What was stono rebellion

A malaria epidemic in Charlestown, which caused general confusion throughout Carolina, may have influenced the timing of the Rebellion. The act required all white men to carry firearms to church on Sunday.

Thus the enslaved leaders of the rebellion knew their best chance for success would be during the time of the church services when armed white males were away from the plantations. After the Stono Rebellion South Carolina authorities moved to reduce provocations for rebellion. Masters, for example, were penalized for imposing excessive work or brutal punishments of slaves and a school was started so that slaves could learn Christian doctrine.

In a colony that already had more blacks than whites, the Assembly also imposed a prohibitive duty on the importation of new slaves from Africa and the West Indies. Authorities also tightened control over the enslaved. The previous year, seventy slaves from South Carolina had traveled over water and land as they fled successfully to Florida and freedom. South Carolina planters generally had large plantations of several hundred acres to raise labor-intensive rice and indigo.

The wealthier ones owned hundreds of African slaves, who outnumbered white settlers in the colony. Poorer farmers had smaller farms and fewer slaves but were just as interested in controlling the slave population through a variety of means, including whipping, slave patrols, and a version of Christianity that promoted obedience.

Compared with enslaved people in other regions, they had a fair amount of autonomy to determine the means by which they would labor for their masters. The presence of fewer Europeans enabled these Africans and African Americans to shape their own communal culture in the fields and in their quarters during time off for the Sabbath on Sunday. They resisted the slave system by feigning illness, running away for a few days, or breaking farming implements.

But violence ultimately controlled slaves and compelled their labor. Meanwhile, slave owners lived in constant fear that their slaves would revolt and kill them, because they were greatly outnumbered. In August , the colonial assembly passed a law requiring planters to go to church armed in case of a slave revolt or an escape.

Sometime after midnight on September 9, about twenty slaves working as a crew on a drainage ditch decided to escape to freedom in Florida. Many were Angolans and were led by an enslaved man named Jemmy. Somehow, they were discovered by two white men, Robert Bathurst and a Mr.

The slaves killed the men and left their heads on the front steps. There was no turning back. Moving out into the night without a plan, the armed slaves first came upon the home of a planter named Godfrey.

They plundered the house and killed Godfrey and his two children before setting fire to the dwelling. With the flames rising, they continued their march southward. They proceeded to sack the nearby home of a Mr. Lemy, killing him, his wife, and their child before setting the house ablaze. The emboldened slaves traveled along the road, burning six more houses and killing several of the white inhabitants, whether wealthy planters or poor farmers. Some of the slaves in the plantations hid their masters and even drove off the rebels, either too frightened to join the rebellion or genuinely concerned for their owners.

Other slaves, however, joined the rebels, whose ranks grew to fifty or sixty. As dawn broke, the rebels boldly marched down the road waving a banner and beating a drum to signal other slaves to rebel. Destruction was evident in their wake, with flames and smoke rising high into the sky across the landscape. Just then, Lieutenant Governor William Bull and a small group of white planters coincidentally riding along the road spied the formation.

Realizing what was happening, Bull and his outnumbered companions wheeled their horses and fled, narrowly eluding capture and sounding an alarm as they went.

As they marched several more miles, the rebels were joined by additional runaways and numbered almost one hundred. By the time they stop to rest for the night, their numbers will have approached one hundred. What exactly triggered the Stono Rebellion is not clear. Many slaves knew that small groups of runaways had made their way from South Carolina to Florida, where they had been given freedom and land. Looking to cause unrest within the English colonies, the Spanish had issued a proclamation stating that any slave who deserted to St Augustine would be given the same treatment.

Certainly this influenced the potential rebels and made them willing to accept their situation. A fall epidemic had disrupted the colonial government in nearby Charlestown Charleston , and word had just arrived that England and Spain were at war, raising hopes that the Spanish in St. Augustine would give a positive reception to slaves escaping from Carolina plantations. But what may have actually triggered the rebellion on September 9th was the soon-to-be-enacted Security Act.

In mid-August, a Charlestown newspaper announced the Security Act. A response to the white's fears of insurrection, the act required that all white men carry firearms to church on Sundays, a time when whites usually didn't carry weapons and slaves were allowed to work for themselves. Anyone who didn't comply with the new law by September 29 would be subjected to a fine.

Whatever triggered the Rebellion, early on the morning of the 9th, a Sunday, about twenty slaves gathered near the Stono River in St. Paul's Parish, less than twenty miles from Charlestown.

The slaves went to a shop that sold firearms and ammunition, armed themselves, then killed the two shopkeepers who were manning the shop. From there the band walked to the house of a Mr.