Jacobins of the lowcountry: The vesey plot on trial

William and Mary Quarterly

Volumn 59, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 185-192

  Paquette, Robert L ^a  

^a HAMILTON COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 70449853349     PISSN: 00435597     EISSN: 1933-769     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3491649     Document Type: Review

References (24)

1. The petition is excerpted in Edward A. Pearson, ed., Designs against Charleston: The Trial Record of the Denmark Vesey Slave Conspiracy of 1822 (Chapel Hill, 1999), 318-19
2. Michael P. Johnson, "The Making of a Slave Conspiracy: Denmark Vesey and His Co-Conspirators," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Ser., 58 (2001), 926, demonstrates Pearson's "unrelenting carelessness" in transcribing the manuscript court record. (References to Johnson's article are given in parentheses in the text of this comment.) Readers of the book should also be warned that the documents transcribed in Appendix 3 suffer from the same problem
3. [Holland], A Refutation of the Calumnies Circulated against the Southern and Western States, Respecting the Institution and Existence of Slavery among Them (Charleston, 1822), 86
4. John Oliver Killens, ed., The Trial Record of Denmark Vesey (Boston, 1970), 3
5. See David Barry Gaspar, Bondmen and Rebels: A Study of Master-Slave Relations in Antigua, with Implications for Colonial British America (Baltimore, 1985), esp. chap. 1, for a particularly good discussion of the problems associated with the study of slave conspiracies
6. Luis Marino Pérez, Guide to the Materials for American History in Cuban Archives (Washington, D. C., 1907), 142, estimated "not less than 12,000 pages" for only one cache of official documents
7. He did not exaggerate. On the Camden plot, which merits further study, see Killens, ed., Trial Record, 4
8. Kershaw County: MS, July 3-17, 1816, Negro Trials, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina
9. For an overview, see Robert Paquette, "Discipline and Punishment," in Paul Finkleman and Joseph C. Miller, eds., Macmillan Encyclopedia of World Slavery, 2 vols. (New York, 1998), 1:252-57
10. I argue that La Escalera consisted of an intricate set of discrete yet overlapping plots in Sugar Is Made with Blood: The Conspiracy of La Escalera and the Conflict between Empires over Slavery in Cuba (Middletown, Conn., 1988), 4 (quotation)
11. [Higginson], "Denmark Vesey," Atlantic Monthly, 7 (June 1861), 741. The Thomas Wentworth Higginson Collection, bms Am 784, Houghton Library, Harvard University, contains some of the materials on slave rebellion that he collected
12. Stuart, Conscience and the Constitution with Remarks on the Recent Speech of the Hon. Daniel Webster in the Senate of the United States on the Subject of Slavery (Boston, 1850), 93
13. F. A. Mood, Methodism in Charleston: A Narrative of the Chief Events Relating to the Rise and Progress of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S. C. . . . (Nashville, 1856), 204, identifies Hall as a Methodist. The Confession of Bacchus Hammet, William and Benjamin Hammet Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University, refers to Rev. Bachman's contribution, although his name is misspelled
14. [Frederick Dalcho], Practical Considerations Founded on the Scriptures, Relative to the Slave Population of South-Carolina (Charleston, 1823), 37. Dalcho, an assistant minister of St. Michael's Episcopal Church, also had close contact with some of the jailed slaves and alluded to Rev. Palmer's grief over Billy
15. [William Johnson], To the Public of Charleston (Charleston, 1822), 4
16. Charleston Courier, June 21, 1822
17. Killens, ed., Trial Record, 125, 129
18. Egerton, He Shall Go Out Free: The Lives of Denmark Vesey (Madison, 1999), 181
19. Killens, ed., Trial Record, 41, 47, 54, 132
20. Killens, ed., Trial Record, 41, 132, 163. Henry Deas replaced James Legaré, who stepped down from the first court because of illness
21. P. J. Staudenraus, ed., "Letters from South Carolina, 1821-1822," S.C. Hist. Gen. Mag., 58 (1957), 213
22. See, for example, David Geggus, "Slavery, War, and Revolution in the Greater Caribbean, 1789-1815," in A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution and the Greater Caribbean, ed. David Barry Gaspar and Geggus (Bloomington, Ind., 1991), esp. 7-9, 12
23. Holland, Refutation of the Calumnies, passim
24. Washington Gazette, Sept. 26, 1822