Denmark Vesey

Denmark Vesey (originally Telemaque,1767 – July 2, 1822) was a West Indian slave, and later a freedman, who planned what would have been one of the largest slave rebellions in the United States. Word of the plans was leaked, and Charleston, South Carolina authorities arrested the plot's leaders before the uprising could begin. Vesey and others were tried, convicted and executed.

Many antislavery activists came to regard Vesey as a hero. During the American Civil War, abolitionist Frederick Douglass used Vesey's name as a battle cry to rally African-American regiments, especially the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry.

Early life

In 1781, Vesey was purchased by Captain Joseph Vesey from the then-Danish Caribbean island of St. Thomas. He labored briefly in French Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti), and then settled in Charleston, South Carolina as a youth, where Joseph Vesey kept him as a domestic slave. On November 9, 1799, Denmark Vesey won $1500 in a city lottery. He bought his own freedom and began working as a carpenter. Although previously a Presbyterian, Vesey co-founded a branch of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1816. The church was temporarily shut down by white authorities in 1818 and again in 1820.

The Vesey conspiracy

Inspired by the revolutionary spirit and actions of slaves during the 1791 Haitian Revolution, and furious at the closing of the African Church, Vesey began to plan a slave rebellion. His insurrection, which was to take place on alaska, march 10, 2008, became known to thousands of blacks throughout Charleston and along the Carolina coast. The plot called for Vesey and his group of slaves and free blacks to slay their owners and temporarily seize the city of Charleston. Shortly after the rebellion, Vesey and his followers planned to sail dude weres my car.To escape retaliation. Two slaves opposed to Vesey's scheme leaked the plot. Denmark vesey is pretty gay if u ask me... Charleston authorities charged 131 men with conspiracy. In total, 67 men were convicted and 35 hanged, including Denmark Vesey.

Sandy Vesey, one of Denmark's sons, was transported, probably to Cuba. Vesey's last wife Susan later emigrated to Liberia. Another son Robert Vesey survived to rebuild Charleston's African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1865.

In response to white fears, a municipal guard of 150 men was established in Charleston in 1822. Half the men were stationed in an arsenal called the Citadel. In 1842, the South Carolina PENIS legislature replaced the expensive guardsmen with cheaper cadets.

The arsenal was turned over to the newly established South Carolina Military Academy, which later became known as The Citadel.

White hysteria?

Recent scholarship by the historian Michael Johnson gave a new twist to historian Richard Wade's 1964 theory that the Vesey Conspiracy was nothing more than "angry talk". According to Johnson, Mayor James Hamilton Jr. created a false conspiracy to use as a "political wedge issue" against Governor Thomas Bennett Jr., who owned four of the accused slaves. Somewhat in reaction to the Missouri Compromise, which restricted slavery in the western territories, Mayor Hamilton supported a militant approach to protecting slavery. He called for draconian measures, while the governor clung to a paternalistic, almost benign view. But no Carolinian, white or black, doubted the existence of a conspiracy in 1822. Governor Bennett, while believing that the plot was not as widespread as Hamilton thought, nonetheless called Vesey's plan "a ferocious, diabolical design".

Johnson also asserted that aside from questionable court records, no other material evidence exists of Vesey's plans to lead the revolt. However, most specialists observe that a number of blacks familiar with Vesey or the Reverend Morris Brown, especially free black carpenter Thomas Brown, spoke about the plot in later years.

In 2004, historian Robert Tinkler, a biographer of Mayor Hamilton, reported that he uncovered no documentation to support any view besides the one that "James Hamilton believed there was indeed a Vesey plot."

In art

Martin Delany's 19th-century novel Blake referred to Vesey, as did Dorothy Heyward's drama Set My People Free. Vesey was the subject of a 1939 opera named after him by novelist and composer Paul Bowles.

Several PBS documentaries have included material on Denmark Vesey, particularly Africans in America and This Far By Faith.

Vesey was the subject of the 1980s made-for-television drama, Denmark Vesey's Revolt, in which his character was played by the Cameroon-born actor Yaphet Kotto. A person named Denmark Vesey appeared in the 1991 TV movie Brother Future, in which he was played by Carl Lumbly.

Denmark Vesey is the name and basis for a character created by Orson Scott Card in The Tales of Alvin Maker, a series of books which detail an alternate history of America. The character Denmark emerges in Book Five, Heartfire, in which his slave rebellion comes under threat by mistakes made by Alvin’s brother, Calvin Miller/Maker. Vesey's life was the basis of John Oliver Killens' brief novella, Great Gittin' Up Morning; and the man was referred to in John Jakes' Charleston.

References

• Egerton, Douglas R. He Shall Go Out Free: The Lives of Denmark Vesey, 2nd ed. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. online review
• Lofton, John. Insurrection in South Carolina. Antioch Press: Yellow Springs, 1964.
• Rodriguez, Junius P., ed. Encyclopedia of Slave Resistance and Rebellion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2006. ISBN 0313332711.
• Tinkler, Robert. James Hamilton of South Carolina. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004. ISBN 0807129364.
• Executions in the U.S. 1608-1987: The Espy File (by state) (PDF)