Denmark Vesey's Revolt: The Slave Plot That Lit a Fuse to Fort Sumter

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“. . . an exciting account of an almost forgotten chapter in American history.” —The New York Times “Easily the most definitive account in print of a single slave plot. But it is more than that. It is an excellent social history of South Carolina in the early nineteenth century and a most revealing analysis of the political and economic system that created the turbulent world of Denmark Vesey.” —John Hope Franklin “[G]ives as full a biographical account of Vesey as it is probably possible to reconstruct from admittedly fragmentary sources; it details the construction and unfolding of the plot itself; it chronicles its suppression and the controversies this induced; it focuses upon the effects of the conspiracy upon state and national politics; and it notes the impact of the Vesey story upon the development of the defense of and the attack upon the institution of American Negro slavery.” —Herbert Aptheker American Abolitionism and Antislavery The Kent State University Press Kent, Ohio 44242 www.KentStateUniversityPress.com Denmark Vesey was found guilty of plotting an insurrection in 1822—what would have been the biggest slave uprising in U.S. history. A free man of color, he was hanged along with 34 other African Americans in Charleston, South Carolina, in what historians agree was probably the largest civil execution in U.S. history. At the time of Vesey’s conviction, Charleston was America’s chief slave port and one of its most racially tense cities. Whites were outnumbered by slaves three to one, and they were haunted by memories of the 1791 slave rebellion in Haiti. In Denmark Vesey’s Revolt, John Lofton draws upon primary sources to examine the trial and provides, as Peter Charles Hoffer says in his new introduction, “one of the most sensible and measured” accounts of the subject. This classic book was originally published in 1964 as Insurrection in South Carolina: The Turbulent World of Denmark Vesey, and then reissued by The Kent State University Press in 1983 as Denmark Vesey’s Revolt: The Slave Plot That Lit a Fuse to Fort Sumter. Peter Charles Hoffer is Distinguished Research Professor in the history department of the University of Georgia. His recent works include A Nation of Laws: America’s Imperfect Pursuit of Justice and The Free Press Crisis of 1800: Thomas Cooper’s Trial for Seditious Libel. Denmark Vesey’s Denmark Vesey’s RevOlt John Lofton New Introduction by Peter Charles Hoffer The Slave Plot That Lit a Fuse to Fort Sumter LOFTON isbn 978-1-60635-171-0 9 781606 351710 The Slave Plot That Lit a Fuse to Fort Sumter I IIII I ...