Robert A. Gross | Forum: The Making of a Slave Conspiracy, part 1 | The William and Mary Quarterly, 58.4

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Robert A. Gross | Forum: The Making of a Slave Conspiracy, part 1 | The William and Mary Quarterly, 58.4 | The History Cooperative

Forum: The Making of a Slave Conspiracy, part 1

IN the late spring and summer of 1822, the city of Charleston, South Carolina, was thrown into turmoil by reports of an imminent slave insurrection. Municipal authorities swept into action to suppress the plot, seize the perpetrators, and convict and punish the accused. The official inquiry, conducted by the Charleston Court of Magistrates and Freeholders, led to the arrest of 128 black men, both free and slave, of whom thirty-five were hanged from the gallows and forty sent into exile "beyond the limits of the United States." At the head of the plot, the court declared, was a free black carpenter named Denmark Vesey, and the purported rebellion has ever since borne his name. 1

But did a conspiracy exist outside the minds of fearful whites? Doubts were raised at the time, and they have been occasionally vetted by historians, but to little effect. The consensus view has been to accept the judgment of the Charleston court: the insurrection was real, and it was foiled only by the timely actions of white authorities. Scholars have found in the Vesey conspiracy a testament to African-American resistance to slavery and a revealing glimpse into the world of black Charlestonians during the early republic. In this spirit, three books on Denmark Vesey and his abortive uprising appeared in 1999. . . .

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