Stono

Documenting and Interpreting a Southern Slave Revolt

Mark M. Smith, Mark M. Smith

• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781643360942
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Slavery
• Index: Social Sciences

A sourcebook for understanding an uprising that continues to incite historical debate

In the fall of 1739, as many as one hundred enslaved African and African Americans living within twenty miles of Charleston joined forces to strike down their white owners and march en masse toward Spanish Florida and freedom. More than sixty whites and thirty slaves died in the violence that followed. Among the most important slave revolts in colonial America, the Stono Rebellion also ranks as South Carolina's largest slave insurrection and one of the bloodiest uprisings in American history. Significant for the fear it cast among lowcountry slaveholders and for the repressive slave laws enacted in its wake, Stono continues to attract scholarly attention as a historical event worthy of study and reinterpretation.

Edited by Mark M. Smith, Stono: Documenting and Interpreting a Southern Slave Revolt introduces readers to the documents needed to understand both the revolt and the ongoing discussion among scholars about the legacy of the insurrection. Smith has assembled a compendium of materials necessary for an informed examination of the revolt. Primary documents-including some works previously unpublished and largely unknown even to specialists-offer accounts of the violence, discussions of Stono's impact on white sensibilities, and public records relating incidents of the uprising. To these primary sources Smith adds three divergent interpretations that expand on Peter H. Wood's pioneering study Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion. Excerpts from works by John K. Thornton, Edward A. Pearson, and Smith himself reveal how historians have used some of the same documents to construct radically different interpretations of the revolt's causes, meaning, and effects.

II. INTERPRETING STONO

Essay 1

ANATOMY OF A REVOLT

Peter H. Wood

Peter H. Wood, professor of history at Duke University, offered the first modern historical account of the Stono Rebellion. Wood’s work—first published in 1974—has stood the test of time very well. It is the classic interpretation and account of the rebellion, and it remains the touchstone for anyone writing on the topic. Wood places the revolt in context, thinks carefully and imaginatively about causes and timing, and explains the impact of the revolt and its local and larger significance. Although other historians of the Stono Rebellion sometimes disagree with Wood, they are clearly indebted to his work on the topic. More than any modern historian, Peter Wood identified the importance of the revolt and opened up the question for further research.

In September 1739 South Carolina was shaken by an incident that became known as the Stono Uprising. A group of slaves struck a violent but abortive blow for liberation that resulted in the deaths of more than sixty people. Fewer than twenty-five white lives were taken and property damage was localized, but the episode represented a new dimension in overt resistance. Free colonists, whose anxieties about controlling slaves had been growing for some time, saw their fears of open violence realized, and this in turn generated new fears.

According to a report written several years later, the event at Stono “awakened the Attention of the most Unthinking” among the white minority; “Every one that had any Relation, any Tie of Nature; every one that had a Life to lose were in the most sensible Manner shocked at such Danger daily hanging over their Heads.” The episode, if hardly major in its own right, seemed to symbolize the critical impasse in which Carolina’s English colonists now found themselves. “With Regret we bewailed our peculiar Case,” the same report continued, “that we could not enjoy the Benefits of Peace like the rest of Mankind and that our own Industry should be the Means of taking from us all the Sweets of Life and of rendering us Liable to the Loss of our Lives and Fortunes.”¹

The Stono Uprising can also be seen as a turning point in the history of South Carolina’s black population. [… T]his episode was preceded by a series of projected insurrections, any one of which could have assumed significant proportions. Taken together, all these incidents represent a brief but serious groundswell of resistance to slavery that had diverse and lasting repercussions. The slave system in the British mainland colonies withstood this tremor and never again faced a period of such serious unrest. For Negroes in South Carolina the era represented the first time in which steady resistance to the system showed a prospect of becoming something more than random hostility. But the odds against successful assertion were overwhelming; it was slightly too late, or far too soon, for realistic thoughts of freedom among black Americans.

The year 1739 did not begin auspiciously for the settlement. The smallpox epidemic that had plagued the town in the previous autumn was still lingering on when the council and commons convened in Charlestown in January. Therefore, Lt. Gov. William Bull, in his opening remarks to the initial session, recommended that the legislature consider “only what is absolutely necessary to be dispatched for the Service of the Province.”² The primary issue confronting them, Bull suggested, was the desertion of their slaves, who represented such a huge proportion of the investments of white colonists. The Assembly agreed that the matter was urgent,³ and a committee was immediately established to consider what measures should be taken in response to “the Encouragement lately given by the Spaniards for the Desertion of Negroes from this Government to the Garrison of St. Augustine.”⁴

Even as the legislators deliberated, the indications of unrest multiplied. In Georgia, William Stephens, the secretary for the trustees of that colony, recorded on February 8,1739, “what we heard told us by several newly come from Carolina, was not to be disregarded, viz. that a Conspiracy was formed by the Negroes in Carolina, to rise and forcibly make their Way out of the Province” in an effort to reach the protection of the Spanish. It had been learned, Stephens wrote in his journal, that this plot was first discovered in Winyaw in the northern part of the province, “from whence, as they were to bend their Course South, it argued, that the other Parts of the Province must be privy to it, and that the Rising was to be universal; whereupon the whole Province were all upon their Guard.”⁵ If there were rumblings in the northernmost counties, Granville County on the southern edge of the province probably faced a greater prospect of disorder. Stephens’s journal for February 20 reports word of a conspiracy among the slaves on the Montaigut and de Beaufain plantations bordering on the Savannah River just below the town of Purrysburg.⁶ Two days later the Upper House in Charlestown passed on to the Assembly a petition and several affidavits from “Inhabitants of Granville County relating to the Desertion of their Slaves to the Castle of St. Augustine.”⁷

That same week the commons expressed its distress over information that several runaways heading for St. Augustine had been taken up but then suffered to go at large without questioning. An inquiry was ordered, but it was not until early April that the Assembly heard concrete recommendations upon the problem of desertions. The first suggestion was for a petition to the English king requesting relief and assistance in this matter. Secondly, since many felt that the dozens of slaves escaping in November had eluded authorities because of a lack of scout boats, it was voted to employ two boats of eight men each in patrolling the southern coastal passages for the next nine months. Finally, to cut off Negroes escaping by land, large bounties were recommended for slaves taken up in the all-white colony of Georgia. Men, women, and children under twelve were to bring £40, £25, and £10, respectively, if brought back from beyond the Savannah River, and each adult scalp “with the two Ears” would command £20.⁸

In the midst of these deliberations, four slaves, apparently good riders who knew the terrain through hunting stray cattle, stole some horses and headed for Florida, accompanied by an Irish Catholic servant. Since they killed one white and wounded another in making their escape, a large posse was organized, which pursued them unsuccessfully. Indian allies succeeded in killing one of the runaways, but the rest reached St. Augustine, where they were warmly received.⁹ Spurred by such an incident, the Assembly completed work April 11 on legislation undertaken the previous month to prevent slave insurrections. The next day a public display was made of the punishment of two captured runaways, convicted of attempting to leave the province in the company of several other Negroes. One man was whipped, and the other, after a contrite speech before the assembled slaves, “was executed at the usual Place, and afterwards hung in Chains at Hangman’s Point opposite to this Town, in sight of all Negroes passing and repassing by Water.”¹⁰

The reactions of colonial officials mirrored the desperate feelings spreading among the white population. On May 18 the Reverend Lewis Jones observed in a letter that the desertion of more than a score of slaves from his parish of St. Helena the previous fall in response to the Spanish proclamation seemed to “Considerably Encrease the Prejudice of Planters agst the Negroes, and Occasion a Strict hand, to be kept over them by their Several Owners, those that Deserted having been Much Indulg’d.”¹¹ But concern continued among English colonists as to whether even the harshest reprisals could protect their investments and preserve their safety. […]

Developments during the summer months did little to lessen tensions. In July the Gazette printed an account from Jamaica of the truce that the English governor there had felt compelled to negotiate with an armed and independent force of runaways.¹² During the same month a Spanish Captain of the Horse from St. Augustine named Don Piedro sailed into Charlestown in a launch with twenty or thirty men, supposedly to deliver a letter to General Oglethorpe. Since Oglethorpe was residing in Frederica far down the coast, the visit seemed suspicious, and it was later recalled, in the wake of the Stono incident, that there had been a Negro aboard who spoke excellent English and that the vessel had put into numerous inlets south of Charlestown while making its return. Whether men were sent ashore was unclear, but in September the Georgians took into custody a priest thought to be “employed by the Spaniards to procure a general Insurrection of the Negroes.”¹³

Another enemy, yellow fever, reappeared in Charlestown during the late summer for the first time since 1732. The epidemic “destroyed many, who had got thro’ the Small-pox” of the previous year, and as usual it was remarked to be “very fatal to Strangers & Europeans especially.”¹⁴ September proved a particularly sultry month. A series of philosophical lectures was discontinued “by Reason of the Sickness and Heat”; a school to teach embroidery, lacework, and French to young ladies was closed down; and the Gazette ceased publication for a month when the printer fell sick.¹⁵ Lieutenant Governor Bull, citing “the Sickness with which it hath pleased God to visit this Province,” prorogued the Assembly, which attempted to convene on September 12. The session was postponed again on October 18 and did not get under way until October 30.¹⁶ By then cool weather had killed the mosquitoes that carried the disease and the contagion had subsided, but it had taken the lives of the chief justice, the judge of the Vice-Admiralty Court, the surveyor of customs, the clerk of the Assembly, and the clerk of the Court of Admiralty, along with scores of other residents.¹⁷

The confusion created by this sickness in Charlestown, where residents were dying at a rate of more than half a dozen per day, may have been a factor in the timing of the Stono Rebellion,¹⁸ but calculations might also have been influenced by the newspaper publication, in mid-August, of the Security Act, which required all white men to carry firearms to church on Sunday or submit to a stiff fine, beginning on September 29.¹⁹ It had long been recognized that the free hours at the end of the week afforded the slaves their best opportunity for cabals, particularly when whites were engaged in communal activities of their own. In 1724 Governor Nicholson had expressed to the Lords of Trade his hope that new legislation would “Cause people to Travel better Armed in Times of Publick meetings when Negroes might take the better opportunity against Great Numbers of Unarmed men.”²⁰ Later the same year the Assembly had complained that the recent statute requiring white men “to ride Arm’d on every Sunday” had not been announced sufficiently to be effective, and in 1727 the Committee of Grievances had objected that “the Law wch. obliged people to go arm’d to Church &^ca: wants strengthening.”²¹ Ten years later the presentments of the Grand Jury in Charlestown stressed the fact that Negroes were still permitted to cabal together during the hours of divine service, “which if not timely prevented may be of fatal Consequence to this Province.”²² Since the Stono Uprising, which caught planters at church, occurred only weeks before the published statute of 1739 went into effect, slaves may have considered that within the near future their masters would be even more heavily armed on Sundays.²³

One other factor seems to be more than coincidental to the timing of the insurrection. Official word of hostilities between England and Spain, which both whites and blacks in the colony had been anticipating for some time, appears to have reached Charlestown the very weekend that the uprising began.²⁴ Such news would have been a logical trigger for rebellion. If it did furnish the sudden spark, this would help explain how the Stono scheme, unlike so many others, was put into immediate execution without hesitancy or betrayal, and why the rebels marched southward toward Spanish St. Augustine with an air of particular confidence.

During the early hours of Sunday, September 9, 1739, some twenty slaves gathered near the western branch of the Stono River in St. Paul’s Parish, within twenty miles of Charlestown. Many of the conspirators were Angolans, and their acknowledge...