![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
The Vesey conspiracy was the largest in North America, yet historians have failed to establish the wider contexts for how white authorities responded to the plot. This article points to a conspiracy in Camden, South Carolina, in 1816 to argue that many of the responses to Vesey derived from participants' knowledge of Camden. In particular, those representing Charleston in the state legislature gained first-hand knowledge of the plot and several later became key actors in the Vesey trials. The Camden conspiracy in 1816 thus established the wider socio-political context for the unfolding of the Vesey trials in 1822.
KEYWORDS:
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Among the notable contributions to the historiography of the Vesey conspiracy are Egerton, He Shall Go Out Free; Johnson, “Denmark Vesey and His Co-Conspirators”; Johnson, “The Making of a Slave Conspiracy”; Egerton and Paquette, The Denmark Vesey Affair; and Paquette and Egerton, “Of Facts and Fables.”
2 Wade, “The Vesey Plot”; and Johnson, “Denmark Vesey and His Co-Conspirators,” 935–8.
3 The Denmark Vesey Affair, 540–1.
4 Paquette and Egerton, “Of Facts and Fables,” 17.
5 For details of the 1797 conspiracy see City Gazette, November 22, 23 and 28, 1797.
6 Kirkland and Kennedy, Historic Camden, 19.
7 On the re-opening of the transatlantic trade between 1803 and 1808 and the importation of c.70,000 Africans into South Carolina see McMillin, The Final Victims, 19–27; and Shugerman, “The Louisiana Purchase,” 280.
8 Message of the Governor, City Gazette, December 6, 1816.
9 Message of the Governor, City Gazette, December 6, 1816; and Stern, Mary Chestnut’s Civil War Epic, 213.
10 A Refutation of the Calumnies, 76.
11 Camden Gazette, July 4, 1816.
12 Paquette and Egerton, The Denmark Vesey Affair, 159.
13 “Extract of a Letter from a Gentleman in Camden, S.C. to His Friend in Philadelphia, Dated July 4, 1816.” National Advocate (N.Y.) July 19, 1816.
14 Message of the Governor, City Gazette, December 6, 1816.
15 Henry, “The Police Control of Slaves in South Carolina,” 152.
16 For Salmond, see his obituary The South-Carolinian, July 6, 1854; for Kershaw, see Kirkland and Kennedy, Historic Camden, 381. The freeholders were Benjamin Bynum (formerly Sheriff of Kershaw District), Joseph Brevard (formerly judge of the South Carolina Supreme Court); Burwell Boykin (previously a state legislator), Thomas Whitaker, and Benjamin Carter (both planters). See Kirkland and Kennedy, Historic Camden, 321–6; 347–8, 360–1, 397.
17 Brevard, An Alphabetical Digest of the Public Statutes.
18 The procedure for the trials of enslaved people was set out in Article 9 of the 1740 Negro Act. The law is included in Paquette and Egerton, The Denmark Vesey Affair, 113–14.
19 Henry W. Desaussure to Timothy Ford, July 9, 1816, Timothy Ford Papers, South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston, South Carolina.
20 Freehling, “Denmark Vesey’s Antipaternalist Reality,” 54–5.
21 Trial Record, Kershaw County, July 3–17, 1816, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina.
22 For the execution of Sam by burning for the murder of his master in Edgefield District, see Charleston Courier, February 7, 1820.
23 A Refutation of the Calumnies, 76.
24 Rachel Blanding (Camden, SC) to Hannah Lewis (Philadelphia), July 4, 1816, William Blanding Papers, South Caroliniana Library.
25 Camden Gazette, July 11, 1816.
26 Desaussure to Ford, July 9, 1816.
27 Desaussure to Ford, July 9, 1816. “The chiefs disdained to implicate others – the head man avowed his guilt, + gloried in it, but said nothing not even quartering should induce him to inculpate others.”
28 Blanding to Lewis, July 25, 1816.
29 A Refutation of the Calumnies, 76.
30 James Spady observes that several of those who were interrogated during the Vesey trials accepted they had heard of the plot, but had declined to join it. Spady, “Belonging and Alienation,” 43.
31 Paquette and Egerton note that this is exactly what occurred in Charleston in 1822. Paquette and Egerton, “Of Facts and Fables,” 8–48.
32 Trial Record, Kershaw County, MS, July 3–17, 1816 (South Caroliniana Library).
33 Post-trial confessions (often made on the scaffold) were often published in the press, or in pamphlet form, and nearly always involved the condemned accepting the fairness of their treatment, and often a warning to others not to follow the path that had led to their deaths. See Carlton, “The Rhetoric of Death,” 66–79.
34 Camden Gazette, July 11, 1816.
35 Camden Gazette, July 4, 1816.
36 Camden Gazette, July 11, 1816.
37 Camden Gazette, July 4 and 11, 1816; Ford, Deliver us from Evil, 176–9.
38 Camden Gazette, July 11, 1816.
39 Raboteau, Slave Religion, 130–43; Egerton, He Shall Go out Free, 104–5; Loveland, Southern Evangelicals and the Social Order, 188–94; and Gallay, “Planters and Slaves in the Great Awakening,” 19–36.
40 Inabinet, Lyttleton Street United Methodist Church, 17, 25.
41 Blanding to Lewis, July 4, 1816.
42 Rachel Blanding (Camden, SC) to Hannah Lewis (Philadelphia), July 25, 1816, William Blanding Papers, South Caroliniana Library.
43 A Refutation of the Calumnies, 76.
44 On the role of printing and reprinting materials in this manner see Beals, “The Role of the Sydney Gazette,” 149–50; idem, “Transnational Exchanges,” 246; and McGill, American Literature and the Culture of Reprinting, 30. See also Sharples, The World That Fear Made, 62.
45 American Beacon, July 30, 1816.
46 Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser, July 19 and New York Commercial Advertiser, July 20, New York Spectator and Boston Recorder, July 24, New York Courier, July 25, Eastern Argus (Portland Maine) July 31, 1816.
47 Charleston Times, July 17, 1816. In June and July 1822 the Charleston papers were similarly silent on the unfolding Vesey conspiracy, aside from a few oblique references.
48 Columbia Telescope, July 19, 1816; Southern Patriot, July 8 and 10, 1816.
49 Blanding to Lewis, July 4, 1816.
50 New York Commercial Advertiser, New York Evening Post both July 18; National Advocate (New York) and Boston Daily Advertiser both July 19, 1816 [Boston paper bylines it Philadelphia July 16], The Reportory (Boston) July 20, Independent Chronicle, July 22, Connecticut Currant, July 23.
51 American Beacon (Norfolk VA) July 30, 1816.
52 Sharples, The World That Fear Made, 1–18, 99–100; see also Jordan, White over Black, 150–4 and Egerton, He Shall Go out Free, 167–8.
53 Egerton and Paquette, The Denmark Vesey Affair, 368.
54 Mary Beach to Elizabeth Gilchrist, July 5, 1822, in Egerton and Paquette, The Denmark Vesey affair, 376.
55 Blanding and Williams had been roommates at Brown University. Kirkland and Kennedy, Historic Camden, 100.
56 Desaussure to Ford, July 9, 1816. Desaussure and Ford and previously been partners in a legal practice in Charleston.
57 City Gazette, December 6, 1816. It was also printed in the Camden Gazette, December 5, 1816 and the Columbia Telescope, December 3, 1816.
58 Isaac and Cameron were owned by Sarah Lang, Jack by her son Thomas Lang. Locations of the plantations are marked on the Mills Map of Kershaw District (1825). http://www.davidrumsey.com/maps860034-23867.html.
59 Spady, “Power and Confession,” 292, 303.
60 Camden Gazette, April 25, 1816. This report originally appeared in the Newport Mercury, March 23, 1816 and featured in the press in nearly every state. The London Times, however, noted that “the danger has been exaggerated … some ill-disposed individuals had thrown the place into confusion. It was found necessary to read the riot act, and to call out the troops, and these energetic measures had defeated the plans of the turbulent” (Times, May 7, 1816).
61 Camden Gazette, May 30, 1816, June 20, 1816.
62 Kingsley, A Treatise on the Patriarchal or Co-operative System, 11.
63 Inabinet, “The July Fourth Incident,” 218. On the occupation of Cumberland Island, see Caulfield, One Hundred Years’ History of the 2nd Batt, 34; Latour, Historical Memoir of the War, clxxix; and Bullard, Robert Stafford of Cumberland Island, 46. On the similar impact of British forces in Virginia during 1813 and 1814, see Taylor, The Internal Enemy, 200–13; 245–349; and Millett, “Slavery and the War of 1812,” 184–205.
64 Desaussure to Ford, July 9, 1816.
65 On literacy see, for example, the complaint made by the Charleston Grand Jury in 1820 about “missionary school-masters” teaching slaves to read. Egerton and Paquette, The Denmark Vesey Affair, 56. A similar link was observed during the Gabriel Prosser plot in Virginia in 1800, see Sidbury, Ploughshares into Swords, 72–82.
66 Egerton and Pacquette, The Denmark Vesey Affair, 398.
67 Jason Sharples argues that the commonality between slave plots is a result of the easy circulation of information among British colonies, the leading questions asked by investigators, and the widespread use of torture. Sharples, The World That Fear Made, 1–18, 99–100; The 1797 plotter in Charleston also intended “to fire the city” (City Gazette, November 22, 1797).
68 Camden Town Council investigation 1816, Kershaw District, Magistrates and Freeholders Records, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina [SCDAH]. Testimonies of Sam “raise an army and fight the white people”; Jim “raise [sic] against the white people”; Tom “fight this country”; Old Jack “rise and take country,” Spottswood “go and fight the white people.”
69 Biographical Directory of the Senate of the State of South Carolina 1776–1964, 36; Biographical Directory of the South Carolina House of Representatives, 294–5.
70 See Senate Journal 1816, 117 and House of Representatives Journal 1816, 26, 85, 92. SCDAH.
71 Petition of Sarah Martin, Petitions to the General Assembly (S165015), SCDAH.
72 Spady, “Belonging and Alienation,” 41–2; and Kaye, Joining Places, 24.
73 Paquette and Egerton, The Denmark Vesey Affair, 160.
74 Spady, “Power and Confession,” 290–1.
75 Johnson, “Denmark Vesey and His Co-Conspirators,” 915–976; and Sharples, The World That Fear Made, 102.
76 Egerton and Paquette, The Denmark Vesey Affair, 21–4; and Mood, Methodism in Charleston, 130–3. John Saillant points out that despite, being generally referred to by historians as an African Methodist Episcopal church, at the time it was simply termed “The African Church.” While organised on Methodist lines, he argues, it was not formally linked to the African Methodist Episcopal Church based in Philadelphia. Saillant, “Before 1822.”
77 Spady, “Power and Confession,” 299; and Egerton, He Shall Go out Free, 105–25.
78 Egerton uses the trial testimony to argue that Vesey became a Methodist class leader who promoted the vengeful and angry Deity of the Old Testament as the most suitable role model for enslaved people. Egerton, He Shall Go out Free, 112–13. Michael Johnson, discounting most of the testimony as coerced and unreliable, points out that Vesey was actually a full communicant at the Second Presbyterian Church. Johnson, “Denmark Vesey’s Church,” 805–48. That Vesey was deeply religious is not in doubt. Egerton, He Shall Go out Free, 41.
79 For examples of failed petitions for compensation when slaves had been killed by patrols or the militia, and not after a trial, see Lockley, Maroon Communities, 80–6.
80 Paquette and Egerton, The Denmark Vesey Affair, 540.
81 Ibid., 540, 159.
82 Governor Bennett’s Circular Letter, August 10, 1822, in Paquette and Egerton, The Denmark Vesey Affair, 470.
83 Paquette and Egerton, The Denmark Vesey Affair, 626–7.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Tim Lockley
Tim Lockley is professor of North American history at the University of Warwick.