Denmark Vesey
Denmark Vesey was a free Black man and community leader in Charleston, South Carolina, who was accused and convicted of planning a major slave revolt in 1822. Although the alleged plot was discovered before it could be realized, its potential scale stoked the fears of the antebellum planter class that led to increased restrictions on both enslaved and free African Americans.
Likely born into slavery in St. Thomas, Vesey was enslaved by Captain Joseph Vesey in Bermuda for some time before being brought to Charleston. There, Vesey won a lottery and purchased his freedom around the age of 32. He had a good business and a family but was unable to buy his first wife, Beck, and their children out of slavery. Vesey worked as a carpenter and became active in the Second Presbyterian Church. In 1818, he helped found an independent African Methodist Episcopal congregation in the city, today known as Mother Emanuel. The congregation began with the support of white clergy and, with over 1,848 members, rapidly became the second-largest AME congregation in the nation.
His insurrection, which was to take place on Bastille Day, 14 July 1822, became known to thousands of Blacks throughout Charleston, South Carolina, and along the Carolina coast. The plot called for Vesey and his group of enslaved people and free blacks to execute their enslavers and temporarily liberate the city of Charleston. Vesey and his followers planned to sail to Haiti to escape retaliation. Two enslaved men opposed to Vesey's scheme leaked the plot. Charleston authorities charged 131 men with conspiracy. In total, 67 men were convicted and 41 hanged, including Denmark Vesey.
Early life
Manuscript transcripts of testimony at the 1822 court proceedings in Charleston, South Carolina, and its report after the events constitute the chief documentation source about Denmark Vesey's life. The court judged Vesey guilty of conspiring to launch a slave rebellion and executed him by hanging.The court reported that he was born into slavery about 1767 in St. Thomas, at the time a colony of Denmark. Captain Joseph Vesey renamed him Telemaque; historian Douglas Egerton suggests that Vesey could have been of Coromantee origin. Biographer David Robertson also suggests that Telemaque may have been of Mandé origin.
Telemaque was purchased at around the age of 14 by Joseph Vesey, a Bermudian sea captain and slave merchant. Little is known of the life of Joseph Vesey, though the Vesey family is one of some influence in Bermuda, more recently producing notable businessmen and politicians including master mariner Captain Nathaniel Arthur Vesey, and his sons, Sir Nathaniel Henry Peniston Vesey, CBE and John Ernest Peniston Vesey, CBE, MP for Southampton Parish, and grandson Ernest Winthrop Peniston Vesey. After a time, Vesey sold the youth to a planter in French Saint-Domingue. When the youth was found to suffer epileptic fits, Captain Vesey took him back and returned his purchase price to the former master. Biographer Egerton found no evidence of Denmark Vesey having epilepsy later in life, and he suggests that Denmark may have faked the seizures to escape the particularly brutal conditions on Saint-Domingue.
Telemaque worked as a personal assistant for Joseph Vesey and served Vesey as an interpreter in slave trading, a job which required him to travel to Bermuda for extended periods; as a result, he was fluent in French and Spanish as well as English. Following the Revolutionary War, the captain retired from his nautical career, settling in Charleston, South Carolina, which had been settled from Bermuda in 1669. In 1796, Captain Vesey wed Mary Clodner, a wealthy "free East Indian woman", and the couple used Telemaque as a domestic at Mary's plantation, The Grove, just outside Charleston on the Ashley River.
Freedom
On November 9, 1799, Telemaque won $1,500 in a city lottery. At the age of 32, he bought his freedom for $600 from Vesey. He took the surname Vesey and the given name of 'Denmark' after the nation ruling his birthplace of St. Thomas. Denmark Vesey began working as an independent carpenter and built up his own business. By this time, he had married Beck, an enslaved woman. Their children were born into slavery under the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, by which children of an enslaved mother took her status. Vesey worked to gain freedom for his family; he tried to buy his wife and their children, but her master would not sell her. This meant their future children would also be born into slavery.Along with other slaves, Vesey had belonged to the Second Presbyterian church and chafed against its restrictions on Black members.
In 1818, after becoming a freedman, he was among the founders of a congregation on what was known as the "Bethel circuit" of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. This had been organized in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1816 as the first independent Black denomination in the United States.
The AME Church in Charleston was supported by leading white clergy. In 1818, white authorities briefly ordered the church closed for violating slave code rules that prohibited Black congregations from holding worship services after sunset. The church attracted 1,848 members by 1818, making it the second-largest AME church in the nation. City officials always worried about slaves in groups; they closed the church again for a time in 1821, as the City Council warned that its classes were becoming a "school for slaves". Vesey was reported as a leader in the congregation, drawing from the Bible to inspire hope for freedom.
Background
By 1708, a majority of South Carolinians were enslaved, reflecting the numerous enslaved Africans imported to the state as laborers on the rice and indigo plantations. Exports of these commodity crops and cotton from the offshore Sea Islands produced the wealth South Carolina's planters enjoyed. This elite class controlled the legislature for decades after the American Revolution. The state, the Lowcountry, and the city of Charleston had a majority of the population who were enslaved Africans. By the late 18th century, slaves were increasingly "country born," native to the United States. They were generally considered more tractable than newly enslaved Africans. Connections of kinship and personal relations extended between slaves in the city of Charleston and those on plantations in the Lowcountry, just as those connections existed among the planter class, many of whom had residences in both places.From 1791 to 1803, the Haitian Revolution of enslaved and free people of color on Saint-Domingue embroiled the French colony in violence; Black people gained independence and created the republic of Haiti in 1804. Many whites and free people of color had fled to Charleston and other port cities as refugees during the uprisings and brought the people they enslaved with them. In the city, the new slaves were referred to as "French Negroes". Their accounts of the revolts and their success spread rapidly among enslaved Charlestonians. The free people of color occupied a place between the mass of Black people and the minority of whites in Charleston.
In the early 1800s, the state legislature had voted to reopen its ports to import slaves from Africa. This decision was highly controversial and opposed by many planters in the Lowcountry, who feared the disruptive influence of new Africans on the people they enslaved. Planters in Upland areas were developing new plantations based on short-staple cotton and needed many workers, so the state approved the resumption of the Atlantic trade. The profitability of this type of cotton had been made possible by the invention of the cotton gin just before the turn of the 19th century. From 1804 to 1808, Charleston merchants imported some 75,000 slaves, more than the total brought to South Carolina in the 75 years before the Revolution. Some of these slaves were sold to the Uplands and other areas, but many of the new Africans were held in Charleston and on nearby Lowcountry plantations.
Planning
Even after gaining his freedom, Vesey continued to identify and socialize with many slaves. He became increasingly set on helping his new friends break from the bonds of slavery. In 1819, Vesey became inspired by the congressional debates over the status of the Missouri Territory and how it should be admitted to the United States since slavery appeared to be under attack.Vesey developed followers among the mostly enslaved Black people in the Second Presbyterian Church and then the independent AME African Church. The latter's congregation represented more than 10% of the Black people in the city. They resented the harassment by city officials. Economic conditions in the Charleston area became difficult since an economic decline affected the city. In 1821, Vesey and a few slaves began to conspire and plan a revolt. For the revolt to be successful, Vesey had to recruit others and strengthen his army. Because Denmark Vesey was a lay preacher, when he had recruited enough followers, he would review plans of the revolt with his followers at his home during religious classes. Vesey inspired slaves by connecting their potential freedom to the biblical story of the Exodus, God's delivery of the children of Israel from Egyptian slavery.
In his 50s, Vesey was a well-established carpenter with his own business. He reportedly planned the insurrection on Bastille Day, July 14, 1822. This date was notable in association with the French Revolution, whose victors had abolished slavery in Saint-Domingue. News of the plan was said to be spread among thousands of Black people throughout Charleston and for tens of miles through plantations along the Carolina coast. Within the black population was a growing upper class of free people of color or mulattos, some of whom were slave-holders.
Vesey held numerous secret meetings and eventually gained the support of both enslaved and free Black people throughout the city and countryside who were willing to fight for their freedom. He was said to have organized thousands of slaves who pledged to participate in his planned insurrection. By using intimate family ties between those in the countryside and the city, Vesey created an extensive network of supporters.
His plan was first to make a coordinated attack on the Charleston Meeting Street Arsenal. Once they secured these weapons, these Freedom Fighters planned to commandeer ships from the harbor and sail to Haiti, possibly with Haitian help. Vesey and his followers also planned to kill white slave-owners throughout the city, as had been done in Haiti, and liberate the slaves. According to records of the French Consulate in Charleston, his group was reported to have numerous members who were "French Negroes," slaves brought from Saint-Domingue by refugee slave-holders.