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10. Maroons, Conspiracies, and Uprisings
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[ 256 ] [ 10 ] Maroons, Conspiracies, and Uprisings The Alleghenies “are the basis of my plan. God has given the strength of the hills to freedom, they were placed here for the emancipation of the negro race; they are full of natural forts, where one man for defense will be equal to a hundred for attack; they are full also of good hiding places, where large numbers of brave men could be concealed, and baffle and elude pursuit for a long time.” This was John Brown’s vision of guerillas as liberators of the enslaved, as he confided in a skeptical Frederick Douglass in 1847.1 He believed he could gather a hundred hardy men whose main occupation would be to “run off the slaves in large numbers,” thereby destroying the monetary value of slavery. This in turn would cause slavery to collapse, as it would no longer make economic sense. From this perspective, runaways like Douglass were only chipping at the system on a small scale and Brown had only contempt for them. In his plan, the men of the mountains would “send the weak and timid to the North by the Underground Railroad.” Guerilla ranks would increase only with “the brave and strong ones.” More than a hundred years after they were first touted as a potential Jamaica-like source of dangerous conflicts because of a hypothetical maroon expansion, Brown was putting the Alleghenies back on the map of black freedom and maroon guerillas at the heart of his grand plan to end slavery. His friend, journalist and activist James Redpath, was also convinced of the revolutionary potential of the maroons, the prospective leaders of a “servile revolution.”2 Maroons, Conspiracies, and Uprisings [ 257 ] We know what happened to these plans and predictions. But did the maroons organize conspiracies, did they launch or participate en masse in insurrections? Did they attack the slave system, guerilla-style as some scholars continue to assert? The analysis of major conspiracies and uprisings in South and North Carolina and Virginia allows us to bring some responses to these questions. The 1765 South Carolina Christmas Conspiracy Sometime in December 1765 Isaac Huger informed Lieutenant Governor William Bull that his wife had overheard two black men talking about a general insurrection “to massacre the white people.” The slaughter was scheduled for Christmas Eve. Confirmation of the plot came from two black men from Johns Island who revealed it “through friendship to the white people.” Bull, noting that eight thousand Africans had been introduced that year despite a three-year ban on the international slave trade, wondered if “this sudden Addition to a number already beyond a prudent proportion will be productive of unhappy consequences.” The rumored insurrection, he believed, was one of them. To thwart it, a party of one hundred militias was ordered to guard Charleston; in addition the numerous sailors already in town were requisitioned.3 Bull later learned that 107 individuals left their plantations soon after the conspiracy was discovered and joined “a large number of Runaways in Colleton County, which might increase to a formidable Body.” Several slaves suspected of taking part in the plot were apprehended and endured “a very long examination.” Bull told the Council to be on its guard and not to let itself be lulled into complacency by the apparent tranquility. “The cause of our Danger is domestic,” he stressed, “and interwoven with almost all the employments of our Lives, so ought to be our attention to the Remedy.”4 To dislodge the maroons and the new runaways, Bull ordered the recruitment of Catawbas as Indians struck “terrour into the Negroes and the Indians manner of hunting render them more sagacious in tracking and expert in finding out the hidden recesses where the Runaways conceal themselves” than the English could ever be. “To spirit them on [34.205.142.9] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 14:42 GMT) Maroons, Conspiracies, and Uprisings [ 258 ] in their hunting out the negro camps,” in addition to a blanket and ammunition, they were to receive 30 pounds for each maroon taken alive and fifteen if dead; while the owner was to be paid 200 pounds maximum .5 The search lasted several weeks, at the end of which the Catawbas brought in five individuals while the militia seized another two to four. It was a meager result given that the group of new runaways alone was said to be over a hundred. Perhaps they were not that numerous to begin with. But what...