Slavery Struggle for Black Equality
On the morning of August 22, 1831, Nat Turner and his followers rose in rebellion against the master class. The mob killed the family to whom Turner belonged and rampaged through Southampton killing nearly sixty whites (Stampp 278). Why was this rebellion one of the few organized attempts to protest slavery? What prevented slaves from overthrowing their masters when they sometimes had over one hundred slaves to one master? The relative lack of slave revolts in the antebellum south was due to the absence of a rebellious influence, the masters' continuous effort to make the slaves submissive, and the strength of the family. The slaves did not accept their lot in life, however, and they rebelled without using violence. This is not to say that there were not slave revolts. The previously mentioned Turner rebellion was not the first uprising in the South. Several earlier conspiracies could have resulted in something much larger than the Turner rebellion. The Gabriel Conspiracy in Henrico County, Virginia, involved over a thousand slaves. A march on Richmond was barely avoided when two slaves warned the town. Ten years later more than five hundred slaves in the St. John Baptist Parish, Louisiana, m
This relative lack of influence led many slaves to decide against a revolt (Degler 184). Some slaves even made theft their business by which they could obtain luxuries which they might not normally have. Bennet Barrow distributed $15 to $20 gifts per slave family in 1839 and 1840. However, around two hundred revolts have been documented which is almost insignificant when you take into account the size and population of the antebellum south. One Englishman wrote that in the Carolinas: "Each child has its Momma, whose gestures and accent it will necessarily copy" (Blassingame 266). Another crime was self-sabotage and suicide. For example, consider the treatment of Moses Roper, a steady runaway. They planned to influence several hundred slaves to join them as they marched to Plymouth and to kill all the whites they met on the road, burn the town, take money and weapons, and escape by ship through Albemarle Sound. The fact is that sexual episodes did not occur very often and had a very little effect on breaking up the slave family. As we have seen, the slaves did not revolt due to the lack of rebellious influence, the master's continuous work to keep them obedient, and the strength of the black family. Some slaveholders agree "that every attempt to force a slave beyond the limit that he fixes himself as a sufficient amount of labor to render his master, instead of extorting more work, only tends to make him unprofitable, unmanageable, a vexation and a curse" (Fogel 270-271). Entire harvests were burned in order to get even with a master. However, not all masters resorted to the punishment method of controlling their slaves. In fact, the masters of these large plantations did not need the black women to satisfy their sexual episodes.
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