"I Will Gather All Nations": Resistance, Culture, and Pan-African Collaboration in Denmark Vesey's South Carolina

Abstract

From U.B. Phillips' contention that Africans were "inertly obeying minds and muscles" to the pioneering work of Herbert Aptheker, the historiographical discourse on American slave resistance has undergone a dramatic paradigm shift over the past century. (1) Despite considerable opposition to both his political affiliations and his theoretical approach, Aptheker successfully created the foundation from which future studies of slave resistance would begin. Writing in the 1940s, Aptheker built upon the works of such black scholars as W.E.B. DuBois and Carter G. Woodson by arguing that Africans never accepted their collective conditions under slavery and this sentiment was occasionally expressed in the form of insurrection and other types of resistance. He points to over two hundred and fifty alleged rebellions and conspiracies as evidence of the widespread nature of slave discontent. (2) To Aptheker, the root cause of slave revolts was slavery, a conclusion which undermines any romantic perception of plantation life. He also viewed slave resistance as a necessary and natural phenomenon; in essence, it was a human response to inhumane conditions. In the "Preface" to his 1969 edition of American Negro Slave Revolts, Aptheker claims that "Humans, no matter of what color, being humans (sic) have rebelled when their treatment was bestial and when opportunity and capacity for rebellion was present." A similar sentiment is voiced by Kenneth Stampp in his 1956 work entitled The Peculiar Institution. In this sustained rebuttal of Phillips, Stampp states that "I have assumed that the slaves were merely ordinary human beings, that innately Negroes are, after all, only white men with black skins, nothing more, nothing less." (3) These statements, while well intentioned, can obscure as much as they reveal. Though it can be maintained that resistance is indeed a human reaction, this notion may not fully reflect the nuanced and multi-faceted realities evident in the African Diaspora. Slaves were human beings as well as Africans from specific socio-political contexts and cultural backgrounds. While the conclusion that resistance is a human response might be true on the most rudimentary level, it would only seem logical that the types of resistance engaged in by slaves were largely determined and shaped by their African past. Historians Stanley Elkins, Richard Dunn, and Albert Raboteau have all argued that African "tribalism" and cultural diversity contributed heavily to undermining the possibilities of slave collaboration and resistance. Dunn epitomizes this by noting that both linguistic barriers and tribal rivalries "hindered these blacks, once enslaved, from combining against their masters." Additionally, Raboteau claims that "[t]ribal and linguistic groups were broken up, either on the coasts of Africa or in the slave pens across the Atlantic. ...In the New World slave control was based on the eradication of all forms of African culture because of their power to unify slaves and thus enable them to resist or rebel." (4) The essential argument being made by these scholars is that the very nature of the transplanted African cultures in the Americas, in this case the assumed unbridgeable diversity between African groups, was an obstacle to organized slave resistance. The contention made in this current study is quite the opposit e, however. This study will demonstrate that African culture and Pan-African connections brought together enslaved Africans, from various backgrounds, and facilitated resistance during Denmark Vesey's 1822 conspiracy. The Charleston Plot and Subsequent Trials Serving in its principal role as the main entry for many Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina slaves, the city of Charleston was a key commercial center in the Atlantic commercial network during the era of the slave trade. Daily auctions of African and American born slaves held on Vendue Range Street, near the aptly named Exchange building, were so common that by 1790 the city of Charleston began to assume a distinctly African flavor. …