Updated Tuesday, July 26, 2005
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Many abolitionists like Joshua Coffin argued that the existence of slavery in the United States constituted a real threat to public peace and security. He used this volume to show how often slaves rose up against their owners to demand their freedom. In it he describes slave resistance through large and small-scale rebellions in the North and South, work slow downs, poisonings, arsons, and murders. He discusses many mutinies, including one on a Rhode Island ship when captives near Cape Coast Castle (in present-day Ghana) rose and "murdered the captain and all the crew except the two mates, who swam ashore."
In addition to numerous published accounts documenting white fear of slave uprisings, many private letters discuss problems brewing on individual plantations. In this letter, John Rutherford, an agent for Virginia plantation owner William B. Randolph, wrote to Randolph indicating that a concerned neighbor near Randolph's Chatworth plantation feared "fatal consequences" if the overseer did not cease his "brutality" toward the Chatworth slaves.
After the Chatworth overseer received a demanding letter of inquiry from Randolph, he answered on September 14, 1833, stating that he had whipped some of the slaves because they were idle or had escaped. Although three escapees had not returned, the situation was under control and work was proceeding as usual.
In the New York Sun, where this portrait appeared in 1839, Cinqué is described as a "brave Congolese chief . . . who now lies in jail in arms at New Haven, Conn., awaiting his trial for daring for freedom." Cinqué is quoted as saying, "Brothers, we have done that which we proposed . . . I am resolved it is better to die than be a white man's slave."
President Martin Van Buren and the Spanish administrators of Cuba wanted the Africans returned to stand trial for mutiny, but the Connecticut judge who heard the case disagreed. The U. S. appealed the case to the Supreme Court where former President John Quincy Adams argued that it was the Africans, not the Cubans, who should be treated sympathetically because they were free people illegally enslaved.
Armistad
was not the only revolt on a slave ship.
John Quincy Adams argued the appeal on behalf of the Africans before the Court. He stated that they "were entitled to all kindness and good offices due from a humane and Christian nation." In January 1841, the Supreme Court rendered its decision relating to the Amistad affair. Adams won and the Africans were returned to Africa.
In November 1841 the 135 enslaved African Americans on board the ship Creole overpowered the crew, murdering one man, while sailing from Hampton Roads, Virginia, to New Orleans, Louisiana. Led by Madison Washington, they sailed the vessel to Nassau, Bahamas, where the British declared most of them free. This pamphlet's author, William Channing, refutes the American claims that the property of U.S. slave owners should be protected in foreign ports.
In the diplomatic controversy that followed, Ohio Congressman Joshua Giddings argued that once the ship was outside of U.S. territorial waters, the African Americans were entitled to their liberty and that any attempt to enslave them would be unconstitutional. Censured by the House of Representatives, he resigned, but his constituents quickly reelected him and sent him back to Congress.
In this work, An Address to the Negroes in the State of New-York, first published in 1787, an African American, Jupiter Hammon, makes it clear that he believes slavery is wrong but nevertheless recommends respectful behavior of slaves to masters and urges those in slavery to seek spiritual freedom through Christianity.
This title page to Hammon's address includes verses that emphasize God's acceptance of all persons regardless of color or condition of servitude. Hammon, who started writing poetry in the 1760s, was a slave for his entire life.
Researching history brings you face to face with those enslaved. Look upon the face of slavery and know that it was surely one the darkest hours of United States history. The time has passed but the shame remains.
