Causes Of The Stono Rebellion

The Stono Rebellion was the last major slave uprising until Nat Turner’s Rebellion in Virginia in 1831. What lesson did slaves and masters learn from the Stono Rebellion that would discourage a similar rebellion for almost a century? The Stono Rebellion had a lot of casualties on both sides. It made each side reflect on what exactly happened. The lesson learned from the slaves and the masters was that actions have

” For many, the economic structure of slavery still held strong and it established status in British America. Slavery had begun in the later half of the 17th century and in many ways, it had made Atlantic commerce and overseas settlement possible. Thousands of Africans had been shipped overseas to work in the fields of staple crops. In the years leading up to the American Revolution, high concentrations of slaves remained in the southern colonies where they continued to labour on cotton and tobacco plantations. Of the thirteen colonies, Georgia, Virginia and the Carolinas held the highest concentrations of slaves. In 1775, it is estimated that of the 2.5 million people living in the thirteen colonies, 500,000 were blacks. The vast majority of these blacks were slaves, with many labouring for their masters under harsh conditions. Although their experiences were difficult, blacks rarely revolted or staged rebellions against their masters. This has often been associated with the plantation system, and the role it played in severing blacks’ ties to one another. As highlighted by historian Silvia Frey, “The North American plantation organization, with the dominating presence of the master, inhibited the development of the tribal cohesiveness that characterized the islands’ plantation organization and produced widespread violence against whites by black guerrilla bands.” However, despite the absence of any significant

In the United States, the very thought of a slave rebellion was petrifying. The revolution in Haiti, definitely had impact in the United States, in the year 1831 Nat Turner used similar strategies to lead a violent slave revolt in Southampton, Virginia. His actions are comparable to that of Toussaint L ’Overture and Jean Jacques Dessalines in his fight for freedom. Also another occurrence in the United States was John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry, slave revolts were often interpreted as an "an abolitionist conspiracy to instigate a slave uprising" (Hunt, p. 139). The he Southern press resurrected the themes of "Northern Jacobinism" and the Haitian revolution, in lurid, emotionally charged articles, as if these were fresh events, not 60 to 70 years in the past. Even during the Civil War, Confederate propaganda used Haiti as an example of how the Confederacy was needed to protect white families from the evils of Jacobinism and

The Stono Rebellion was at the time the biggest slave rebellion to ever take place in the American colonies. It came at a time when owning slaves was one of the accepted things in the colonies and the colonists depended on the labor the slaves were doing. Some colonies entire economies depended on it. In South Carolina, there were more slaves than free men in the colony. This was because of the African slave trade.

Bacon’s Rebellion helped originate slavery in Jamestown, Virginia in the Chesapeake region. Nathaniel Bacon was a white land owner in this town who brought together indentured servants and other poor whites to overthrow their elites due to the

The slaves used rebellions or anti-slavery movements as a form of resistance against slavery. However, the result of slave insurrections was mass executions, and many of them avoided these rebellions for the fear of being executed. The famous insurrections in the American history were the Gabriel Prossey's conspiracy in 1800, Nat Turner's Rebellion in 1831, and the Stono Rebellion of 1739. Among these rebellions, only the Nat

Vesey began to build a network of supporters who would help recruit and organize other slaves for his planned revolt. However, he knew his rebels could not hold the city or force recognition of their freedom. Instead, he planned for them to rise up at night, killing many whites while they slept. In the ensuing chaos, they would seize ships to sail to Haiti, where slaves had revolted and established a free nation (132).

Claiming roughly eighty black and white lives and involving as many as one hundred slaves and perhaps as many whites, the Stono Rebellion of September 1739 was one of the most significant and violent slave uprisings in colonial America. Although the rebels failed in their attempt to reach St. Augustine and claim freedom under Spanish rule, the revolt shaped South Carolina slave society in some important ways and its legacy lingered for years after the event.

Beginning on September 9,1739, the Stono Rebellion was one of the largest slave uprisings in colonial America (Stono's Rebellion). It was the first known slave revolt in the continent of North America in 1739 (Slave Rebellions). Though it was one of the largest slave revolts in colonial America, it was still unsuccessful, but because it was so large, it had several effect on America and its government.

support them. Through the eyes of the freemen this was seen as a big mistake.

They attacked their owner Manuel Andry, killing him and stealing all his valuables. They then continued to kill whites, burn plantations, and garner support.

In the early 18th century, South Carolina experienced a boom in their rice industry. This caused a shift from a frontier to a plantation economy, affecting the quality of life of slaves. Their tasks switched from farming, hunting, fishing, and raising cattle, to being trapped in the rice fields. The slaves felt much resent for this extremely difficult, straining work. In the 1730s, there was an outbreak of many slave conspiracies in the West Indies, especially in the Bahamas and Antigua. Furthermore, many runaway slaves from South Carolina had made their way down to Florida, where Spain offered them freedom. This inspired slaves to fight for their freedom. As a result of the Stono Rebellion, slaveowners came to fear their slaves and the threat of future uprisings. Because of this fear, The Slave Code of South Carolina of 1740 was created. This code greatly limited rights of the slaves living in the region.

Slave revolts normally happened outside of the plantation system and in large cities were the slaves were able to act more freely. It’s estimated there were at least 250 slave rebellions in America before slavery was abolished in 1865.Most tales of what happened during those rebellions could be bias seen as they were written by whites rather than by the slaves that started the revolt. Since African American slaves accounted for more than one-third of the population in the 18th century, slave rebellions were a large source of fear for white Americans in the south.

An approximate of three thousand slaves escaped from their masters in 1781 when the British invaded Virginia (Blumrosen & Blumrosen, 2006). About five thousand and twenty thousand slaves in Georgia and South Carolina, respectively, were freed from bondage as a result of the American Revolution (Clifford, 2005). The Revolution’s natural rights philosophy inspired the freed blacks to request the state legislatures to get rid of slavery and Congress to terminate the slave trade (Waldstreicher, 2004). Many of the freed slaves moved to the North because they believed that living conditions were better in the North than in the South. Unfortunately, they experienced many problems in the North, such as lack of jobs, insufficient food, and lack of housing, which forced many of them to go back to the south to work on the cotton plantations for wages (Clifford, 2005). In the South, the freed slaves were assured of food and housing.

On September 1739, a group of South Carolina slaves, most of them recently arrived from kongo where some had appeared to be soldiers, where they had taken a store containing which had a number of weapons at the town of stono. They would use “beating drums to attract followers, the armed band marched southward toward Florida, burning houses and barns, killing whites they encountered, and shouting liberty.”(144). This rebellion took the lives of more than two dozen whites and as many as 200 slaves. Many slaves managed to reach Florida, where in 1740 they were armed by the Spanish to help repel an attack on St. Augustine by a force from