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sittininaaw · 8 years ago

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He Shall Go Out Free: The Lives of Denmark Vesey, “Perhaps nothing speaks more eloquently about the dehumanizing nature of Atlantic slavery than the fact that one of the most influential abolitionists in antebellum America lacks a known African birthplace, birthdate and, for approximately the first fourteen years of his life, even a name.”

Do u know about Denmark Vesey? #DanishHistory #Garveism www.theatlantic/archive/1999//denmark-vesey-forgotten-hero/

Denmark Vesey was an African man, bought to Danish slavetrades and settlers, that had colonized St.Thomas, during the West Indian slavetrade. Later he became a freedman, who planned what would have been one of the largest slave rebellions in the United States. The African man names Denmark Vesey after his slavemaster was in life a literate, skilled carpenter and leader among African Americans in Charleston, South Carolina. He is notable as the accused and convicted ringleader of "the rising," a major potential slave revolt planned for the city in June 1822. Word of the plans was leaked, and Charleston, South Carolina authorities arrested the plot's leaders before the uprising could begin. Vesey and others were tried, convicted and executed.

Many antislavery activists came to regard Vesey as a hero. During the American Civil War, abolitionist Frederick Douglass used Vesey's name as a battle cry to rally African-American regiments, especially the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry.

Widespread recognition for #DenmarkVesey has been a long time coming. In 1822, in Charleston, South Carolina, Vesey masterminded what would have been the largest #slaveRevolt in American history. When an informer revealed the plans at the last minute and the revolt was nipped in the bud, Charleston authorities downplayed the story, claiming that they had "allowed" the plot to progress so as to ensure the capture of its leaders. Fearing future attempts at insurrection, Charleston slaveowners had Vesey and many of his co-conspirators put to death, and hid written records of the Vesey episode from their slaves. Vesey's legacy was, for all intents and purposes, buried and forgotten.

Now, one hundred and seventy-seven years later, we are witnessing a surge of interest in this forgotten American hero. Three books on Vesey and his plot have appeared in 1999—He Shall Go Out Free, by Douglas R. Egerton, Designs Against Charleston: The Trial Record of the Denmark Slave Conspiracy of 1822, edited by Edward A. Pearson, and Denmark Vesey, by David Robertson—and there is talk of television specials and a feature film in the works. Unknown to most people, however, is the fact that Vesey's story has been recounted for posterity before—in the pages of The Atlantic Monthly.

In the June, 1861, issue there appeared a detailed account of Vesey's planned revolt and its suppression, titled "Denmark Vesey." Its author, a frequent Atlantic contributor named Thomas Wentworth Higginson, was a Cambridge, Massachusetts, minister and a committed abolitionist. (In other issues of the magazine Higginson documented the stories of revolts by Toussaint L'Overture and Nat Turner. In 1862 he served as colonel of the first black regiment in the Civil War, the First South Carolina Volunteers.)

In his Atlantic account Higginson described Vesey's plan (which was developed in collaboration with a slave named #PeterPoyas) as "the most elaborate insurrectionary project ever formed by American slaves.... In boldness of conception and thoroughness of organization there has been nothing to compare it with." Higginson went on:

That a conspiracy on so large a scale should have existed in embryo during four years, and in an active form for several months, and yet have been so well managed ... shows extraordinary ability in the leaders, and a talent for concerted action on the part of the slaves generally with which they have hardly been credited. Vesey was no longer a slave at the time he planned the revolt—he had purchased his own freedom several years before, so his motives were not self-serving—and Charleston's official report of the episode, as quoted by Higginson, made note of Vesey's pride and the strength of his convictions. "Even whilst walking through the streets in company with another," the report stated, "he was not idle; for if his companion bowed to a white person, he would rebuke him, and observe that all men were born equal." At the trial, the sentencing judge was plainly astonished in the face of the stoic heroism displayed by Vesey throughout his ordeal. Higginson quoted the judge addressing Vesey:

"It is difficult to imagine, what infatuation could have prompted you to attempt an enterprise so wild and visionary. You were a free man, comely, wealthy, and enjoyed every comfort compatible with your situation. You had, therefore, much to risk and little to gain." As though responding to the judge four decades after the fact, Higginson posed a rhetorical question: "Is slavery, then, a thing so intrinsically detestable, that a man thus favored will engage in a plan this desperate merely to rescue his children from it?"

https://newrepublic.com/article/122064/remarkable-life-denmark-vesey-co-founder-emanuel-church

https://www.amazon.com/He-Shall-Go-Out-Free/dp/0945612672/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=

#DenmarkVesey #DanishColonialHistory #panfrican #african studies #WestIndien #blackhistory

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