Throwback Thursday: So You Want to Throw a Slave Mutiny?

A lost supplement from the New York Times Bestseller "Black AF History: The Unwhitewashed Story of America."

“The Mutiny on La Amistad." (Talladega College, Talladega, Alabama/National Museum of African American History and Culture)

When writing Black AF History: The Unwhitewashed Story of America, my editor informed me that there was one problem with the manuscript:

It was “revolt-heavy.”

Even though rebellions of enslaved people are one of my favorite historical topics, I agreed. I couldn’t bear to part with the story of Forest Joe, the Haitian Revolution, the German Coast Uprising or the Stono Rebellion, so I removed a supplement detailing the rarely told stories of the most common genre of slave revolts.

Now you can read it.

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By now, you’re probably wondering why I’m recounting the tales of these unsuccessful slave revolts. Well, I’m sorry to inform you that there is no surefire, guaranteed way to escape slavery and live to tell the tale. It’s kinda how slavery works. OK, I’m gonna let you in on a secret. There actually is one statistically likely way to throw off the shackles of enslavement and get to freedom.

The mutiny.

While most tales of slave revolts begin with burning down the master’s house, revolts aboard slave ships were often successful. There is evidence of 485 “collective act of rebellions by Africans, slave or otherwise,” aboard merchant vessels—about one out of every 10 trips.

If you’re going to do this, there are some rules you need to follow. In fact, I’ve put together a short list of things you might want to remember if you’re considering organizing a rebellion on the high seas.

Rule 1: Start early

The first thing you should know about overthrowing a slave vessel is that it’s better to start before your new slave transporters even get started. In fact, the best slave mutinies don’t even make it out of the parking lot. About half of the rebellions took place on the coast, usually before the ships were fully loaded, and another tenth took place before the boats reached the high seas. The voyage can last anywhere from one to three months, but to stay on the safe side, it’s best to start killing the whites while you can still see the coast of Africa.[i]

I don’t know how many slave ships you’ve been on, but I hear the seating is very uncomfortable. Eighteenth-century newspapers reported numerous deaths of ship captains whose ships were found abandoned on the coast of Africa. In 1731, all but three of Captain William Jump’s crew from Massachusetts were killed in an uprising.

In 1730, six days into their forced cruise, several captives aboard the sloop Little George slipped out of their chains, seized weapons and killed three crew members who were trying to alert the captain. When the Africans found materials to make a bomb, the rest of the crew surrendered and hit a U-turn back to Sierra Leone, where Captain George Scott dropped them off safely at home.[ii]

The revolt on the Little George started at 4:30 a.m.

You know what they say:

“The early bird catches the white person.”

Rule 2: Get help

You are probably going to need a few allies.

If I were you, I would just let all of my homeboys know that if they ever see you on any ship, just attack the ship. That’s what happened in 1733 to a ship passing through the Gambia River loaded with human cargo. Seven years later, in 1740, Africans attacked the Jolly Bachelor, freed all of the slaves and killed Captain Cutler and two of his men.

If you’re with ships in Senegambia, Sierra Leone or the Windward Coast, you’ll probably find some help. Ships coming from these countries were three to five times more likely to revolt.[iii] And, because slave ships often kept enslaved Africans as part of their crew, you might wanna holla at them. Sure, they might snitch, but they might revolt with you, like the African crew aboard the Feliz Eguina in 1812. [iv] What’s the worst that can happen? You’re already a slave!

Rule 3: Go for the weapons

As soon as you get free, you have to find out where the guns and knives are kept. The freedom-seekers aboard La Amistad found some, and you can, too. If you can’t find guns, just “buss”* them upside the head with whatever you can find. When captives attacked Captain George Faggot in 1764, they used pieces of wood and sticks to beat the entire crew to death and free themselves.

* Buss: An African-American word meaning “buss.”

Rule 4: Don’t count out the women

I know it seems counterintuitive, but research shows that the more women who were enslaved on a ship, the more likely an uprising was to occur.[v] Many ships had a policy of leaving women unshackled. And of course, some women were sexually assaulted during voyages, giving them the opportunity to attack their abusers. In 1797 aboard the Thomas, “two or three of the female slaves having discovered that the armorer had incautiously left the arms chest open ...conveyed all the arms which they could find through the bulkheads to the male slaves, about two hundred of whom immediately ran up the forescuttles and put to death all the crew who came their way.”

A white survivor of a mutiny on L’Annibal recounted a July 13, 1729 women-led mutiny:

A flock of our negresses burst into the main bedroom and punched M. Bart, sublieutenant of the ship. Being suddenly awakened, he believed that it was the negres [that is, men, not women] who had come to murder him. He jumped out of his window into the sea [and then climbed back on deck]. This tumult caused great alarm. We ran to arms and fired several rifle shots. Seeing that they were trying to come on the deck in a crowd, and believing it was the negres, the gunfire had alarmed the entire port (Hall 1992, 91).

So, if you’re kinda cute, you might have a chance to convince a shipmate to set you free!

Rule 5: It’s not all about the violence

Just kidding.

Rule 6: Never have a Plan B

I gotta warn you: You may fail.

But, for many Africans, death is preferable to enslavement. The most common kind of revolt aboard slave ships was suicide.

There is an old Gullah Geechee tale about a group of kidnapped Igbo people who screamed all the way to America. Every time the captain would send members of the crew down into the belly of the ship to quiet them, the crew members would be afraid because they would realize that the captives weren’t just screaming, they were saying one chant, over and over, in unison. They were just waiting and praying: “Orimiri Omambala bu anyi bia. Orimiri Omambala ka anyi ga ejina.”[vi]

When the ship got close to the shore, the chants grew louder. “Orimiri Omambala bu anyi bia. Orimiri Omambala ka anyi ga ejina,” they yelled in unison.

And somehow, the Africans broke the chains, rebelled and threw the entire crew overboard. Led by a captured chieftain, the people walked calmly into the sea, chanting: “Orimiri Omambala bu anyi bia. Orimiri Omambala ka anyi ga ejina,” drowning themselves rather than be slaves.

Some say the number was 75; others say it was 13. Whatever the case, in 1803, a number of slaves who were chained together walked into the Dunbar Creek on St. Simons Island in Glynn County, Georgia, and drowned themselves, chanting: “The Water Spirit brought us here. The Water Spirit will take us home.”

But if it is true that “before I be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave,” then isn’t resistance a kind of freedom itself?

Now that you have learned the rules, you may be wondering what a good slave revolt looks like. Luckily, we have an example.

The Perfect Slave Revolt

After a humiliating road loss in Game Seven of the 1776 Eastern Conference Finals, many of the colonial residents who bet on Mediocre Britain** in the Revolutionary War moved to the Bahamas, bringing their enslaved property with them. But harsh conditions forced many of the British Loyalists to leave, especially after Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807.

** It turns out, Britain wasn’t as “Great” as people thought.

When given the choice between returning to a majority white country (Britain) or kicking it in the Bahamas, the newly freed Africans and the ones who unenslaved themselves and fought against the United States to win their freedom, chose to stay in the Bahamas as free people. After the United States purchased the Florida territory from Spain, thousands of enslaved people in America, along with hundreds of Black Seminoles, also decided America wasn’t that great.

Not only was the Bahamas a regular stop on the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but storms and hurricanes in the Caribbean often caused slave vessels to shipwreck near the Caribbean island. After the British Empire emancipated its enslaved people in 1834, the island was Blacker than D.C. during Howard Homecoming weekend. So when American, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch—basically any ship with white people wearing funny hats, pulled up (I think that’s the nautical term), Bahamians would tell the captains: “I don’t know if you heard, but we don’t play that slave shit over here. Y’all can ride out, but you gotta leave the Africans here. They’re free now."

As a British colony, the Bahamians were just following the law. But because slavery was still legal in the U.S., an island of free Black people was a huge problem. And, of course, word about the Hermosa started getting around plantations about the Bahamas.

In 1840, the Hermosa, a U.S. slave ship headed from Richmond to New Orleans, wrecked on an archipelago in the Northern Bahamas called Abaco. The human trafficker who captained the ship tried to tell the Black Bahamian watchmen that slavery was legal in the U.S., so technically, these enslaved people were cargo. And as far as America was concerned, freeing their human property was tantamount to piracy.

Of course, the anti-white officers who policed the shore didn’t care. Remember, most of these Black people were the sons and daughters of African-Americans who were enslaved in that so-called “land of freedom.” Instead of reading the American enslavers their rights, the Bahamians FORCIBLY FREED the entire ship and told the Hermosa’s crew to “Runtelldat.”Of course, the thieving human traffickers actually ran and told the U.S. government that someone had stolen the property they had just stolen. The U.S. government got involved, but something else happened.

Enslaved Africans on plantations started hearing about that shit, too!

Then things got even crazier:

In 1839, a Black man named Madison Washington escaped slavery via the Underground Railroad. On his way to Canada, he stayed with abolitionist Robert Purvis in Philadelphia, who noted that Washington would stare at a photo of Cinque, the leader of the 1839 La Amistad revolt. But when Madison reached Canada, he decided to return for his wife and was re-enslaved.

To be clear, Madison was not captured by fugitive slave hunters. One of the rarely told stories of America’s peculiar institution is that most slave traders didn’t go to Africa. There was an underground white market composed of “nigger hunters” who kidnapped free Black people in America. And since most free Black people couldn’t just prove they were free by giving their VIN numbers or using CarFax, even free Black people were subject to being enslaved.

That’s how Madison found himself re-enslaved in November 1841, aboard the Creole, a slave ship transporting 143 Africans, 17 white crewmembers …

And one gun.

As soon as one of the Creole’s crewmen lifted the grate to where Madison and his crew were being held, Madison’s boys pounced, killing one of the slave traders immediately. The rest of the white boys were so shook they didn’t even get a chance to fire their lil’ gun. At first, the revolters tried to force the ship’s captain, William Merritt, to take them back to Africa, but Merritt was like: “Y’all got some Africa gas money?”***

***Plus, without Google Maps, they’d probably have to print out directions from Mapquest, and the ship’s printer was probably out of ink.

Then one of the revolters, Ben Blacksmith (who, I’m guessing, was a blacksmith) said: “Aye, Madison, did you hear that story about the Hermosa in the Bahamas? Maybe we should see what they’re talking about.” They literally took a vote and, since Merritt didn’t want any smoke, on Nov. 9, he pulled up in the Bahamas’ driveway two days later.

Because of the Hermosa incident, U.S. authorities were already stationed in the Bahamas. A few of them actually tried to re-steal the Creole but were caught. After the ship had idled in the driveway for three days, a bunch of Black soldiers came on board. The captain tells the soldiers that the people were his property, but the Bahamian attorney general told the men, “Y’all can go. You’re free now.”

The newly emancipated freedmen didn’t know what to do. They were a thousand miles from home, still on the ocean, and aside from the ship’s provisions, they had no food. The Bahamian attorney general told the men to walk onto the ship’s deck. When they did, they witnessed something astonishing.

The slave ship was surrounded by a “fleet” of tiny boats manned by local Bahamians ready to take the revolters to freedom.

They were free

The Bahamian authorities determined that 17 of the men were responsible for the white crew member’s death and held them on the boat. The trial became a huge international incident and was in all the papers. Secretary of State Daniel Webster, Sen. Charles Sumner (Mass.) and Rep. Joshua Reed Giddings (Ohio) even got involved. Pro-slavery politicians and regular-degular white people heard about the revolt and demanded a trial. Not wanting to destroy U.S.-British relations, Britain agreed.

In April 1842, a British court ruled in favor of the Creole mutineers, freeing them forever.

This is not just a cool story from history. Because of the Creole incident, Rep. Giddings introduced nine different resolutions advocating for the Creole revolters, including Resolution No. 8:

Resolved, That all attempts to regain possession of or to re-enslave said persons are unauthorized by the Constitution or laws of the United States, and are incompatible with our national honor.

Giddings' resolutions were technically illegal. In 1836, Congress passed a gag rule banning any discussion of slavery on the House floor. So when Giddings issued his proposal, his colleagues censured him and banned him from saying anything in his defense. In 1842, Giddings resigned from Congress and vowed revenge.

When his district held a special election to fill his seat, Giddings ran on one issue: Vote for me, I promise I will kill slavery if it is the last thing I do. In 1843, Giddings returned to Congress with the largest margin of victory in the history of America.

The racists had radicalized Giddings.

He started a “Select Committee on Slavery” dedicated to eliminating the institution. Since it was technically illegal, he funded it out of his own pocket. When Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Giddings gave a speech advising Black people to shoot slave hunters. The next year, he organized a national “Free Soil” convention, inviting celebrities like Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, Salmon P. Chase and Sen. Cassius Clay (not that one) and a little-known fellow Whig Party member named Abraham Lincoln. Even though some Whig members were abolitionists, the Free-Soilers were a little too radical.

So, on Jan. 19, 1854, Giddings, Sumner, Chase and a few other elected officials got together and wrote “Appeal of the Independent Democrats in Congress to the People of the United States.” Because it was intended to lure moderate Democrats and Whigs out of the pro-slavery Democratic Party, the letter was not as radical as Giddings’ and Sumners’ other resolutions. The small coalition didn’t give itself a name, but they scheduled a meeting for March 20, 1854—the date the Republican Party was founded.

The party ran John C. Fremont as a third-party candidate in 1856, who got beaten like a drum. So in 1860, the party’s most popular candidates, Giddings and Chase, agreed to campaign for that little-known country lawyer, Abraham Lincoln. Although Lincoln wasn’t a radical anti-slavery activist, Giddings never condemned Lincoln publicly. He didn’t have to. Someone else handled that.

In 1843, preacher and abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet gave the keynote speech at the National Colored Convention, telling the story of Madison Washington. At the end of the speech, he begged the attendees to go home and do something:

“Awake, awake; millions of voices are calling you! Your dead fathers speak to you from their graves. Heaven, as with a voice of thunder, calls on you to arise from the dust. Let your motto be resistance! resistance! resistance! —No oppressed people have ever secured their liberty without resistance. What kind of resistance you had better make, you must decide by the circumstances that surround you and according to the suggestion of expediency.”

A young man who had emancipated himself a few years earlier was in the audience. Although he was making a name for himself in the abolitionist community, when he heard the story of Madison Washington, he was so radicalized, he wrote a novel based on Washington’s life. He became friends with Giddings, Chase and Sumner and was Lincoln’s most vocal critic.

His name was Frederick Douglass.

Not only did the Creole Incident radicalize Douglass, but it also radicalized an entire state. See, in 1842, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that anyone “nearer white than Black” could vote. Essentially, light-skinned Black people and mixed-race citizens were allowed to vote for the first time. This is why Giddings, whose district was in Cleveland, vowed to destroy slavery. And, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, in the next governor’s election, “Negroes, black as Erebus, voted in Cleveland on that day, and voted for CHASE.”

This is how Giddings won. This is how Samuel P. Chase won. This is how the Free Soil Party became powerful. This is the Republican Party’s origin story.

On Jan. 31, 1865, Congress passed the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery. To celebrate, Congress invited a special guest to speak. It was not Frederick Douglass or Abraham Lincoln or even Joshua Giddings. For the first time in history, a Black man, Henry Highland Garnet, spoke to Congress. Although Giddings had passed away a few months earlier, Garnet told the story of the most successful slave revolt in U.S. history.

Again …

Black people freed themselves.

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[i] David Eltis, David Richardson, “Productivity in the Transatlantic Slave Trade,” Explorations in Economic History, Vol. 2, Issue 4, October 1995, 466.

[ii] Eric Robert Taylor, “If We Must Die: Shipboard Insurrections in the Era of the Atlantic Slave Trade.” United Kingdom: Louisiana State University Press, 2006.

[iii] Richardson, Shipboard Revolts, 77.

[iv] Mariana P. Candido (2010) “Different Slave Journeys: Enslaved African Seamen on Board of Portuguese Ships, c.1760–1820s,” Slavery & Abolition, 31:3, 398, DOI: 10.1080/0144039X.2010.504530.

[v] Rebecca Hall, “Not Killing Me Softly: African American Women, Slave Revolts, and Historical Constructions of Racialized Gender” (November 29, 2007). Freedom Center Journal, Vol. 2, p. 1, 2010, Available at SSRN.

[vi] Michael Coard, “Anniversary of historic, courageous ‘Igbo Landing,’” Philadelphia Tribune, May 4, 2020