In May of 1822, Charlestonians uncovered a plot for a slave insurrection planned for July. Denmark Vesey, a free black man who purchased his freedom in 1800, was the leader of the alleged insurrection, which planned to take the city of Charleston. After a lengthy trial, Vesey and over thirty others were condemned to death and hanged. After the insurrection scare, laws were passed to restrict the movement of slaves and free blacks.
From 2009 Teaching American History in South Carolina Project
Offers archival journal collections in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences as well as robust image collections from libraries, museums, and archives including Artstor.
Newspapers, selected issues
Denmark Vesey's Revolt by 
True Stories of Black South Carolina by
From the Upstate to the Lowcountry, African Americans have had a gigantic impact on the Palmetto State. Unfortunately, their stories are often overshadowed. Collected here for the first time, this selection of essays by historian Damon L. Fordham brings these stories to light. Rediscover the tales of Samuel Smalls, the James Island beggar who inspired DuBose Heyward's Porgy, and Denmark Vesey, the architect of the great would-be slave rebellion of 1822. Learn about the blacks who lived and worked at what is now Mepkin Abbey, the Spartanburg woman who took part in a sit-in at the age of eleven and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s visit to Charleston in 1967. These articles are well-researched and provide an enlightening glimpse at the overlooked contributors to South Carolina's past.
Denmark Vesey by
A biography of the black freedom whose planned slave revolt in 1822, while never materializing, caused South Carolina to pass severe laws restricting the education, movement, and occupation of free blacks and slaves.
The Denmark Vesey Affair by
"A truly invaluable collocation of documents. Highly Recommended."--Choice"Brilliantly conceptualized, exhaustively researched, and eloquently written, it is a gold mine for anyone interested in America's ongoing dilemma with slavery and race."--John Stauffer, author of Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln"This stunning and magisterial documentary history accumulates and analyzes much evidence never before considered adequately, if at all. The work of fifteen years by assiduous senior historians of slave rebellions, it not only considers the prehistory of the affair but also the long aftermath."--David Moltke-Hansen, editor of William Gilmore Simms's Unfinished Civil War: Consequences for a Southern Man of Letters"Will surely become the definitive source on the Vesey conspiracy. Such an impressive assemblage and explication of records show not only how Vesey's actions contributed to America's Civil War but also why he continues to influence us, particularly in the South."--Bernard E. Powers Jr., author of Black Charlestonians: A Social History, 1822-1885"Places the Denmark Vesey conspiracy in a broad context. This volume should put to rest the argument by some historians that the conspiracy was little more than 'loose talk' among those held in bondage."--Loren Schweninger, author of Families in Crisis in the Old South: Divorce, Slavery, and the Law In 1822, thirty-four slaves and their leader, a free black man named Denmark Vesey, were tried and executed for "attempting to raise an insurrection" in Charleston, South Carolina. In The Denmark Vesey Affair, Douglas Egerton and Robert Paquette annotate and interpret a vast collection of contemporary documents that illuminate and contextualize this complicated saga, ultimately arguing that the Vesey plot was one of the most sophisticated acts of collective slave resistance in the history of the United States. This is the definitive account of a landmark event that spurred the South to secession. Douglas R. Egerton, professor of history at Le Moyne College, is the author of Death or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America. Robert L. Paquette, executive director of The Alexander Hamilton Institute in Clinton, New York, is coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of Slavery in the Americas.A volume in the series Southern Dissent, edited by Stanley Harrold and Randall M. Miller
Designs Against Charleston by
Using both primary and secondary sources, this text provides a comprehensive account of the Vesey conspiracy of 1822. It contains the complete, verbatim transcripts of the trials, as well as an introductory essay describing the events and context of South Carolina in 1822.
He Shall Go Out Free by
In this biography of the great rebel leader Denmark Vesey, Douglas R. Egerton employs a variety of historical sources--church records, court documents, travel accounts, and newspapers from America and Saint Domingue--to recreate the lost world of the mysterious Vesey. Although Vesey's 1822 conspiracy has attracted the attention of earlier scholars, Egerton recaptures the historical drama and significance of the failed exodus by examining the turbulent life that led up to it.
Denmark Vesey by
In a remarkable feat of historical detective work, David Robertson illuminates the shadowy figure who planned a slave rebellion so daring that, if successful, it might have changed the face of the antebellum South. This is the story of a man who, like Nat Turner, Marcus Garvey, and Malcolm X, is a complex yet seminal hero in the history of African American emancipation. Denmark Vesey was a charasmatic ex-slave--literate, professional, and relatively well-off--who had purchased his own freedom with the winnings from a lottery. Inspired by the success of the revolutionary black republic in Haiti, he persuaded some nine thousand slaves to join him in a revolt. On a June evening in 1822, having gathered guns, and daggers, they were to converge on Charleston, South Carolina, take the city's arsenal, murder the populace, burn the city, and escape by ship to Haiti or Africa. When the uprising was betrayed, Vesey and seventy-seven of his followers were executed, the matter hushed by Charleston's elite for fear of further rebellion. Compelling, informative, and often disturbing, this book is essential to a fuller understanding of the struggle against slavery.
Denmark Vesey's Garden by
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2018 One of Janet Maslin?s Favorite Books of 2018, The New York Times Named one of the "Best Civil War Books of 2018" by the Civil War Monitor "A fascinating and important new historical study." --Janet Maslin, The New York Times "A stunning contribution to the historiography of Civil War memory studies." --Civil War Times In the tradition of James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me, a deeply researched book that uncovers competing histories of how slavery is remembered in Charleston, South Carolina--the heart of Dixie A book that strikes at the heart of the recent flare-ups over Confederate symbols in Charlottesville, New Orleans, and elsewhere, Denmark Vesey's Garden reveals the deep roots of these controversies and traces them to the heart of slavery in the United States: Charleston, South Carolina, where almost half of the U.S. slave population stepped onto our shores, where the first shot at Fort Sumter began the Civil War, and where Dylann Roof shot nine people at Emanuel A.M.E. Church, the congregation of Denmark Vesey, a black revolutionary who plotted a massive slave insurrection in 1822. As early as 1865, former slaveholders and their descendants began working to preserve a romanticized memory of the antebellum South. In contrast, former slaves, their descendants, and some white allies have worked to preserve an honest, unvarnished account of slavery as the cruel system it was. Examining public rituals, controversial monuments, and whitewashed historical tourism, Denmark Vesey's Garden tracks these two rival memories from the Civil War all the way to contemporary times, where two segregated tourism industries still reflect these opposing impressions of the past, exposing a hidden dimension of America's deep racial divide. Denmark Vesey's Garden joins the small bookshelf of major, paradigm-shifting new interpretations of slavery's enduring legacy in the United States.
American Slave Revolts and Conspiracies by
Provides a comprehensive overview of 10 major slave revolts and examines how those uprisings and conspiracies impacted slaveholding colonies and states from 1663 to 1861. Offers an overview of American slave revolts and conspiracies to revolt Explores the context of chronic fear of uprising in slaveholding colonies and states in North America from 1663 to 1861 Offers accounts gleaned from primary resources regarding slave leaders and their lieutenants, and of the trials that condemned them Describes the climate of fear in which slaveholding whites lived, as well as the various social practices and legal statutes they enacted to minimize the risk of slave revolt Includes a narrative, primary materials, biographics, a chronology, and an annotated bibliography--all of which will be helpful to students writing papers on the topic
