Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion: From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond by Mark Ames Page A
Authors: Mark Ames
Tags: United States, General, Social Science, True Crime, Political Science, Murder, Criminology, Violent crimes, Violence in Society, Civics & Citizenship
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were well dressed and of decent bearing, and had all the appearance of enjoying a holiday.”
In 1820, the state assembly, worried by these demographics, barred any freed slaves from entering the state, and disallowed any free blacks who left the state from returning.
Denmark Vesey was born Telemanque in West Africa, where he was thrown into captivity, taken to South Carolina and sold to a Captain Vesey in 1781. Vesey was said to have been impressed with “the beauty, alertness and intelligence” of his slave, who served him “faithfully” for twenty years. In 1800, Denmark Vesey won $1,500 in a lottery and used the money to buy his freedom and open a carpentry shop. Locals, particularly blacks, were impressed by his wealth, luck, and intelligence. He was one of the very few who could read—and he used his knowledge to argue for equality of the races.
Tensions rose when whites in South Carolina forbade a new black-led church—that had broken off from the Methodists—from preaching to slaves. Local authorities were afraid of what black preachers might say to their congregation, so they outlawed and harassed the church’s members and leaders. In 1820, when Charleston moved to restrict the African Church, there were some three thousand black members, and Denmark Vesey was one of its leaders.
Within two years of the new oppressive legislation restricting black movement and worship in South Carolina, the greatest slave plot in American history was “exposed.” On May 30, 1822, George Wilson, “a favorite and confidential slave” to his Charleston master, told his master about a plot led by Vesey which was to involve thousands of free and enslaved blacks, and even a few whites. The guerrillas were supposedly planning to take over Charleston, seize the munitions, massacre the whites, and sail on ships to Haiti sometime in July, just a couple of months away.
Authorities rounded up hundreds of suspects, extracted confessions, and in the end, executed fifty-five blacks (including Vesey), transported another nineteen out of the United States, briefly jailed four poor whites, and exonerated dozens of others. Some slaves informed on others, while a few, including Vesey, denied that there was ever a plot and refused to confess right up to their deaths, despite gruesome interrogation techniques.
Yet many believe that a plot never existed. Both then-South Carolina Governor Thomas Bennett and his brother-in-law, Supreme Court Justice William Johnson, were fierce critics of the Vesey trial proceedings. Governer Bennett wrote, “I fear nothing so much as the Effects of the persecuting Spirit that is abroad in this Place [Charleston].” They doubted that there ever was such a wild, bizarre plot involving thousands of insurgents and the takeover of the state’s largest city. The fact that the slave-informants were later freed on state orders and given handsome rewards is just one of the reasons that some historians today doubt the plot’s existence. A recent study by Johns Hopkins history professor Michael Johnson argues that the combination of rumor, empty boasting by slaves, and general paranoia among the local whites created a critical mass of the Salem witch trials sort, producing an entirely fictitious slave rebellion plot of monumentally absurd proportions.
As another historian, Philip Morgan, professor of history at Johns Hopkins University, noted, “We want to believe in the revolt. It points to the heroism of the slaves, that they were willing to lay down their lives to fight injustice.” The real heroes, he said, were those like Vesey who refused to cave in and admit that there was a plot despite the torture and threat of execution.
Johnson’s revisionist findings were praised, for example, in the Nation , because he “exonerated” Vesey and the other alleged plotters and indicted the evil white slaveholding culture that carried out the mass executions through sheer paranoia. Yet if Johnson is right—and it
In 1820, the state assembly, worried by these demographics, barred any freed slaves from entering the state, and disallowed any free blacks who left the state from returning.
Denmark Vesey was born Telemanque in West Africa, where he was thrown into captivity, taken to South Carolina and sold to a Captain Vesey in 1781. Vesey was said to have been impressed with “the beauty, alertness and intelligence” of his slave, who served him “faithfully” for twenty years. In 1800, Denmark Vesey won $1,500 in a lottery and used the money to buy his freedom and open a carpentry shop. Locals, particularly blacks, were impressed by his wealth, luck, and intelligence. He was one of the very few who could read—and he used his knowledge to argue for equality of the races.
Tensions rose when whites in South Carolina forbade a new black-led church—that had broken off from the Methodists—from preaching to slaves. Local authorities were afraid of what black preachers might say to their congregation, so they outlawed and harassed the church’s members and leaders. In 1820, when Charleston moved to restrict the African Church, there were some three thousand black members, and Denmark Vesey was one of its leaders.
Within two years of the new oppressive legislation restricting black movement and worship in South Carolina, the greatest slave plot in American history was “exposed.” On May 30, 1822, George Wilson, “a favorite and confidential slave” to his Charleston master, told his master about a plot led by Vesey which was to involve thousands of free and enslaved blacks, and even a few whites. The guerrillas were supposedly planning to take over Charleston, seize the munitions, massacre the whites, and sail on ships to Haiti sometime in July, just a couple of months away.
Authorities rounded up hundreds of suspects, extracted confessions, and in the end, executed fifty-five blacks (including Vesey), transported another nineteen out of the United States, briefly jailed four poor whites, and exonerated dozens of others. Some slaves informed on others, while a few, including Vesey, denied that there was ever a plot and refused to confess right up to their deaths, despite gruesome interrogation techniques.
Yet many believe that a plot never existed. Both then-South Carolina Governor Thomas Bennett and his brother-in-law, Supreme Court Justice William Johnson, were fierce critics of the Vesey trial proceedings. Governer Bennett wrote, “I fear nothing so much as the Effects of the persecuting Spirit that is abroad in this Place [Charleston].” They doubted that there ever was such a wild, bizarre plot involving thousands of insurgents and the takeover of the state’s largest city. The fact that the slave-informants were later freed on state orders and given handsome rewards is just one of the reasons that some historians today doubt the plot’s existence. A recent study by Johns Hopkins history professor Michael Johnson argues that the combination of rumor, empty boasting by slaves, and general paranoia among the local whites created a critical mass of the Salem witch trials sort, producing an entirely fictitious slave rebellion plot of monumentally absurd proportions.
As another historian, Philip Morgan, professor of history at Johns Hopkins University, noted, “We want to believe in the revolt. It points to the heroism of the slaves, that they were willing to lay down their lives to fight injustice.” The real heroes, he said, were those like Vesey who refused to cave in and admit that there was a plot despite the torture and threat of execution.
Johnson’s revisionist findings were praised, for example, in the Nation , because he “exonerated” Vesey and the other alleged plotters and indicted the evil white slaveholding culture that carried out the mass executions through sheer paranoia. Yet if Johnson is right—and it
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