convicted and 35 were hanged—22 of them on the same day and at the same place. Those convicted but not hanged were sent “out of the limits of the United States,” which probably meant being sold to one of the West Indies. As a reward for their testimony, Charles Drayton and Monday Gell, were pardoned but also sent out of the country.
For the authors of the official report, a striking and perplexing feature of the plot was that “the character and condition of most of the insurgents were such as rendered them objects the least liable to suspicion. It is a melancholy truth that the general good conduct of all the leaders, except Gullah Jack, had secured them not only the unlimited confidence of their owners, but they had been indulged in every comfort, and allowed every privilege compatible with their situation in the community; and although Gullah Jack was not remarkable for the correctness of his deportment, he by no means sustained a bad character. Vesey himself was free, and had amassed a considerable estate for one of his color.” Another conspirator, Rolla, “was the confidential servant of his master.” Peter Poyas “possessed the confidence of his master in a remarkable degree, and had been treated with indulgence, liberality and kindness.” Monday Gell “was much indulged and trusted by his master; his time and a large proportion of the profits of his labor were at his own disposal.”
After passing sentence of death on ten of the accused who had been convicted in a joint trial, the judges also condemned them to this tongue lashing: “Your conduct, on the present occasion, exhibits a degree of depravity rarely paralleled … In addition to the crime of treason, you have on the present occasion displayed the vilest ingratitude. It is a melancholy truth that those servants in whom was reposed the most unlimited confidence have been the principal actors in this wicked scheme … You have moreover committed the grossest impiety: you have perverted the sacred words of God, and attempted to torture them into a sanction for crimes at the bare imagination of which humanity shudders.” If only they had searched the Scriptures “in the spirit of truth, you would have discovered instructions peculiarly applicable to yourselves—‘Servants (says St. Paul) be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ; not with eye-service as men-pleasers, but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.’ Had you listened with sincerity to such doctrines, you would not have been arrested by an ignominious death.
“Your days on earth are near their close and you now stand upon the confines of eternity. While you linger on this side of the grave, permit me to exhort you, in the name of the everliving God, whose holy ordinances you have violated, to devote most earnestly the remnant of your days in penitence and preparation for that tribunal whose sentence, whether pronounced in anger or in mercy, is eternal.”
Great umbrage was taken by the members of the court when the editor of the Charleston Courier published a letter headed Melancholy Effect of Popular Excitement, by William Johnson, a Charlestonian and associate justice of the Supreme Court. As well as containing “an insinuation that the Court, under the influence of popular prejudice, was capable of committing perjury,” the letter impugned the “purity of their motives” and included such terms as “injustice,” “precipitation,” and “legal murder.” For this libel Johnson was rebuked by the court, while the editor apologized for publishing the letter. But writing privately to his friend Thomas Jefferson, Johnson spoke of the “shame and anguish” he felt at having “lived to see what I really never believed it possible I should see—courts held with closed doors, and men dying by scores who had never seen the faces nor heard the voices of their accusers.” As to the plot itself, it had been “infinitely exaggerated.”
Johnson may well have been right, but most Charlestonians were determined to have had a narrow escape; and when casting about for people to blame, they came up with the usual suspects: outside agitators, and the enemy within. According to A Refutation of the Calumnies Circulated Against the Southern and Western States a “swarm of Missionaries, white and black, that are perpetually visiting us, who, with the Sacred Volume of God in one hand, breathing peace to the whole family of man, scatter at the same time with the other the fire-brands of discord and destruction, and secretly disperse among our Negro population the seeds of discontent and sedition.” These “apostolic vagabonds,” had been distributing “religious magazines, newspaper paragraphs and insulated [i.e. out of context] texts of Scripture, all throwing such a delusive light upon their condition as was calculated to bewilder and deceive, and finally to precipitate them into ruin. Religion was stripped of her pure and spotless robe, and … her voice was heard instigating the midnight ruffian and coward to creep silently to the pillow of his unsuspecting master, and at one fell swoop to murder him in the unconscious hour of sleep, prostitute the partner of his bosom, violate the child of his affections, and dash out the brains of his innocent and unoffending infant.” There was more, but “such are a few of the barbarities to which we would have been exposed had the late intended Insurrection been crowned with success.”
As to the enemy within, “we look upon the existence of our Free Blacks among us as the greatest and most deplorable evil with which we are unhappily afflicted. They are, generally speaking, an idle, lazy, insolent set of vagabonds, who live by theft or gambling, or other means equally vicious and demoralizing. And who, from their general carriage and insolent behavior in the community, are a perpetual source of irritation to ourselves, and a fruitful cause of dissatisfaction to our slaves.” A petition to the South Carolina House of Representatives to “send out of our State, never again to return, all the free persons of color,” explained that “the superior condition of the free persons of color excites discontent among our slaves, who continually have before their eyes persons of the same color—freed from the control of masters, working where they please, going whither they please, and expending their money how they please. The slave, seeing this, finds his labor irksome; he becomes dissatisfied with his state, he pants after liberty!” And “let it not be forgotten that Denmark Vesey was a free person.”
Seven years later, in September, 1829, southern readers of northern publications had their worst suspicions about outside agitators confirmed with the appearance of a pamphlet written by David Walker, a young black Bostonian, and titled, Appeal in Four Articles, together with a Preamble, to the Colored Citizens of the World, but in particular and very expressly to those of the United States of America. Walker made his living by selling second-hand clothes, and although, or perhaps because, he lacked a formal education, as a writer he could strike off some memorable phrases—“There are indeed more ways to kill a dog besides choking it to death with butter,” and “Many of our children … leave school knowing but a little more about the grammar of their language than a horse does about handling a musket.” He also knew how to grab his readers’ attention:
“Dearly beloved Brethren and Fellow Citizens,” he wrote, “Having travelled over a considerable portion of these United States, and having, in the course of my travels taken the most accurate observations of things as they exist—the result of my observations has warranted the full and unshaken conviction that we—colored people of these United States—are the most degraded, wretched, and abject set of beings that ever lived since the world began.”
Walker had two targets: whites who enslaved blacks, and blacks who allowed themselves to be enslaved. Both greatly offended God and would pay a price, especially the whites�
��“an unjust, jealous, unmerciful, avaricious and blood-thirsty set of beings, always seeking after power and authority.” But at the same time “the man who would not fight under our Lord and Master Jesus Christ in the glorious and heavenly cause of freedom and of God—to be delivered from the most wretched, abject and servile slavery that ever a people was afflicted with since the foundation of the world to the present day—ought to be kept with all of his children or family in slavery, or in chains, to be butchered by his cruel enemies.”
If only blacks would rise up and fight, they would be sure to win. “I give it as a fact, let twelve black men get well armed for battle and they will kill and put to flight fifty whites.” That being so, Walker was particularly enraged by “servile submission”—black people who collaborated with owners. “To show the force of degraded ignorance and deceit among us” he then quoted a recent story from the Columbian Centinel datelined “Portsmouth, (Ohio) August 22, 1829.”
“A most shocking outrage was committed in Kentucky about eight miles from this place, on the 14th inst. A negro driver, by the name of Gordon, who had purchased in Maryland about sixty negroes, was taking them, assisted by an associate named Allen and the wagoner who conveyed the baggage, to the Mississippi. The men were hand-cuffed and chained together in the usual manner for driving these poor wretches, while the women and children were suffered to proceed without incumbrance. It appears that by means of a file the negroes unobserved had succeeded in separating the irons which bound their hands, in such a way as to be able to throw them off at any moment. About 8 o’clock in the morning, while proceeding on the state road leading from Greenup to Vanceburg, two of them dropped their shackles and commenced a fight, when the wagoner (Petit) rushed in with his whip to compel them to desist. At this moment, every negro was found to be perfectly at liberty; and one of them seizing a club, gave Petit a violent blow on the head and laid him dead at his feet; and Allen, who came to his assistance, met a similar fate from the contents of a pistol fired by another of the gang. Gordon was then attacked, seized and held by one of the negroes, whilst another fired twice at him with a pistol, the ball of which each time grazed his head, but not proving effectual, he was beaten with clubs and left for dead. They then commenced pillaging the wagon and with an axe split open the trunk of Gordon and rifled it of the money, about $2,490. Sixteen of the negroes then took to the woods. Gordon, in the meantime, not being materially injured, was enabled by the assistance of one of the women to mount his horse and flee, pursued, however, by one of the gang on another horse, with a drawn pistol; fortunately he escaped with his life, barely arriving at a plantation as the negro came in sight; who then turned about and retreated. The neighborhood was immediately rallied, and a hot pursuit given—which, we understand, has resulted in the capture of the whole gang and the recovery of the greatest part of the money.”
David Walker then comments on this story:
“Here, my brethren, I want you to notice particularly in the above article the ignorant and deceitful actions of this colored woman. I beg you to view it carefully, as for ETERNITY!!! Here a notorious wretch, with two other confederates had SIXTY of them in a gang, driving them like brutes—the men all in chains and hand-cuffs, and by the help of God they got their chains and hand-cuffs thrown off and caught two of the wretches and put them to death, and beat the other until they thought he was dead, and left him for dead; however, he deceived them, and rising from the ground this servile woman helped him upon his horse and he made his escape. Brethren, what do you think of this? Was it, the natural fine feelings of this woman to save such a wretch alive? … For my own part, I cannot think it was anything but servile deceit, combined with the most gross ignorance: for we must remember that humanity, kindness and the fear of the Lord does not consist in protecting devils … Are they not the Lord’s enemies? Ought they not to be destroyed? Any person who will save such wretches from destruction, is fighting against the Lord!”
Such talk was shocking to most white readers, including “moral suasion” abolitionists. “Believing, as we do, that men should never do evil that good may come,” wrote William Lloyd Garrison, in The Liberator; “that a good end does not justify wicked means in the accomplishment of it, and that we ought to suffer, as did our Lord and his Apostles, unresistingly … we deprecate the spirit and tendency of this Appeal.” And Benjamin Lundy, the Quaker pacifist, calling it an “attempt to rouse the worst passions of human nature,” declared that “I can do no less than set the broadest seal of condemnation on it.”
Meanwhile the unrepentant Walker managed to have some copies of his Appeal smuggled into Charleston and Savannah by black sailors who sewed them inside their jackets. In response, the mayor of Savannah asked the mayor of Boston to arrest Walker, and the Georgia legislature offered a reward of $10,000 if he were delivered to their state alive, and $1,000 if dead. However, before anything could happen, Walker died. Many suspected that he had been poisoned, but it is probable that he died of tuberculosis, the same disease that had killed his daughter a week earlier.
A little over one year after Walker’s death, Nat Turner led his famous uprising in Southampton County, Virginia. Unlike Gabriel Prosser’s insurrection, which was washed out before it could get started, and Denmark Vesey’s, whose leaders were all arrested before they could act, Turner’s Revolt was the real thing, causing widespread bloodshed and terror. It differed also in that it took place in the country rather than in a town, and in that the best account was given by the leader himself—although some allowance should be made for the fact that Nat Turner’s famous Confession was written up, and doubtless somewhat edited, by Thomas Gray, a lawyer who visited him in prison shortly after he had been captured.
Gray described Turner as “a complete fanatic” with “an uncommon share of intelligence” and “a mind capable of attaining anything, but warped and perverted by the influence of early impressions. He is below the ordinary stature, though strong and active, having the true Negro face, every feature of which is strongly marked … The calm, deliberate composure with which he spoke of his late deeds and intentions; the expression of his fiend-like face when excited by enthusiasm, still bearing the stains of the blood of helpless innocence about him; clothed with rags and covered with chains, yet daring to raise his manacled hands to heaven; with a spirit soaring above the attributes of man—I looked on him, and my blood curdled in my veins.”
Turner spoke freely, ranging back to his childhood and his first awareness that he had been singled out by God for a special destiny. “Being at play with other children, when three or four years old, I was telling them something which my mother overhearing, said it had happened before I was born.” This was confirmed by others “and caused them to say, in my hearing, I surely would be a prophet, as the Lord had shown me things that had happened before my birth. And my father and mother strengthened me in this, my first impression, saying in my presence I was intended for some great purpose, which they had always thought from certain marks on my head and breast.”
Also significant was “the manner in which I learned to read and write.” Although he “had no recollection whatever of learning the alphabet,” yet “to the astonishment of the family, one day when a book was shown to me to keep me from crying, I began spelling the names of the different objects. This was a source of wonder to all in the neighborhood, particularly the blacks.” As he grew up he spent much time in fasting and prayer and reading the Scriptures, with growing “confidence in my superior judgment.” And then, “as I was praying one day at my plough, the Spirit spoke to me, saying: ‘Seek ye the kingdom of heaven, and all things shall be added unto you.’ And I was greatly astonished, and for two years prayed continually, whenever my duty would permit; and then, again, I had the same revelation, which fully confirmed me in the impression that I was ordained for some great purpose in the hands of the Almighty.
“Several years rolled round in which many events occurred to strengthen me in this, my belief,” and then he h
ad another vision. “And I saw white spirits and black spirits engaged in battle, and the sun was darkened—the thunder rolled in the heavens, and blood flowed in streams—and I heard a voice saying, ‘Such is your luck, such you are called to see, and let it come rough or smooth, you must surely bear it.’” Following this revelation he isolated himself as much as he could and “sought more than ever to obtain true holiness before the great day of judgment should appear; and then I began to receive the true knowledge of faith. And from the first steps of righteousness until the last was I made perfect, and the Holy Ghost was with me and said, ‘Behold me as I stand in the heavens’; and I looked and saw the forms of men in different attitudes, and there were lights in the sky to which the children of darkness gave other names than what they really were, for they were the lights of the Saviour’s hands, stretched forth from east to west, even as they were extended on the cross on Calvary for the redemption of sinners. And I wondered greatly at these miracles, and prayed to be informed of a certainty of the meaning thereof, and shortly afterwards, while laboring in the field, I discovered drops of blood on the corn, as though it were dew from heaven, and I communicated it to many, both black and white, in the neighborhood; and I then found on the leaves in the woods hieroglyphic characters and numbers, with the forms of men in different attitudes, portrayed in blood, and representing the figures I had seen before in the heavens. And now the Holy Ghost had revealed itself to me, and made plain the miracles it had shown me, for as the blood of Christ had been shed on this earth, and had ascended to heaven for the salvation of sinners, and was now returning to earth again in the form of dew; and as the leaves on the trees bore the impression of the figures I had seen in the heavens, it was plain to me that the Saviour was about to lay down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and the great day of judgment was at hand.”
