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Major revolts and escapes
1663 First serious slave conspiracy in Colonial America, Sept. 13. Servant betrayed plot of White servants and Negro slaves in Gloucester County, Va.
1712 Slave revolt, New York, April 7. Nine Whites killed. Twenty-one slaves executed.
1730 Slave conspiracy discovered in Norfolk and Princess Anne counties, Va.
1739 Slave revolt, Stono, S.C., Sept 9. Twenty-five Whites killed before insurrection was put down.
1741 Series of suspicious fires and reports of slave conspiracy led to general hysteria in New York City, March and April. Thirty-one slaves, five Whites executed.
1773 Massachusetts slaves petitioned legislature for freedom, Jan. 6. There is a record of 8 petitions during Revolutionary War period.
1791 Haitian Revolution began with revolt of slaves in northern province, Aug 22.
1800 Gabriel Prosser plotted and was betrayed. Storm forced suspension of attack on Richmond, Va., by Prosser and some 1,000 slaves, Aug. 30. Conspiracy was betrayed by two slaves. Prosser and fifteen of his followers were hanged on Oct 7.
1811 Louisiana slaves revolted in two parishes about 35 miles from New Orleans, Jan. 8-10. Revolt suppressed by U.S. troops. The largest slave revolt in the United States.
1816 Three hundred fugitive slaves and about 20 Indian allies held Fort Blount on Apalachicola Bay, Fla., for several days before it was attacked by U.S. Troops.
1822 Denmark Vesey plotted and was betrayed. 'House slave' betrayed Denmark Vesey conspiracy, May 30. Vesey conspiracy, one of the most elaborate slave plots on record, involved thousands of Negroes in Charleston, S.C., and vicinity. Authorities arrested 131 Negroes and four whites. Thirty-seven were hanged. Vesey and five of his aides hanged at Blake's Landing, Charleston, S.C., July 2.
1829 Race riot, Cincinnati, Ohio, August 10. More than 1,000 Negroes left the city for Canada.
1831 Nat Turner revolt, Southampton County, Va., August 21-22. Some 60 Whites were killed. Nat Turner was not captured until October 30. Nat Turner was hanged, Jerusalem, Va., Nov. 11.
1838 Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery in Baltimore, Sept. 3.
1839 Amistad mutiny led by Joseph Cinquez, captured. After trial in Conn., returned to Africa.
1841 Slave revolt on slave trader 'Creole' which was en route from Hampton, Va., to New Orleans, La., Nov 7. Slaves overpowered crew and sailed vessel to Bahamas where they were granted asylum and freedom.
1848 Ellen Craft impersonated a slave holder, William Craft acted as her servant in one of the most dramatic slave escapes--this one from slavery in Georgia, Dec 26.
1849 Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery in Maryland, summer. She returned to South 19 times and brought out more than 300 slaves.
1851 Negro abolitionist crashed into courtroom in Boston and rescued a fugitive slave, Feb 15.

Negroes dispersed group of slave catchers Sept 11 in Christiana, Pa., conflict. One White man was killed, another wounded.

Negro and White abolitionists smashed into courtroom in Syracuse, N.Y., and rescued a fugitive slave Oct 1.
1859 Five Negroes with 13 Whites with John Brown attacked Harpers Ferry, Va., Oct 16-17. Two Negroes killed, 2 captured, one escaped. John Copeland and Shields Green hanged at Charlestown, Va., Dec 16.
From Before the Mayflower, by Lerone Bennett
Nat Turner
Nat Turner's rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia, in the summer of 1831, threw the slaveholding South into a panic, and into a determined effort to bolster the security of the slave system. Turner, claiming religious visions, gathered about seventy slaves who went on a rampage from plantation to plantation, murdering at least fifty-five men, women, and children. They gathered supporters but were captured as their ammunition ran out. Turner and perhaps eighteen others were hanged.


Denmark Vesey

Vesey won a lottery and purchased his freedom in the year of Gabriel Prosser's defeat (Aug. 30, 1800). From that date he worked as a carpenter in Charleston, S.C.

He accumulated money and property and was respected by Negroes and whites.

He was, by his own admission, satisfied with his own condition yet he risked everything in a bold effort to free other men.

There burned in Vesey's breast a deep and unquenchable hatred of slavery and slaveholders. A brilliant, hot-tempered man, he was for some twenty years the slave of a slave trader. He traveled widely and learned several languages; he learned also that slavery was evil and that man was not meant to slave for man.

The conspiracy this firebrand conceived is one of the most elaborate on record.

"Men," he said, "must not only be dissatisfied; they must be so dissatisfied they will act." Denmark Vesey was interested in action. He told slaves their lives were so miserable that even death would be an improvement.


Gabriel Prosser

He stood six feet-two and he wore his hair long in imitation of his Biblical idol Samson.

Like most leaders of American Negro slave revolts, Prosser was a deeply religious man. He meditated upon the Bible and dreamed dreams of a Negro state-not in the Caribbean but in Virginia, the land of Jefferson and Washington. He laid plans for his uprising in the spring and summer of 1800. He plotted and was betrayed.