Insurrection in South Carolina: The Turbulent World of Denmark Vesey (review)

sufficient resolution to fight an all-out war. In the meantime the Republicans were "improving" the old Leviathan by passing legislation which elements in the party demanded and capped the process by dispatching a series of constitutional amendments to the states for approval. Students of Civil War causation generally consider Roy F. Nichols to be a "revisionist"; and too often he is simply mentioned in passing after discussions of the work of James G. Randall and Avery Craven. If emphasis on the complexity of the causes of the Civil War, if concern that aberrations in human behavior be considered, if the suggestion, overt or implicit, that the war was not inevitable, make the revisionist, the label is perhaps appropriate. But it should be stressed that Nichols' description of the Civil War era is a very different one than that of either Randall or Craven and more difficult for many historians to assess because it is more firmly grounded in social science thinking concerning culture and value orientations . Safe in their parochial ivory towers, most historians of the Civil War tender a kind of respectful inattention to his work, but as the infection of the social sciences spreads in the historical brotherhood the writings of Dean Nichols may assume additional significance. Anyone interested in studying them carefully can well begin with Blueprints for Leviathan: American Style. Allan G. Bogue University of Wisconsin Insurrection in South Carolina: The Turbulent World of Denmark Vesey. By John Lofton. (Yellow Springs, Ohio: Antioch Press, 1964. Pp. ix, 294. $6.00.) Here is a conscientious effort to reconstruct the material circumstances which attended Denmark Vesey's famous attempt in 1822 to organize a slave uprising in Charleston, South Carolina. The author courageously recreates what can be recreated of Vesey's own life and character, not avoiding its negative features. He draws up a balance sheet of events and their implications. Mr. Lofton is a journalist and a lawyer, and weighs evidence as well as phrases. The result is a most readable and helpful account of the Vesey episode. Much of his related work is interesting on its own account, involving as it does the life of Captain Joseph Vesey, a Bermuda shipmaster who made a personal servant of an able young slave, Denmark, who had been raised in St. Thomas (Virgin Islands) and who adopted his master's name. Mr. Lofton describes slave systems on and off the mainland, and brings together a variety of information about Charleston, where Denmark, having won $1,500 in a lottery, purchased his freedom. He describes the slave revolt against French rule in St. Domingue in 1791, which stirred slaveholder 's fears and roused libertarian ambitions among some Negroes. AU this, and more, prepared the ground for the subversive negotiations of 205 206CIVIL WAR HISTORY which Vesey became the center. When those negotiations were revealed, they were sensationalized, and hasty trials brought groups of alleged conspirators to the gallows, so peremptorily that even some conservatives among the white population feared for civil rights. Richard C. Wade, in "The Vesey Plot: A Reconsideration" (Journal of Southern History, May, 1964), believes there was no plot, there were no weapons. Unrest among Negroes and fears among whites precipitated an hysteria of dire proportions. Mr. Wade's findings do not erase those of Mr. Lofton. There are areas of disagreement which continue to merit study and interpretation. The above writings, and others, show how many related areas have been too lightly investigated, which could be profitably considered in depth. Thus, Mr. Wade remarks that "the urban environment proved inhospitable to conspiracies because it provided a wider latitude to the slave, a measure of independence within bondage, and some relief from the constant surveillance of the master." Perhaps so. But Marion D. deB. Kilsen, in Toward Freedom: An Analysis of Slave Revolts in the United States" (Phyton, Summer, 1964), concludes that The urban factor appears to have been significant as a source both of more cosmopolitan ideas and of greater role differentiation for Negroes." Mr. Wade is correct in noting that emotionalism affected Negro and pro-southern white historians, and retarded understanding. Mr. Lofton's hard-earned researches may not be the last word on...