Stono Rebellion
The
Stono Rebellion is the earliest known organized act of rebellion against slavery in the
United States. On September 9,
1739 Carolinian slaves gathered at the
Stono River (for which the rebellion is named) to plan an armed march for
freedom.
Several factors convinced the slaves that a rebellion might successfully lead to freedom. A
yellow fever epidemic had weakened the power of slaveholders, there was talk of a war between the
British and
Spanish, and accounts of slaves who had obtained their freedom by escaping to Spanish-controlled
Florida gave the Carolinian slaves hope. Lastly, the slaves organized their revolt to take place before September 29, when the Security Act of 1739 (which required all white males to carry arms on Sundays to guard against slave uprisings) would take effect. Jemmy, the leader of the revolt, was a literate slave described as
Angolan, which likely meant he was from the
Kongo Empire in
Central Africa. He and the other slaves who lead the rebellion may have realised that if they did not act to seek their freedom before September 29, they might not ever get another chance.
On
September 9,
1739, twenty black Carolinians led by Jemmy, an Angolan slave, met near the Stono River, twenty miles southwest of
Charleston. They marched down the roadway with a banner that read "
Liberty!"--they chanted the same word in unison. At the bridge, they seized weapons from a store and killed the two storekeepers. They raised a flag and proceeded towards
St. Augustine. On the way, they gathered more recruits, their number now close to 100. They burned the houses of slave owners. South Carolina's
Lieutenant Governor,
William Bull, and four of his friends ran in to the group on horseback. The Lieutenant Governor fled and warned other slave-holders. They rallied a mob of
plantation owners and slave-holders to seek out Jemmy and his freedom-seeking followers.
Late that afternoon, planters on horseback caught up with the group now numbering sixty to one hundred slaves. Twenty white Carolinians and forty of the rebels were killed before the rebellion was suppressed. The captured slaves were then
decapitated though some also managed to escape.
That same year there was another uprising in Georgia, and the next year another took place in South Carolina, probably inspired by the Stono Rebellion - at the time, colonial officials believed as much. The Stono Rebellion resulted in a 10 year moratorium on slave imports through Charleston and enacted a harsher slave code, which banned earning money and education for slaves.
*Wood, Peter.
Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion. New York: Norton, 1974.
*
PBS story on the revolt*
Library of Congress webpage on the revolt
