Political Activity and Resistance to Oppression: From the American Revolution to the Civil War 279
military training from fi ghting in the confl ict. As occurred
with most in British North American, this settlement was
ultimately destroyed by the state police forces (with some
killed and others wounded), but not before the group had
conducted armed attacks on plantations and the state troop-
ers of Georgia. Th ere nonetheless were extraordinary mo-
ments, such as in July 1816, when 300 fugitive slaves (with
Indian allies) held Fort Blount (captured from the Creeks
in 1815 and used as refuge for runaway slaves) in Apalachi-
cola, Florida, for several days before being subdued by U.S.
military forces.
Although some have argued that the seizure of Fort
Blount constituted the largest slave rebellion in British North
America, usually four plots or rebellions have been described
as the archetype of resistance to slavery: Gabriel’s Rebel-
lion near Richmond, Virginia (1800); Charles Deslondes’s
near New Orleans (1811); Denmark Vesey’s in Charleston,
South Carolina (1821–22); and Nat Turner’s in Southampton
County, Virginia (1831). Th e number of actual slave rebel-
lions may never be known and continues to be debated. Her-
bert Aptheker long ago proposed that over 200 had occurred.
Of the four major ones, many of the “leaders” of these rebel-
lions or plots invoked the claims of the Revolution of 1776 as
well as the tenets of Christianity.
Gabriel, born in July 1776, planned—with his wife,
Nanny; two brothers, Solomon and Martin; and Jack
Bowler—an armed rebellion to overtake the city of Rich-
mond. Because of torrential rains as well as the betrayal of
the plot by two slaves, the plan was aborted. It has been
stated that Gabriel, slave of Tomas Prosser of Henrico
County, wanted to buy a fl ag on which to write “death or
liberty,” and Bowler insisted “we had as much right to fi ght
for our liberty as any men.” Indeed, according to an English
visitor a few years aft er the rebels were hanged, a lawyer
present at the trials told him that Gabriel had stated in his
defense, “I have nothing more to off er than what General
Washington would have had to off er, had he been taken by
the British and put to trial by them.”
In January 1811, Deslondes, a slave driver originally
from St. Domingue, led a march of more than several hun-
dred slaves toward New Orleans, in which plantations in St.
Charles and St. John the Baptist parishes were burned and
at least two whites were killed before federal marshals sup-
pressed the insurrection.
Traditional historical accounts (based on the offi cial
report from the trial) have described Vesey as a carpenterto obtain freedom, more severe slave laws were instituted
including a decade long ban on the slave trade.
It certainly should be noted that physical resistance to
slavery took many forms, including work stoppages, which
could involve poor performance of work or feigning illness
in order to not work at all. As well, slaves engaged in individ-
ual acts of sabotage on plantations, including arson in some
instances. Personal actions committed against slavehold-
ing families, such as poisoning, occurred, though probably
not to the extent feared by whites. Opposition to slavery
was not restricted to plantations because slaves revolted on
ships as well. Although the 1839 mutiny on the ironically
named schooner the Amistad (“Friendship”) has become
well-known, just two years aft er the revolt led by Cinque,
an uprising occurred on the brig the Creole, led by the also
ironically named Madison Washington. On November 7,
1841, Washington and 18 others seized the ship en route
from Richmond, Virginia, to New Orleans (where North
America’s largest slave market was located) and forced the
crew to sail to the Bahamas, where they knew they would
be free because England had abolished slavery in 1834.
Both mutinies revealed the geopolitical dynamics of empire
and slave trading. Whereas the Amistad brought the United
States and Spain into confl ict (the mutiny having occurred
off the coast of Spain’s colony Cuba), the Creole ignited an
intense diplomatic struggle between the United States and
Great Britain. In the end, most found freedom, but not
until aft er enduring the ordeal of a Supreme Court trial (in
March 1841), in the case of the Amistad, and imprisonment
for those involved in the mutiny on the Creole.
Running away also constituted a protracted challenge
to the institution of slavery. Although precise numbers will
never be known, slaves ran away as individuals, as families,
and in small groups. Moreover, in the Great Dismal Swamp
of Virginia and North Carolina as well as the Florida Ev-
erglades, maroon communities of runaway slaves formed,
though they never established themselves in the same way
as they did in the Caribbean (and Brazil), especially in the
case of Jamaica, where a treaty with the colonial powers
was negotiated in 1795. From the 17th century, runaway
slaves from coastal Georgia and South Carolina joined with
Indian groups, most signifi cantly, the Seminoles, to form
communities that resisted colonial encroachment. Th e
Revolution of 1776 intensifi ed the formation of maroon
settlements, such as with the community formed during
the war on the Savannah River by blacks who had acquired