Slave resistance took many forms in the colonial period but it did not often result in outright rebellion. Slaves did take up arms, however, in South Carolina in 1739. In September of that year, a group of twenty slaves attacked a general store, killing both store owners and taking guns and ammunition. They left the severed heads of the two shopkeepers on the front steps of the store. The group of slaves then marched south in the direction of Spanish Florida, where they believed they would be set free. Along the road the slaves attacked and burned plantations, killing twenty white men, women, and children. At each plantation, they recruited other slaves, and as they moved south their numbers grew. A government official saw the armed slaves and fled to find help. He gathered a larger group of whites on horseback. They attacked the slaves, killing many of them and driving the rest into the hills. Some slaves eluded capture for months. Others were hunted down and killed. After the Stono rebellion of 1739, the South Carolina legislature passed a series of repressive laws that sought to eliminate the possibility of revolt by slaves in the future.

Historians point to the Stono rebellion as a key turning point in the history of slavery in South Carolina and other slave states. After the uprising, South Carolina passed a series of laws that sought to ensure the subordination of slaves, both subtly and overtly.  The uprising had other more subtle effects on race relations as well. The Stono rebellion brings up a number of difficult historical issues. First, why did slave resistance become violent in this instance and not in others? Did other slaves see Stono as an indication that revolt would be the same as suicide? Second, how did whites respond to Stono? Did the rebellion alter the trajectory of slavery in the state? Third, how did the revolts fit into the context of race relations more generally in the colonial South? What role did American Indians play in both the revolt and its aftermath?  In this exercise, you will look at three documents from the Stono rebellion. For each document, you should consider the question: How did the uprising change race relations in South Carolina?

Source
A set of documents regarding and resulting from the Stono rebellion.  

Quiz

1. After the Stono rebellion, whites in South Carolina ___________. 

a. sought to punish all slaves equally
b. passed restrictive laws for all slaves and rewarded some slaves who had been loyal during the uprising
c. created a series of codes against American Indians as well as African slaves

2. After the rebellious slaves were recaptured, they were __________.

a. killed immediately
b. imprisoned and ordered to stand trial for treason
c. given back to their masters to be punished as the masters saw fit

3. After the Stono rebellion, the South Carolina legislature passed laws that ________.

a. forbade cooperation between American Indians and African slaves
b. determined the price slaveholders would receive if they sent rebellious slaves to another state
c. justified the actions taken by whites during the uprising

4. William Bull ________.

a. was killed by the slaves
b. saw the rebellious slaves and gathered the militia to fight them
c. fled South Carolina in fear after seeing the rebellious slaves

5. The report to the House of Commons on the Stono rebellion recommended that __________.

a. slaves and American Indians who helped put down the revolt be rewarded
b. slaves be given more autonomy so that they would be less likely to revolt in the future
c. a commission be appointed to study the system of race relations in the colonies

Short Answers

1. Explain the strategy whites took to define race relations after the Stono rebellion. What methods did they use to ensure the subordination of slaves? Did whites see American Indians as allied with slaves?

2. Explain the significance of the law during and after the Stono rebellion. Did the law merely provide a cover for the violence of whites against slaves? Or did the laws passed after the Stono rebellion themselves lead to a shift in race relations?

3. Explain the Stono rebellion from the perspective of the slaves. What did they hope to achieve? What were their goals? What role did the possibility of freedom in Spanish Florida play in the plans of the slaves?

Projects

1. Compare the Stono rebellion with the revolt of Nat Turner in 1831. How had the institution of slavery evolved in the years between the two events? Can you see any differences in the white response to each revolt? What role did the law play in the aftermath of each incident?

2. Considering the Stono rebellion and the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, write an essay on the effectiveness of different types of slave resistance. Do you see a difference between individual and collective resistance? How would you evaluate different acts of resistance? Are some more successful than others? If so, how would you define success?

Resources

Bedford / St. Martin’s sources: Robert Allison edits and presents The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Written by Himself (1995).  Bedford also publishes The Confessions of Nat Turner and Related Documents (1996), edited and with an introduction by Kenneth S. Greenberg.  

Print sources: The classic discussion of the roots of slavery in South Carolina and the origins of the Stono rebellion is Peter Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina through the Stono Rebellion (1974). David Littlefield’s Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and the Slave Trade in Colonial South Carolina (1981) looks at the economic basis of slavery in South Carolina. M. Eugene Sirmans covers the legal background of the 1740 slave codes in “The Legal Status of the Slave in South Carolina, 1670-1740,” Journal of Southern History (1962). For a more general history of slavery in the colonial era see Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery (1998).

Internet sources: Some documents from the Stono rebellion and on other aspects of slavery during the colonial period are located at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/.  A broader site on African and African-American resistance to slavery is http://www.afroam.org/history/slavery/main.html.  For a look at local slave life before and during the Civil War, see http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/vshadow2/.