Kingdom Comin': The Largest Slave Rebellion in U.S. History

Violence begets violence; oppress
someone long enough and they
will rebel. / PD LOC LC-USZC4-2523

Over at Present in the Past, Michael Lynch recently posted a provocative question and accompanying video about slave revolt. It got the wheels in my head turning. It also helped that Monday night was my first lecture scheduled on my course syllabus to dig into the "political war." My mind's been swimming with concepts of violence and resistance, freedom and slavery.

So what was the largest slave rebellion in U.S. History? That requires a key definition: what is a slave rebellion?

Toussaint-Louverture and his fellow revolutionaries in the Saint-Domingue rebellion, one of the first truly successful slave revolutions in world history, certainly throw light on one necessary ingredient: blood. The Haitian Revolution's iteration of slave rebellion was truly violent work, undertaken by one race of men against another race in response to their subjugation in spite of the master class espousing the tenants of freedom. For Toussaint-Louverture, that master race were the French. Violence was the first national language of Haiti.

Prosser's slave Gabriel, planning his revolution at the turn of the 19th century amid the growing state capital at Richmond, likewise chose violence as his language. But Gabriel more than likely had fewer than 30 allies. On Bastille Day, 1822, Denmark Vesey planned to rise up with a few more than a hundred slaves to strike Charleston, South Carolina. The plan leaked and it went no where. Just shy of a decade later, down the road in Southampton County, Nat Turner likewise echoed the idea of violence in service of freedom. Nat Turner's rebellion saw an army of as many as 200 slaves rising up to kill over 50 local whites.

The LearnLiberty.org link Michael posted on his blog points to the Black Seminole revolt, claiming that John Horse and his fellows, "led the largest slave revolt in U.S. history." But I'm not so sure that's true.

The largest slave revolt in U.S. history involved nearly 5,000 slaves from Alabama, rising up to strike a blow against their masters. Over 5,000 more joined in from South Carolina. Mississippi saw over 17,000 black folks seize arms and draw a bead on the master class. Nearly 25,000 men from Louisiana joid the fight to secure freedom. All told, nearly 100,000 black men from across the South rose up in this slave rebellion, carried guns and killed those who would see them manacled and sold to the highest bidder. With them were nearly 80,000 black allies from the North, joining the fight alongside their enslaved brethren. This mass of men, in open and hostile rebellion against a government and economic system which would see them reduced to chattel, blows any other slave rebellion out of the water in a test of scale.

Never since the world began was a better chance offered to a long enslaved and oppressed people. The opportunity is given us to be men. With one courageous resolution we may blot out the hand-writing of ages against us."

The American Civil War could be seen, after the Emancipation Proclamation offered black men throughout the United States the opportunity to, "be received into the armed service of the United States," as the greatest slave rebellion in U.S. history. Much like the wildest dreams of John Brown, Nat Turner or Gabriel Prosser, black men were now marching across the South, physically destroying the institution with every bullet they fired and forward step they took. They were grasping manhood, proving their mettle and speaking a language of rebellion.

Striking a blow for freedom.
/ PD LOC LC-USZC4-2519

The hour has arrived, and your place is in the Union army. Remember that the musket – the United States musket with its bayonet of steel – is better than all mere parchment guarantees of liberty. In your hands that musket means liberty...."

-Frederick Douglass, 1863

What happens when we, for a moment, think of the Civil War as the largest American slave rebellion?

It's a familiar, simple game of language, I will admit. These games, though, are instructive. They throw a new perspectives onto the war, forcing us to see the war through fundamentally different eyes and from radically different perspectives. Was that thrilling emotion felt by a USCT soldier donning his uniform and firing his gun for the first time really all that different than the emotion felt as Nat Turner's men swung axes against their masters' skulls? Both times, men were simply responding to a violent system with the only language that system would understand: violence.

Playing with Time and Contradictons: Warfield and Barksdale at Gettysburg

There is a small white farmhouse that sits a mile or so outside Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.  During the time of the battle of Gettysburg, a blacksmith known as James Warfield owned it. Warfield, a 42 year old widower, had just moved to Gettysburg the year prior, 1862, from Maryland with his four daughters. Once in Gettysburg, he opened up a blacksmith shop adjoining his farm. In a county full of carriage makers, you could be assured that there was plenty of work for blacksmiths, and Warfield’s shop was touted as one of the best.

It would seem to anybody who hears of James Warfield, that he was living the American dream. He owned his own 13 acre farm and blacksmith’s shop, and although he had lost his wife, he still had his  four daughters. With the Confederate invasion in the summer of 1863, that would all change. James Warfield’s life and dreams would be shattered. Warfield and his family were forced to flee Gettysburg, because of fear of capture by the Confederates. Just because of the color of his skin, James Warfield, a free African American, was in danger. It didn’t matter that James and his family were free blacks. If the Confederates found them, they would be captured and sent south into bondage, into slavery.

Although James Warfield was nowhere near his farm during the battle, his farm was far from being deserted. On July 2nd, General Barksdale and his Mississippi brigade briefly occupied the farm waiting for their orders to attack. General Barksdale, an imposing figure of a man, was a well known Southern planter. As a young man, Barksdale had studied at the University of Nashville, graduated, and eventually settled down at a plantation outside Columbus, Mississippi, where he took up the practice of law. An ardent supporter of State’s Rights, Barksdale abandoned the study of law to become the editor of the Columbus Democrat. As editor, he used the paper as an organ to promote his pro-slavery views. When war broke out with Mexico, Barksdale joined up as an officer of the 2nd Mississippi. Returning home a hero, Barksdale took up politics, first as a delegate to the National Democratic Convention of 1852, later as a representative in Congress from 1853 to 1861. While in Congress, Barksdale gained prominence for being an fervent State’s Rights Democrat, an ardent “Fire Eater” and later, a Secessionist. He would make a speech in 1856 declaring, “I deny the power of Congress to legislate upon the subject of slavery anywhere, except to protect it. That is my position…”

War hero. Accomplished planter and newspaper editor. Congressman. Some might say Barksdale was also living the American dream.

So, when Mississippi seceded, Barksdale thought nothing of resigning his seat in Congress, and returning to the South - to his home, his slaves, and his new country. He would offer his services to the Confederacy and now, two years later, July 2 1863 found Barksdale at the Warfield farm waiting to go into battle. Barksdale was once again a soldier, this time fighting against a country he had previously sworn to defend.

For William Barksdale, you could say that the very reason the battle of Gettysburg was being fought was over his idea of the American dream. Barksdale’s version of the American dream was a dream of property - human property. Barksdale, was fighting at Gettysburg for State’s Rights, for slavery’s rights, and for his own right to own slaves, all 36 of his human property. Ranging from 2 to 40 years old, some of these human beings were the same ages as James Warfield, and his four daughters. In another world, James Warfield and his daughters, could have very well been, the reason, the property, that Barksdale was fighting for at Gettysburg.

General Barksdale and James Warfield probably never met though. But what would have happened if they did meet? What would they say each other? When they looked into each other’s eyes, what would they see?

Would they have seen the antithesis of each other and their dreams?

What do you think Barksdale would have saw? What should have been a piece of his American dream – a piece of property, a slave, was in fact, a property owner himself, James Warfield was no property, he was a human being who owned property – land and a blacksmith shop.

What so you think James Warfield would have saw? A man that was fighting for his dreams? Or the devil that could take his family and freedom away?

Both Warfield’s and Barksdale’s dreams would be shattered later that day, July 2, 1863. Barksdale would be shot down during the attack, and die the next morning in enemy hands. The slave-holding country he fought for would also be struck down by a blow at Gettysburg, one from which it would never recover. After the battle, Warfield would return home with his freedom intact, but his farm ruined. During the battle, it sustained over 500 dollars in damage. 50 bushels of wheat, 60 bushels of corn, and 50 dollars of fences were all destroyed. 2 heads of cattle and 3 hogs went missing during Warfield’s absence as well. Neither Barksdale’s nor Warfield’s dream survived the battle - no one really survived the battle.

The above is one of my favorite interpretive bits/stories that I used to tell to folks when I worked at Gettysburg. I loved playing with the possibilities of bending the fabric of time, throwing together weird contradictions, and generally just using history as a thought experiment. It doesn’t matter that Barksdale and Warfield never met, or that the phrase “American dream” didn’t come into usage until the 1960s (although versions of the idea are found within the ideology of Manifest Destiny). What matters, is we (the visitors and I) thought about it then during that moment. We looked at the story from a radically different perspective. We thought about things in a new way, from some different angle. What matters most, is we tried to create meaning.

Your Fortune: Fried Rice and John Brown

Fortune cookies usually disappoint me.

I had Chinese food Sunday night and it got me thinking. I know that's a very random thing to say, but it's the truth. We don't usually consider Chinese food to be brain food, but for me it can be very powerful stuff. I like the stuff they serve up from the back of the Giant Supermarket here in town. The people who work the counter are always very nice and it tastes just clean enough. I like a bit of mystery in my pork fried rice.

But the thing that gets me thinking the most in any meal of General Tso's or Sweet and Sour Chicken is the fortune cookie. These little nuggets are always so poorly named. They rarely actually try to tell the future, which bugs me a bit. A fortune cookie never warns me I'm about to trip or about to be hit by a speeding train. Platitudes and weird horoscope mumbo-jumbo can only carry this mind so far. That and a few, "...in bed," jokes made with friends while munching after some Beef and Broccoli.

My fortune cookie on Sunday night had a Franklin-esque aphorism which really got the gears turning in my head: "Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery."

My brain turned back to this past summer. I've mentioned a few times that I piloted some experimental programming down in Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, trying out some wild and different interpretive experiences we don't necessarily see that often when we visit historic sites. I let the visitors speak.

We so often paint our museums and institutions, our historic sites and interpretive programs as passive experiences, where the visitor is either explicitly or implicitly told, "look, don't touch; listen, don't talk" That's one of those phrases I hate, right up there with, "no photography allowed." Nothing makes me want to snap a photo more than a small pictogram of a camera in a no-smoking red circle. And when I hear the words, or get the vibe off of a docent or interpreter that this is a, "look, don't touch," moment, or the dreaded and condescending, "touch with your eyes," my fingers begin to twitch. My understanding of the world is based quite a bit on spacial relations and tactile space. Chock that up to the prime toy in my life having been LEGO.

I'm also a talker. Look over on the right-hand side of the blog for proof: a year's worth of back catalogue of rantings, ravings and my inability to keep my big, fat mouth shut. So telling me, "listen, don't talk," is the surefire way to drive me batty.

How many mes are out there in the world, itching to express themselves in environments we typically rope off for listening and observing only? And what could they have to share?

This past summer, I offered one example of what happens when we shut up for a few minutes and let our visitors talk. The results were simply amazing. I would take the crowd on an abbreviated John Brown program, hitting a few key points but not worrying about being completist. Give them a few key pieces of the story: the tales of Dangerfield Newby and Thomas Boerly, along with a piece about why someone might want to own a human being.

The engine house as it appears in
the MOLLUS scrapbooks at
USAHEC (Vol. 134, p. 6858) / PD

Then we would step into the magical place, the sacred, inviolable space. Every site has that place. At Harpers Ferry, it is the four brick walls of the armory fire engine house, known in later years as "John Brown's Fort."

The key to the whole moment was my demeanor. Over the course of the preceding half an hour, I have mostly presented to the crowd in a typical, everyday Ranger style. Moving into the Fort, I change my mannerisms. I sit down, lean back against the wall. I take my hat off and set it on the bench beside me. I speak more softly, not presenting but just chatting. I ask an open ended question: "Was John Brown right? Was violence the answer?" And then I shut up.

Magic would happen. On one tour, within minutes of the visitors beginning their tentative conversations, one man piped in that John Brown was, "just the same as Osama Bin Laden." I could have jumped in. I could have pushed and prodded. I didn't. The crowd did. Other visitors challenged the man in a respectful way. They pushed and pulled back and forth on Brown and his character. They chewed this man who used violence to try to end violence, this man who killed American citizens in order to make a race of men into American citizens. They truly tried to taste Brown.

On another tour, a nice British couple on holiday in the 'States compared Brown to both Nelson Mandela and the American Revolutionaries. That gave the crowd pause as they took in the moment, stirred it into the melting pot of ideas within their brains, and tried to see Brown from that point of view.

We would spend half hour in the Fort some days. Others, the conversation would stretch more than an hour and a half, with new visitors drifting in and out as the topic suited them. In all that time, I probably said five or ten sentences. That's it. The visitors talked, and I listened.

I listened. I bestowed upon them the same respect they had offered me for the past half hour as I tried to unfold a few key moments in Brown's raid. Then I imitated them and listened as they tried to unfold their personal Brown and wrangle with his meanings in our modern land.

It wasn't hollow flattery, though. I listened, sitting in the calm cool of the Fort to show sincere respect. The marketplace of ideas is a powerful thing, if only we are humble enough to let it flourish. Every time I walk into that Fort now, I don't simply think about Brown in 1859. I think of the faces of those people who went on those journeys with me this past summer. I sincerely hope they're doing well.

And I sincerely hope they are still struggling with the morality of Brown. It flatters and humbles me to think that they might still be thinking of his struggle just because I had the crazy idea to shut up and listen.

Interpretive Vernacular: Pop Culture is a Language

I trust people who sound like me. I trust people who speak the same language as me. Part of this comes from a simple fact of understanding. I speak very little Spanish, even less French.

But I also speak other languages, and trust people who speak to me in those languages.

First, I speak geek. I am an unrepentant lover of science fiction, native to personal computers since the era of the DOS prompt, frequent quoter of nerdy movies and television, admirer of the beautiful simplicity of physics and the amazing symmetry of maths. Geek is a second tongue for me.

I also speak the language of popular culture. Frankly, we all do to greater or lesser degrees. I know what Mad Men is all about. I 'get' a good number of the gags when Saturday Night Live lampoons MTV, BET or Lifetime. I have enough of a working knowledge of the Twilight series, The Jersey Shore and much of modern popular music to understand a passing reference to them (and know they hold no real interest for me).

But when I interpret, I am told to dress up my language. We struggle in the public history world with this awkward concept of 'agency voice.' We quake in fear at the concept that we as individuals speak in some mystical, disembodied voice on behalf of our agencies or institutions. But this gussying up our prose, this abandonment of a cultural vernacular for some perceived cultural high ground could be severely destroying our ability to communicate with a modern audience.

We can't speak to an audience in a language they don't understand. Speaking more slowly and louder doesn't work. Just because an audience might listen to Lady Gaga doesn't make them unable to understand, appreciate and come to care for large historical concepts and truths. Sometimes we need to speak in the very words our audiences share with each other, that we share with each other everyday.

So what might this look like? Simple: imagine if Lady Gaga performed a power-anthem to accompany the women's suffrage movement of the late 1910s...

From the folks who brought you Too Late To Apologize, the latest in vernacular public history.

This video is nothing new per say. Yet it is still powerful. Watch it ten times, twenty times, a hundred times. Each time you'll find another small, powerful detail. Did you catch the note from the Senator's mother telling him, "Huzzah and vote for Suffrage"? Did you catch the doubt in the woman's eyes as she proudly declared she didn't need to vote? Did you notice how the protesters in front of the White House were a spot on match for the real women who stood there fighting for their rights? The piece is outrageously powerful, even on the hundredth viewing.

Add caption

But it is only an evolution, not a revolution. It joins a long lineage of style and straight parody incorporating history and civics into a modern vernacular language. Who from my generation and the one preceding doesn't recognize the line, "I'm just a Bill, Yes I'm only a Bill..."? I learned the preamble to the Constitution thanks to Schoolhouse Rock! as well, and still need to hum the tune to keep the pieces in the right order in my mind. Even Schoolhouse Rock! took on Women's Suffrage, with another power anthem about gaining the right to vote.

How can we foster more creative ways of sharing the vast world of history with the public in the language they speak instead of the stilted and foreign voice we think our institutions should speak with? How can we reach an American public where they already are, instead of fruitlessly demanding of them that they try to understand a language they don't speak natively?

I'm not sure. But I think it looks something like a tribute to Lady Gaga featuring Thriller-esque suffragettes, a brooding Woodrow Wilson and a struggle for freedom embodied by men and women acting to make the world better. I think it looks like Ben Franklin wearing a mock AC/DC tee-shirt and shredding the guitar while Thomas Jefferson sings his grievances to the King. I think it speaks in the language of the modern world, the vernacular of the culture we live within. That history will gain far more traction than anything in 'agency voice' could ever hope to, I guarantee.