A new book by historian James O’Neil Spady suggests that Black freedman Denmark Vesey was not the sole leader of the failed 1822 plot to kill White Charlestonians before a planned escape to Haiti.
Two enslaved men revealed the pending attack, which led to the execution of 35 enslaved people, including Vesey, a carpenter, free man of color and a leader in an outlawed Black church.
Spady, an associate professor at Soka University of America in California, said he was inspired to dig deeper into the Vesey uprising after reading a startling 2001 essay by John Hopkins University historian Michael P. Johnson. It suggested Vesey and enslaved people did not plan the uprising but White Charlestonians concocted it as a ruse to kill Black people.
Spady said his book, Take Freedom: Recovering the Fugitive History of the Denmark Vesey Affair, is a response to Johnson’s premise and the underutilization by other historians of two unpublished legislative copies of the original trial records stored in the S.C. Department of Archives and History in Columbia. The new book is available on pre-sale from the University of North Carolina Press with delivery by mid- or late-December.
Different trial records
After the trials that led to the executions, the city of Charleston released An Official Report of the Trials of Sundry Negroes, Charged with an Attempt to Raise an Insurrection in the State of South Carolina.
Shortly after it was released, the original but now lost court records were copied to create two nearly identical handwritten versions of the trial records. An 80-page report was made for the S.C. House of Representatives, and a 100-page document went to the S.C. Senate.
Spady argues historians have relied too much on the city’s 174-page published report and not enough on the unpublished House and Senate versions of the court records.
When taken all together, Spady said, they show Vesey was not the sole leader of the planned uprising, but he was among a diverse community of enslaved Africans and free people of color who secretly planned the attack.
Spady also said he is the first historian to determine who produced the House and Senate versions of the reports, and he is the first to explain how they were made.
Handwritten notes
During the investigation of the uprising and trials, two lead judges took handwritten notes. These notes were the first official trial account. Since then, they have been accidentally or purposefully destroyed or they are missing, Spady said.
Historians have assumed the court produced the House and Senate versions of the records. But Spady said his meticulous analysis of the House and Senate copies and other documents not seen before show that then-South Carolina Gov. Thomas Bennett hired Charleston clerk Christopher Jennerette, who was not part of the trials, to make copies of the judges’ notes that were given to the legislature.
Bennett pleaded for the court’s leniency in its sentences of death for three of his enslaved workers. Bennett believed the evidence was not strong enough to prove his enslaved people were involved in the uprising.
“He didn’t deny that there was a plan and a desire to do it, but he said the evidence was very thin and a sentence of death was excessive,” Spady said.
Bennett didn’t use his authority as governor to pardon his enslaved people because to do so would have been too explosive politically, Spady said.
The hangings that followed a series of trials were the largest number of executions ever ordered by a U.S. civilian court. Spady contends that following the executions, Vesey and the others were quickly buried on what is now the campus of the Medical University of South Carolina.
Spady also tries to settle an ongoing debate in Charleston over where Vesey worshiped. In April 1817, Vesey completed the process to join the White congregation at the Second Presbyterian Church before the African Church was organized, Spady said. “He continued to be a member of Second Presbyterian while also participating in the African Church,” Spady said.
Did not act alone
Charleston’s White community in the 1820s hated Vesey because they felt the city had too many free people of color, and Vesey was an outspoken critic of slavery, Spady said. Vesey also was a leader in the African Church that had been outlawed by the city and demolished. The African Church is a forerunner to Emanuel AME Church on Calhoun Street.
Spady maintains the court made an early conclusion that Vesey was the leader of the conspiracy. But credible testimony also implicated conjuror Gullah Jack, enslaved ship’s carpenter Peter Poyas and Monday Gell, a key leader of the Igbo people from Nigeria. Spady said his research also reveals that Gullah Jack was not from Africa’s west coast, but he was sold into slavery from East Africa.
Some of the people who were questioned about the uprising talked about it without mentioning Vesey, Spady said.
It is unlikely that Vesey, an established and older free man of color, the professor said, would have had the access and ability to break through the cultural and language barriers of a diverse enslaved community to organize a revolt.
“The more reasonable thing to say is the court was prejudiced against Denmark Vesey, and they couldn’t believe enslaved people would uprise against them,” Spady said. “They didn’t like that there was (Vesey), this critic of slavery, in their midst.”
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