Aftermath
In August both Governor Bennett and Mayor Hamilton published accounts of the insurrection and Court proceedings; Bennett downplayed the danger posed by the alleged crisis and argued that the Court’s executions and lack of due process damaged the state’s reputation. But Hamilton captured the public with his 46-page account, which became the “received version” of a narrowly avoided bloodbath and citizens saved by the city’s and Court’s heroic actions.[12] Hamilton attributed the insurrection to black Christianity and the AME African Church, an increase in slave literacy, and misguided paternalism by masters toward slaves. In October the Court issued its Report, shaped by Hamilton. Lacy K. Ford notes that:
“the most important fact about the Report was (and remains) that it tells the story that Hamilton and the Court wanted told. It shaped the public perception of events, and it was certainly intended to do just that. As such, it makes important points about the Vesey Court’s agenda, regardless of the larger historical truth of the document’s claims about the alleged insurrection and accused insurrectionists.”[12]
Ford noted that Hamilton and the Court left a major gap in their conclusions about the reasons for the slave revolt; the addition of thousands of African slaves to the city and region by the early 1800s imports was completely missing, although fears of slave revolt had been one of the major reasons expressed for opposition to the imports. He suggests this was omitted because its political battle was in the past; Hamilton identified reasons for the rising that could be prevented or controlled by legislation which he proposed.[12]
Governor Bennett’s criticism continued and he made a separate report to the legislature in the fall of 1822 (he was in his last year in office). He accused the Charleston City Council of usurping its authority by setting up the Court, which he said violated law by holding secret proceedings, with no protections for the defendants. The court took testimony under “pledges of inviolable secrecy” and “convicted [the accused] and “sentenced [them] to death without their seeing the persons, or hearing the voices of those, who testified to their guilt.”[20] Open sessions could have allowed the potential for the court to distinguish among varying accounts.[20]
Believing that “black religion” contributed to the uprising, and knowing that several AME Church officials had participated in the plot for insurrection, Charleston officials ordered the large congregation to be dispersed and the building destroyed. Rev. Morris Brown of the church was forced out of the state; he later became a bishop of the AME Church. But no independent black church was established in the city again until after the Civil War.[10] Today the Morris Brown AME Church, with a congregation of more than 3,000, carries on his legacy.[22]
The state legislature in 1820 had already restricted manumissions, by requiring that each act of manumission be approved by both houses of the legislature. This made it almost impossible for slaves to gain freedom, even in cases where an individual or family member could pay a purchase price. But after the Vesey Plot, the legislature further restricted the movement of free blacks and free people of color; if one left the state for any reason, that person could not return. In addition, it required each free black to have documented white “guardians” to vouch for their character.[10]
The legislature also passed the Seaman’s Act of 1822, requiring free black sailors on ships that docked in Charleston to be imprisoned in the city jail for the period that their ships were in port, in order to keep them away from contact with and influencing slaves in the city. This act was ruled unconstitutional in Federal court, as it violated international treaties between the US and Britain. The state’s right to imprison free black sailors became one of the issues in the confrontation between South Carolina and the Federal government over states’ rights.[23]
The minority-white population always feared a slave insurrection in a city in which they were outnumbered. Following passage of the Seaman’s Act, they organized the South Carolina Association, essentially to take over enforcement of control of slaves and free blacks in the city.[24] As part of this, in late 1822 the City petitioned the General Assembly “to establish a competent force to act as a municipal guard for the protection of the City of Charleston and its vicinity.” The General Assembly agreed and appropriated funds to erect “suitable buildings for an Arsenal, for the deposit of the arms of the State, and a Guard House, and for the use of the municipal guard” or militia. The South Carolina State Arsenal, what became known as the Citadel,[25] was completed in 1829; by then white fears of insurrection had subsided for a time. Rather than establish the municipal guard authorized in the act, the State and city entered into an agreement with the US War Department for a detail of United States troops to garrison the Citadel, from those soldiers stationed at Fort Moultrie.
Historical debate
The Court published its report in 1822 as An Official Report of the Trials of Sundry Negroes … This was the first full account, as newspaper coverage had been very restricted during the secret proceedings. In particular, the Court collected all the information available on Vesey in the last two weeks of his life and eight weeks following his hanging. Their Report has been the basis of historians’ interpretations of Vesey’s life and the rebellion. Since the mid-20th century, most historians have evaluated the conspiracy in terms of black resistance to slavery, with some focusing on the plot, others on the character of Vesey and his senior leaders, and others on the black unity displayed. Despite the threats of whites, few blacks confessed and few provided testimony against the leaders or each other.[3] Morgan notes that by keeping silent, these slaves resisted the whites and were true heroes of the crisis.[26]
In 1964, historian Richard Wade examined the report in comparison to manuscript transcripts of the court proceedings, of which two versions exist. Based on numerous discrepancies he found and the lack of material evidence at the time of the “trials,” he suggested that the Vesey Conspiracy was mostly “angry talk,” and that the plot was not well founded for action. He noted how little evidence was found for such a plot: no arms caches were discovered, no firm date appeared to have been set, and no well-organized underground apparatus was found, but both blacks and whites widely believed there was a well-developed insurrection in the works. Claiming, erroneously, that both Justice William Johnson and his brother-in-law Governor Thomas Bennett Jr. had strong doubts about the existence of a conspiracy, Wade concluded that among black and white Charleston residents, there were “strong grievances on one side and deep fears on the other,” creating a basis for belief in a broad rebellion.[3] Wade’s conclusion that the conspiracy was not well formed, was criticized by William Freehling and other historians who followed him, particularly as he was found to have overlooked some material.[13]
In 2001, Michael P. Johnson criticized three histories of Vesey and the conspiracy published in 1999, based on his study of the primary documents. He suggested that historians had over-interpreted the available evidence, gathered at the end of Vesey’s life from the testimony of witnesses under great pressure in court. He said historians too wholeheartedly accepted such witness testimony as fact, and notes specific “interpretive improvisations.”[21] for instance, these include statements about Vesey’s physical appearance, which was not documented at all in the court record.[21]
In a response to Johnson’s work, Philip D. Morgan notes that in the 19th century, Vesey was once described as a mulatto or free person of color by William Gilmore Simms. Trial records, however, identified him as a free black man. Some historians from 1849 to the 1990s described him as a mulatto, but lacking documentation for that theory, since the later 20th century, he has been described as black. Morgan suggests this transformation in ancestry represents modern sensibilities more than any evidence.[26]
Johnson found that the two versions of the manuscript transcripts disagreed with each other, and contained material not found in the official report of the court.[21] He concluded that the report was an attempt by the Court to suggest that formal trials had been held, when the proceedings did not follow accepted procedures for trials and due process. Their proceedings had been held in secret and defendants could not confront their accusers. After Vesey and the first five conspirators were executed, the Court had another 82 suspects arrested in July, more than twice as many as had been arrested in June. Johnson suggested that, after public criticism, the Court was motivated to prove there was a conspiracy.[21]
Morgan notes that two prominent men indicated concerns about the Court. In addition, he notes that Bertram Wyatt-Brown in his Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (p. 402) said that prosecutions of slave revolts were typically so arbitrary that they should be considered a “communal rite” and “celebration of white solidarity”, “a religious more than a normal criminal process.”[26] Morgan thinks that historians have too often ignored that warning and supports Johnson’s close examination of the variations among the Vesey Court records.[26]
Wade and Johnson suggest that Mayor James Hamilton, Jr. of Charleston may have exaggerated rumors of the conspiracy to use as a “political wedge issue” against moderate Governor Thomas Bennett Jr. in their own rivalry and efforts to attract the support of whites.[21] Hamilton knew that four of Bennett’s household slaves had been arrested as suspects; three were executed on July 2 together with Vesey. Mayor Hamilton supported a militant approach to controlling slaves and believed that the rise of a paternalistic approach based in improving treatment of slaves, as promoted by moderate slaveholders such as Bennett, was a mistake. He used the crisis to appeal to the legislature for laws which he had already supported, that would enable more control of slaves and free blacks.
Hamilton’s article and the Court Report examine a variety of reasons for the planned revolt. Extremely dependent on slavery, many Charleston residents had been alarmed about the Missouri Compromise of 1820 that restricted slavery from expansion to the western territories, feeling it threatened the future of slavery. Some suggested that slaves had learned about the compromise and thought they were to be emancipated. They blamed the AME Church, they blamed rising slave literacy, and the slaves brought from Haiti during the Revolution. In 1822, beleaguered whites in Charleston uniformly believed that blacks had planned a large insurrection; such a scenario represented their worst fears.[27]
Wade noted the lack of material evidence: no arms caches or documents related to the rebellion; other sources said Vesey destroyed papers.[citation needed] Johnson’s article provoked considerable controversy among historians. The William and Mary Quarterly invited contributions to a “Forum” on the issue, which was published in January 2002. Egerton noted that free black carpenter Thomas Brown and other blacks familiar with Vesey or the Reverend Morris Brown, the leader of the AME Church, continued to speak or write about Vesey’s plot in later years, supporting conclusions that it did exist. In 2004, historian Robert Tinkler, a biographer of Mayor Hamilton, reported that he found no evidence to support Johnson’s theory that Hamilton conjured the plot for political gain. Hamilton ruthlessly pursued the prosecution, Tinkler concluded, because he “believed there was indeed a Vesey plot.” Ford noted that Hamilton presented those aspects of and reasons for the insurrection that enabled him to gain controls on slavery which he had wanted before the crisis.[12]
In a 2011 article, James O’Neil Spady said that by Johnson’s own criteria, the statements of witnesses George Wilson and Joe LaRoche ought to be considered credible and as evidence of a developed plot for the rising. Neither slave was coerced nor imprisoned when he testified. Each volunteered his testimony early in the investigation, and LaRoche risked making statements that the court could have construed as self-incriminating. Spady concluded that a group had in fact been about to launch the rising (as they called it) when their plans were revealed. Perhaps it was of a smaller scale than retold in some accounts, but he believed men were ready to take action.[2]
In 2012 Lacy K. Ford gave the keynote address to the South Carolina Historical Association; his subject was interpretation of the Vesey Plot. He said, “the balance of the evidence clearly points to the exaggeration of the plot and the misappropriation of its lessons by Hamilton, the Court, and their allies for their own political advantage.”[28] Ford compares the reaction of Charleston officials to a crisis in which not one white person had been killed or injured, to the approach in Virginia after the 1831 Nat Turner’s Slave Rebellion, in which tens of whites were killed. Charleston officials described a broad, complex and sophisticated conspiracy led by the “brilliant” Vesey, while Virginia officials donwplayed Turner’s revolt, stressing that he and his few followers acted alone. Ford concludes,
“Enlarging the threat posed by Vesey allowed the Lowcountry elite to disband the thriving AME church in Charleston and launch a full-fledged, if ultimately unsuccessful, counter-attack against the paternalist insurgency. And the local elite’s interpretation of the Vesey scare prepared the state for a politics centered on the defense of slavery, a politics that reinforced tendencies toward consensus latent in the Palmetto state’s body politic, tendencies easily mobilized for radicalism by perceived threats against slavery.”[29]
Legacy and honors
- In 1990s, African-American activists in Charleston proposed erecting a memorial to Denmark Vesey, to honor his effort to overturn slavery in the city. The proposal caused much controversy, as some people did not want to memorialize him; others believed a memorial to him not only marked his leadership but would demonstrate that slaves were not happy with their lot.[11] In 2014, a statue representing him as a carpenter was finally erected in Hampton Park, at some distance from the main tourist areas.[9][11]
(SOURCE: Wikipedia)