The African Americans

by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

  SPAIN DID NOT, HOWEVER, MAINTAIN THE UPPER HAND. IN 1702 AND AGAIN IN 1704, AN ENGLISH FORCE INCINERATED MUCH OF ST. AUGUSTINE, but not its invaluable fort, murdering thousands of Christianized Indians and making off with many more as slaves. For Africans in the Carolinas, the conflicts only tightened security measures, increased the number of slave patrols, and made enslavement even harsher in an effort to stem the flow of fugitives to the Spanish. Yet at the same time the English found themselves terrified by the coalition of Indian tribes that had banded together to crush the colony. For instance, in the Tuscarora War, John Lawson, leader of the Bath, North Carolina, settlement, was executed by the Tuscaroras, although they freed one of his slaves—perhaps to further terrorize the whites. The slave reported that Lawson was hanged, but another account revealed that Lawson was impaled with numerous pieces of wood and slowly set on fire.5

  Facing possible annihilation at the hands of the Indians throughout this era and lacking sufficient manpower, the English took the surprising move of inducting slaves into the colony’s militia. While characteristic of Spanish colonies, such a move rarely happened among the English—who outlawed the right of slaves to own firearms—marking a new level of fear and desperation. In 1708, for instance, the Carolina colony awarded freedom to any slave “who in Time of an Invasion, kills an Enemy,” and the colony agreed to compensate the slave’s owner for the loss of his property. In 1715, at the start of the Yamasee War, South Carolina voted to provide lances to those blacks “who cannot be supplied with guns in the present expedition.” Revealing a level of integration that would rarely, if ever, be duplicated in a military force located in the South until the Korean War, the English reported that at the beginning of the war several “good partyes of Men, White, Indian and Negroes” operated in the field countering Yamasee attacks.

  Lacking enough white men, and uncertain of the loyalty of local Indians, the English turned to their slaves for defense, eventually enrolling hundreds in their militia, aiming to have “600 Whites & 400 negroes” under arms. The slaves faced a choice of bearing arms for their masters, and perhaps winning freedom, or running away to the Yamasees, who often proved welcoming hosts but could offer no permanent guarantee of freedom. Peace came to the region by the early 1720s, but the English response was dramatically to increase the number of slaves they imported, creating an even greater racial imbalance in the colony. As one colonial agent lamented, the growing number of African slaves only led “to the great endangering [of] the Province.”6

  The ever-growing body of slaves fresh from Africa and Florida’s policy of offering freedom to runaways led to disaster. Slave uprisings occurred in 1720 and 1724, significantly increasing the number of blacks in St. Augustine and of those eager to gain their freedom and take up arms in support of the Spanish Crown. In 1726, a group of escaped English slaves arrived in St. Augustine from the Stono region of South Carolina. Not surprisingly, some of the runaways were combat veterans who had fought with the Yamasee and now volunteered to fight for Spain and against their former masters. According to one account, the following year “Ten Negroes and fourteen Indians Commanded by those of their own colour, without any Spaniards in company with them” attacked the English and seized more slaves, followed up by a combined force of Spanish and former slaves that raided an English plantation on the Edisto River and captured additional slaves.7

  When the English retaliated against St. Augustine in 1728, they met resistance not only from Spanish troops but also from a black militia unit under the command of Captain Francisco Menéndez (a self-described Mandingo, but also an Atlantic Creole, someone already acculturated to European culture on the African coast, who then enters the Atlantic world either as a slave or free), who served Spain for more than 40 years. He and his troops performed such invaluable service that they earned praise from the king, who in 1733 reissued his 1693 offer of freedom to any slaves who escaped from the English colonies.

  In 1738, the runaways and other blacks then living in St. Augustine moved about two miles outside the city to land given by the Spanish. Their settlement was called Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, better known as Fort Mose. Not unlike a South American Maroon society, it was commanded by Africans, Captain Menéndez and another black officer, Antonio de la Puente, but functioned as an outer defense for the city. Spanish authorities oversaw construction of the fort and the surrounding homes owned by the black residents, armed the men, and even provided the services of a priest who baptized the converts. Archeologists recovered a St. Christopher medal during recent excavations at the Fort Mose site, which could have been obtained by its original owner in any part of the Spanish empire, or even in the Catholic kingdom of Kongo. A symbol of the patron saint of travelers, the medal is a remarkable symbol of the black diaspora.8

  THE CREATION OF FORT MOSE, WHICH THE ENGLISH RAZED IN 1739, SPOKE TO A VASTLY DIFFERENT AFRICAN EXPERIENCE IN NORTH AMERICA, one that allowed for measures of freedom and autonomy that would rarely be experienced at the same level until the next century. Because of its success and the freedom it promised to English slaves, the settlement represented an intolerable symbol of black independence and a real threat to the foundations of English slavery. Nothing proved this more dramatically than the events of September 9, 1739, at a branch of the Stono River near Charleston, South Carolina.9

  Thousands of the slaves shipped to the Carolinas prior to 1740 came from the kingdom of Kongo. So many came from this same African region that South Carolina became known as “the Kongolese center of North America.” The fact that a large number of the slaves from this region of Angola were already Catholic made them especially appealing to the Spanish, and ever more threatening to the Protestant English. Some of the English became so fearful of their slaves’ religion that they imagined Jesuit priests mingling among them, spreading dissention. But no Jesuits were required to incite Africans laboring under English domination.

  On Sunday, September 9, 1739, a day free of labor, about 20 slaves under the leadership of a man named Jemmy provided whites with a painful lesson on the African desire for liberty. Many of the group were experienced soldiers, either from the Yamasee War or their experience in Africa, and had been trained in the use of weapons. They gathered at the Stono River and raided a simple warehouse-like store, Hutchenson’s, which supplied the region with manufactured goods from England and continental Europe. They executed the white owners and placed their victims’ heads on the store’s front steps for all to see. They proceeded to other houses in the area, killing the occupants and burning the structures, swelling their ranks as they marched through the colony toward St. Augustine.

  Fort Mose, by Jeff Gage. Watercolor. Museum of Florida History.

  More and more slaves joined the original 20, although others avoided the group or actually helped hide their masters. The insurrectionists soon numbered about 100 and paraded down King’s Highway, according to sources, carrying banners and shouting, “Liberty!” In their native Kikongo, they would have thought the word lukangu, a term that would have expressed the English ideas embodied in liberty and, perhaps, salvation. They fought off the English for more than a week before the colonists rallied and killed most of the rebels, although some very likely reached Fort Mose.10

  Even after colonial forces crushed the Stono uprising, additional outbreaks occurred, including the very next year when South Carolina executed at least 50 additional rebel slaves. The appeal of St. Augustine proved too much for the English, and not long after suppression of the Stono rebels, they struck with fury at the city, but especially against Fort Mose. While the English destroyed the fort, Menéndez and his militia retook the outpost the following year, earning acclaim from the Spanish government, which praised “the constancy, valor and glory of the officers … the patriotism, courage, and steadiness of the troops.” The fort persisted but declined in significance as the Carolina slave regime strengthened, surviving until the 1763 Paris Peace Treaty, when the Spanish abandoned Florida and many of the Fort
Mose residents relocated to Cuba.11

  THE STONO REBELLION, THE LARGEST SLAVE REVOLT EVER STAGED IN THE 13 COLONIES, WAS NOT AN ISOLATED EVENT AND REFLECTED THE TENSIONS OF A SLAVE SOCIETY IN THE MAKING. Uprisings and conspiracies—many inspired by Spanish Florida—took place in Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, the Caribbean, and even New York City.12 The New York conspiracy of 1741, while never actually materializing, developed at the end of a series of disturbances—as had been the case in the Carolinas and St. Augustine—that instilled nearly uncontrollable fear in whites and led to devastating consequences for African Americans. In this case, however, the conspiracy came at a time and in a section of the country that few today think of as slave-bound, although New York did not abolish slavery until 1827. And while the region may be fairly characterized as a society with slaves, rather than a slave society, black freedom became every bit as restricted and regulated in the Empire State as in Virginia or South Carolina.13

  In 1991, construction workers preparing the foundations for a new federal office building in Lower Manhattan struck wooden boxes containing the remains of several hundred African men, women, and children, all the former slaves of 17th-century Dutch and British householders. Just a few blocks north of City Hall in one of the world’s largest financial centers, these remains remind us of the human costs of a nation’s formation. Most of the bodies were of children; most of the adults were scarcely out of their 30s when they died, after lives as brutish as they were short. They remind us of both the multinational character of North American slavery during that first century of settlement and how its racial character had hardened by the end of that century.

  THE NEW AMSTERDAM COLONY WAS SETTLED BY THE DUTCH IN THE EARLY 1600S DURING THEIR RISE TO WORLD POWER; it was seized from them in 1664 by the Duke of Albany and York, the future King James II of England. Just two years earlier, James had taken the helm of the newly chartered Royal African Company, which held monopoly rights to the West African slave trade. Although most of those slaves would be consigned to the plantations in the British West Indies, a not insignificant number were redirected to slave auctions in downtown Manhattan, including no doubt many of those laid to rest in the “negro burial grounds.” Moreover, the burial site was established because in the 1690s, blacks were barred from interment in the city’s churchyards, as had been the practice in decades past.

  It surprises many people today to learn that New York City was the leading individual port in the slave trade in the colonies before 1700, receiving 11 shipments direct from Africa, bringing in 1,890 slaves between 1655 and 1698, although the Chesapeake region (where slaves were sold on virtually every river and inlet) took in five times that number of slaves. (In the 18th century, Charleston would receive far more slaves than Virginia, Maryland, and New York combined.)14

  Thus, we should not be surprised that New York also became a site of rebellion. Despite the ability of a very small group of freed black people to own property, not unlike early colonial Virginia, tensions remained high and the enforcement of enslavement rigorous. In the spring of 1712, slaves—Akan-speaking “Coromantees”—set fire to the house of a white owner, and as the occupants fled the flames, the slaves waited outside to butcher them. One white was stabbed in the back by his own slave. About nine whites died in the revolt and another six were wounded.

  Authorities swiftly rounded up about 21 conspirators—many merely on the suspicion of involvement—and began an orgy of executions. Six of the rebels decided to kill themselves rather than be captured and suffer the fate that they knew awaited them. Of those captured, some were broken on the wheel, others hung alive by chains, while others burned at the stake, with one unfortunate captive named Tom slowly roasted for eight hours. One pregnant female slave was allowed to give birth, and was then executed. The remains and several severed heads were displayed along popular roads to show other slaves what lay in store for rebels. The retribution became so fierce that the colony’s governor halted the killings and pardoned some of the accused, including some free Spanish black sailors who had been illegally enslaved before the insurrection.

  Slave Sale in New Amsterdam, by Howard Pyle. Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, January 1895.

  While the governor encouraged citizens to abandon slavery for white indentured servitude, hoping to avoid future incidents, colonists only increased slave imports—as the South Carolinians would do after the Yamasee War—eventually doubling the region’s slave population. To exercise increased social control and prevent future threats, the colonial legislature the following year enacted new, harsher regulations designed to rivet the chains of slavery even tighter, virtually eliminating the possibility that a master could ever free a slave.15

  After the first attempt at rebellion, whites began to imagine insurrections in every whisper of a slave. Rumors of plots surfaced repeatedly in New York and New Jersey, leaving whites keenly attuned to any hint of an effort to burn their city. Hoping to avert another incident, New York outlawed the right of any black to meet with others after sunset. Whites had become so paranoid that in 1731, the words of one drunken slave proved sufficient to ignite a wave of legal killings, whippings, and mutilations. The charge of rape or that a slave had in any way attacked a white woman would send him to the stake. Additionally, whites blamed the meddling Christianizing efforts of itinerant Great Awakening evangelicals like George Whitefield who had repeatedly warned against the dangers of slave owning. With about 1,700 blacks living in a city of about 7,000 whites determined to grind every person of African descent under their heel, revenge might be inevitable.16

  In early 1741, Fort George in New York burned to the ground. Fires erupted elsewhere in the city, four in one day, and in New Jersey and on Long Island. Several whites claimed they had heard slaves bragging about setting the fires and threatening worse. They concluded that a revolt had been planned by secret black societies and gangs, inspired by a conspiracy of priests and their Catholic minions—white, black, brown, free, and slave.

  Certainly, ethnic groups such as the Papa, from the Slave Coast near Whydah; the Igbo, from the area around the Niger River; and the Malagasy, from Madagascar, constituted coherent groups who may have led a resistance movement. Other identifiable groups were Spanish-American sailors, “negroes and mulattoes,” who had been captured in the early spring of 1740, brought to New York from the West Indies, and sold as slaves. The sailors themselves maintained that they were “free subjects of the King of Spain” and hence entitled to treatment as prisoners of war. Known among the conspirators as the “Cuba People,” they had probably come from Havana, the greatest port of the Spanish West Indies and a center of a free black population. Having been “free men in their own country,” they rightly felt unjustly enslaved in New York.17

  A 16-year-old Irish indentured servant, arrested in a case of theft and perhaps hoping to convince authorities to go easy on him, claimed knowledge of a plot by the city’s slaves—in league with a few whites—to kill white men, seize white women, and incinerate the city. In the investigation that followed, 34 people were executed, including 30 black men, 2 white men, and 2 white women. Seventy people of African descent were exiled to places as various as Newfoundland, Madeira, Saint-Domingue (the French colony on Hispaniola), and Curaçao. Before the end of the summer of 1741, 17 blacks were hanged and 13 more went to the stake, becoming ghastly illuminations of white fears ignited by the institution of slavery they so zealously defended.18

  The slave revolts threatened in New York City and throughout the early 18th century highlight the centrality of slavery to colonial economic and political development. Despite the threat to their very lives—and ignoring any consideration of justice—the colonists insisted upon the ownership of Africans. The insurrections also shed light on how slaves retained their Atlantic identity, forged in Africa and brought to America. As revealed in religious and burial practices, Africans retained their diverse roots and borrowed ideas and tactics from the Atlantic world. The revolts in the 13 North Amer
ican colonies also echoed across the other 13 British colonies in the Caribbean, from St. John to Antigua to Jamaica, where an insurrection nearly ended slavery in 1760. Although none succeeded, the rebellions speak resoundingly of the impressive ability of Africans throughout the Americas to forge their own cultures and societies, await a chance for freedom, and strike blows for that liberty, envisioning the scope of their horizons in light of the larger Atlantic world.

  “IF SLAVERY BE THUS FATALLY CONTAGIOUS, HOW IS IT THAT WE HEAR THE LOUDEST YELPS FOR LIBERTY AMONG THE DRIVERS OF NEGROES?” ASKED SAMUEL JOHNSON.19 Historians are by no means the first to notice the contradiction between colonial assertions of freedom, liberty, and equality and their commitment to slavery. Critics in England, like the great lexicographer and author Samuel Johnson, found little difficulty in rebutting the American colonists’ charges that British taxation without representation threatened liberty.

  Such critiques, however, were not limited to America’s opponents. As early as 1764, colonial statesman James Otis asserted his belief in the right of all, black and white, to freedom. In 1774, the Reverend Jeremy Belknap, founder of the Massachusetts Historical Society, wondered, “Would it not be astonishing to hear that a people who are contending so earnestly for liberty are not willing to allow liberty to others?” The next year, Thomas Paine similarly drew attention to his fellow Americans’ hypocrisy: “With what consistency, or decency [can] they complain so loudly of attempts to enslave them, while they hold so many hundred thousands in slavery; and annually enslave many thousands more, without any pretence of authority, or claim upon them?”20