Denmark Vesey
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Denmark Vesey (originally Telemaque, 1767?-1822) was an African American slave and, later, a freeman, who is alleged to have planned what would have been a large slave rebellion had word of the plans not been leaked.
Eventually, many came to regard Vesey as a hero. During the American Civil War, abolitionist Frederick Douglass used Vesey's name as a battle cry to rally African-American regiments, especially the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry.
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[edit] Early Life
In 1781, Vesey was purchased by Captain Joseph Vesey from the Danish Caribbean island of St. Thomas. He labored briefly in French Saint Domingue (present day Haiti), and then settled in Charleston, South Carolina as a youth, where Joseph Vesey kept him as a domestic slave. On November 9, 1799, he won $1500 in a city lottery; he used part of the money to start a new life as a carpenter. Although previously a Presbyterian, he co-founded a branch of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1816, which was temporarily shut down by white authorities in 1818 and again in 1820.
[edit] The Vesey Conspiracy
Inspired by the revolutionary spirit and actions of slaves in Saint Domingue (known today as the 1791 Haitian Revolution), and furious at the closing of the African Church, Vesey began to plan what would have been the largest slave rebellion in U.S. history. His insurrection, which was to take place on Bastille Day, July 14, 1822, became known to thousands of blacks throughout Charleston and along the Carolina coast. The plot called for Vesey and his group of slaves and free blacks to slay their masters and temporarily seize the city of Charleston. Shortly after the rebellion was to take place, Vesey and his followers planned to sail to Haiti to escape retaliation. The plot was leaked by two slaves opposed to Vesey's scheme, and 131 people were charged with conspiracy by Charleston authorities. In total, 67 men were convicted and 35 hanged, including Denmark Vesey.
One of his sons, Sandy Vesey, was transported, probably to Cuba, and his last wife, Susan, later emigrated to Liberia. Another son, Robert Vesey, survived to rebuild the city's AME Church in 1865.
[edit] White Hysteria?
Recent scholarship by Michael Johnson, of Johns Hopkins University, gave a new twist to the old theory that the Vesey Conspiracy was nothing more than angry talk. According to Johnson, Mayor James Hamilton Jr. created a false conspiracy to use as a "political wedge issue" against Governor Thomas Bennett Jr., who owned four of the accused slaves. Somewhat in reaction to the Missouri Compromise, which allowed the federal government to restrict slavery in the West, Hamilton supported a militant approach to protect slavery that called for draconian measures, while the governor clung to a paternalistic, almost benign view. However, no Carolinian, white or black, doubted the existence of a conspiracy in 1822. Governor Bennett, while believing that the plot was not as widespread as Hamilton thought, nonetheless called Vesey's plan "a ferocious, diabolical Design."
Johnson also asserts that alongside questionable court records, no other material evidence exists of Vesey's plans to lead the revolt. However, opponents observe that a number of blacks familiar with Vesey or the Reverend Morris Brown, especially free black carpenter Thomas Brown, spoke about the plot in later years.
Regardless of which side is right, Robert Tinkler (2004), a biographer of Mayor Hamilton, argues that the mayor actually believed there was a slave plot.
[edit] In Fiction
Denmark Vesey is also the name and basis for a character created by Orson Scott Card in the tales of Alvin Maker, a series of books which detail an alternate history of America. The character Denmark emerges in Book Five, Heartfire, in which his slave rebellion comes under threat by mistakes made by Alvin’s brother, Calvin Miller/Maker. Vesey's life was also fictionalized in John O. Killens' brief novella, Great Gittin' Up Morning, and he appears in several cameos in John Jakes' Charleston.
There is also a reference to Vesey in Martin Delany's 19th-century novel, Blake, as well as in the drama by Dorothy Heywood, Set My People Free. Several PBS documentaries discuss Vesey, particulary "Africans in America" and "This Far By Faith."
[edit] References
Douglas R. Egerton, He Shall Go Out Free: The Lives of Denmark Vesey, 2nd ed. Lanham, 2004.
John Lofton, Insurrection in South Carolina. Yellow Springs, 1964.
Robert Tinkler, James Hamilton of South Carolina. Baton Rouge, 2004.
