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In order to view this proof accurately, the Overprint Preview Option must be checked in Acrobat Professional or Adobe Reader. Please contact your Customer Service Representative if you have questions about ἀnding the option. Job Name: -- /351334t 7 THE HALF-FREE COMMUNITY • A few years after Captain Vesey's activity in behalf of the refugees from St. Domingue, Denmark purchased his freedom with $600 of a $1,500 prize he won in the East Bay Street lottery.1 There is no knowing how long he patronized the lottery, hoping against hope that a lucky number might spell liberation. With the drawing of the prize money, a new life and a new outlook was to begin for the young "immigrant" from St. Thomas. He had experienced at least twenty years of slavery in many lands and under varying conditions-in St Thomas where probably his master was Danish; in St. Domingue, under the orders of a French plantation owner; on shipboard, under the discipline of a Bermuda sea captain; in South Carolina, under the regimen of an urban society. It was enough to give him a broad education in slavery, and evidently enough to give him a lasting inspiration to work for freedom, whatever the cost. At least a part of Denmark Vesey's education for freedom may have been given to him, although unwittingly, by organizations that were an outgrowth of South Carolina's own Revolution for freedom. Denmark was living in a city where anti-Britannic and pro-republican partisans were active and where their ideas freely circulated. It was also a city that gave its ear to advocates of the "rights of man" as promoted by the French Revolution. Their talk may not have been meant for slave ears, but words are hard to enslave. The buffeting the young freedman had undoubtedly taken in the years of servitude-the menial role in which he had been cast, the hauteur toward his race and his status -could hardly have failed to produce a certain acerbity of In order to view this proof accurately, the Overprint Preview Option must be checked in Acrobat Professional or Adobe Reader. Please contact your Customer Service Representative if you have questions about ἀnding the option. Job Name: -- /351334t 76 DENMARK VESEY'S REVOLT character and a sourness of outlook toward the society which had imposed such strictures on him. At the time of his emancipation, Denmark was about thirty-three years old and had been a resident of Charleston for some seventeen years. As he prepared to make his own way in the world, he joined a little community of about 1,000 free Negroes in a district where forty times as many of the members of his own race were slaves. He had to find an occupation in which skill was enough in demand to enable him to compete in the labor market with the compulsory services of bondmen. In this period free Negro artisans in Charleston included carpenters, tailors, seamstresses, and shoemakers. Advertisements in Charleston newspapers during the 1790's had indicated that there were openings in carpentry. Denmark Vesey chose this craft. Negro carpenters in Charleston in 1795 were making $l.50 a day.2 Upon leaving the service of Captain Vesey, Denmark was confronted not only with the responsibility of making a living but also with that of finding a place to live. Though he had $900 remaining from his prize money, this did not open for him doors such as would have been opened for a white man. Where should he live? The Charleston Directory indicates that he did not acquire his own address at 20 Bull Street until many years after winning his freedom. Meantime Captain Vesey was himself often on the move during the years after Denmark's liberation, so that any quarters he provided for his ex-slave were changeable.3 In any event, the casual conjugal relationships which Denmark maintained precluded the convenience of a residence with any degree of permanence. His wives-taken or dropped as the exigencies of attachment or the Negro regulations dictated-lived in various parts of the city. He was reported to have had seven in the course of his life and at times more than one at the same time. Those who were slaves he could only visit by permission of their owners. Beck, one of his consorts, lived in a house near that of Major James Hamilton at the corner of Coming and Bull Streets. (There was at...

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