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The Denmark Vesey slave revolt... Would one day fuel Frederick Douglass' battle-cry for freedom...
The Denmark Vesey slave revolt... Would one day fuel Frederick Douglass' battle-cry for freedom...
Item # 719122
July 13, 1822
NILES' WEEKLY REGISTER, Baltimore, July 13, 1822
* Denmark Vesey Slaves Rebellion
* Free black man in Charleston SC
The back page has a report of the Denmark Vesey slave revolt, noting that six slaves were executed in Charleston.
The report has a small heading: "South Carolina" and reads: "Six negro men, one of them free, and the rest slaves, were executed at Charleston on the 2nd inst. pursuant to a sentence of death passed on them three or four days before, for being engaged in an attempt to raise an insurrection of the blacks. The design appears to have been a pretty formidable one. Three of them were slaves of the governor of the state, & one of these was to have had his daughter, a beautiful young lady, as part of his share of the spoils, on the destruction of her father and the whites. The plot was discovered three days before the time appointed for its accomplishment." Small heading, but huge impact!
Complete in sixteen pages, 6 1/4 by 9 3/4 inches, very nice condition.
AI notes: Denmark Vesey was a formerly enslaved man who, after purchasing his freedom in 1799, became a skilled carpenter and respected community leader in Charleston, South Carolina. Deeply influenced by the ideals of the Haitian Revolution and the Biblical narratives of liberation, Vesey used his position within Charleston’s free Black community and the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church to organize a large-scale slave rebellion in 1822. His plan aimed to rally thousands of enslaved and free Black people to seize weapons, kill slaveholders, liberate the city, and escape to Haiti—a free Black republic at the time. The conspiracy was meticulously organized over several months, but it was betrayed by informants before it could be carried out. As a result, Vesey and 34 of his alleged co-conspirators were captured, tried in secret proceedings, and hanged, while many others were imprisoned or exiled. In the aftermath, white authorities clamped down on Black institutions, including destroying Vesey’s church, and enacted stricter laws to control the enslaved population. Though vilified in his time, Vesey is now remembered as a courageous symbol of Black resistance and the enduring fight against slavery and oppression in the United States.
As noted in Wikipedia, this title: "...(was) one of the most widely-circulated magazines in the United States...Devoted primarily to politics...considered an important source for the history of the period."
Category: Pre-Civil War
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