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10-Preparing the Ground
- The Kent State University Press
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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 10 PREPARING THE GROUND • By 1822 Denmark Vesey had lived in the city of Charleston for nearly forty years. Whatever other homes he had known were now buried deep in the recesses of memory. For twenty-two years of his life in Charleston he had been a free man. He enjoyed the kind of liberty which, from a white point of view, was enough to fulfill any reasonable yearning by one with a black skin. He could occupy himself as he pleased and go and come as he pleased without excessive restriction. For all white Charleston knew, Denmark Vesey's cup was full. He kept busy at his carpentry. There were only about a dozen free Negroes in the same field.1 He had accumulated property valued at $8,000.2 He had won the respect of the white community. At fifty-five, and looking older than his years, he seemed to be beyond the age of ambition. But as far as Denmark Vesey was concerned, all was not right with the world. While his status might have satisfied all the criteria a white observer might prescribe for a black man's happiness, there were some things a casual white observer (in Charleston at least) wouldn't understand. Vesey did not enjoy the kind of freedom that would lend dignity to his spirit. While all may have seemed serene on the surface, the Vesey residence at 20 Bull Street3 did not embrace all the conditions for a satisfying home life. Though Vesey himself was "free," all of his children were slaves4 and thus did not have the same freedom of movement as their father. Vesey, during at least some of his married life, was forced to visit his spouse, a slave, at a place other than his own residence.5 On these occasions he was cast in the role of a supplicant for the favor of his consort's owner. 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 132 DENMARK VESEY'S REVOLT His enforced role as father and husband of slaves did not comport well with Vesey's idea of a self-respecting status. Schooled by long experience as a slave himself and acquainted through his reading with many expressed aspirations for freedom, Vesey had his own opinions as to what the liberties and the rights and privileges of Negroes should be. His notions did not conform to the white views that mere liberation from bondage was the ultimate reward for a black man and that freed slaves should be grateful for small blessings. He was annoyed by the obsequious forms which anyone with dark skin was expected to observe. As one who traveled widely and who followed the news of the day, Denmark Vesey might have been expected to entertain interests that extended beyond a simple concern with his personal status. He began to visualize the degradation of Negroes as an affront to their race and he wanted to do something about it. His own superior attainments sometimes caused him to exhibit impatience with those of his race who did not see beyond the narrow conventions and rigid rules of slave society as it existed in Charleston. He deplored the conditions under which Negroes lived, occasionally even in the presence of whites. He rebuked his fellows for being less discerning and more servile than he. He urged them on to efforts to help themselves. Behind Vesey's public protestations was more than a mere display of bravado. His complaints could serve a twofold purpose: both to test whether there was any sympathy among whites and to build confidence among Negroes in his courage and his capacity to lead and speak for them. For several years before he articulated any specific objectives, Vesey seized upon suitable events to voice dissatisfaction with the status of slaves in South Carolina. One such event was the city's repressive action in 1818 against the independent African Church which had been formed by Negroes and conducted in their own building in Hampstead, a suburb of Charleston. Fearful of unsupervised meetings of [3.17.28.48] Project MUSE...