Part 38 (2/2)
[Footnote 26: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Dec. 23, 1856, editorial.]
Early revolts were of course mainly in the West Indies, for these were long the chief plantation colonies. No more than twenty years after the first blacks were brought to Hispaniola a score of Joloff negroes on the plantation of Diego Columbus rose in 1622 and were joined by a like number from other estates, to carry death and desolation in their path until they were all cut down or captured.[27] In the English islands precedents of conspiracy were set before the blacks became appreciably numerous. A plot among the white indentured servants in Barbados in 1634 was betrayed and the ringleader executed;[28] and another on a larger scale in 1649 had a similar end.[29] Incoming negroes appear not to have taken a similar course until 1675 when a plot among them was betrayed by one of their number. The governor promptly appointed captains to raise companies, as a contemporary wrote,[30] ”for repressing the rebels, which accordingly was done, and abundance taken and apprehended and since put to death, and the rest kept in a more stricter manner.” This quietude continued only until 1692 when three negroes were seized on charge of conspiracy. One of these, on promise of pardon, admitted the existence of the plot and his own partic.i.p.ation therein. The two others were condemned ”to be hung in chains on a gibbet till they were starved to death, and their bodies to be burned.” These endured the torture ”for four days without making any confession, but then gave in and promised to confess on promise of life. One was accordingly taken down on the day following. The other did not survive.” The tale as then gathered told that the slaves already pledged were enough to form six regiments, and that arrangements were on foot for the seizure of the forts and a.r.s.enal through bribery among their custodians. The governor when reporting these disclosures expressed the hope that the severe punishment of the leaders, together with a new act offering freedom as reward to future informers, would make the colony secure.[31] There seems to have been no actual revolt of serious dimensions in Barbados except in 1816 when the blacks rose in great ma.s.s and burned more than sixty plantations, as well as killing all the whites they could catch, before troops arrived from neighboring islands and suppressed them.[32]
[Footnote 27: J.A. Saco, _Esclavitud en el Nuevo Mondo_ (Barcelona, 1879), pp. 131-133.]
[Footnote 28: Maryland Historical Society _Fund Publications_, x.x.xV.]
[Footnote 29: Richard Ligon, _History of Barbados_ (London, 1657).]
[Footnote 30: Charles Lincoln ed., _Narratives of the Indian Wars, 1675-1699_ (New York, 1913), pp. 71, 72.]
[Footnote 31: _Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1689-1692_, pp. 732-734.]
[Footnote 32: _Louisiana Gazette_ (New Orleans), June 17, 1816.]
In Jamaica a small outbreak in 1677[33] was followed by another, in Clarendon Parish, in 1690. When these latter insurgents were routed by the whites, part of them, largely Coromantees it appears, fled to the nearby mountain fastnesses where, under the chieftains.h.i.+p of Cudjoe, they became securely established as a community of marooned freemen. Welcoming runaway slaves and living partly from depredations, they made themselves so troublesome to the countryside that in 1733 the colonial government built forts at the mouths of the Clarendon defiles and sent expeditions against the Maroon villages. Cudjoe thereupon s.h.i.+fted his tribe to a new and better b.u.t.tressed vale in Trelawney Parish, whither after five years more spent in forays and reprisals the Jamaican authorities sent overtures for peace. The resulting treaty, signed in 1738, gave recognition to the Maroons, a.s.signed them lands and rights of hunting, travel and trade, pledged them to render up runaway slaves and criminals in future, and provided for the residence of an agent of the island government among the Maroons as their superintendent. Under these terms peace prevailed for more than half a century, while the Maroon population increased from 600 to 1400 souls. At length Major James, to whom these blacks were warmly attached, was replaced as superintendent by Captain Craskell whom they disliked and shortly expelled. Tumults and forays now ensued, in 1795, the effect of which upon the sentiment of the whites was made stronger by the calamitous occurrences in San Domingo. Negotiations for a fresh accommodation fell through, whereupon a conquest was undertaken by a joint force of British troops, Jamaican militia and free colored auxiliaries. The prowess of the Maroons and the ruggedness of their district held all these at bay, however, until a body of Spanish hunters with trained dogs was brought in from Cuba. The Maroons, conquered more by fright than by force, now surrendered, whereupon they were transported first to Nova Scotia and thence at the end of the century to the British protectorate in Sierra Leone.[34] Other Jamaican troubles of some note were a revolt in St. Mary's Parish in 1765,[35] and a more general one in 1832 in which property of an estimated value of $1,800,000 was destroyed before the rebellion was put down at a cost of some $700,000 more.[36] There were troubles likewise in various other colonies, as with insurgents in Antigua in 1701[37] and[38] 1736 and Martinique and Guadeloupe in 1752;[39] with maroons in Grenada in 1765,[40]
Dominica in 1785[41] and Demarara in[42] 1794; and with conspirators in Cuba in 1825[43] and St. Croix[44] and Porto Rico in 1848.[45]
[Footnote 33: _Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1689-1692_, p. 101.]
[Footnote 34: R.C. Dallas, _History of the Maroons_ (London, 1803).]
[Footnote 35: _Gentleman's Magazine_, x.x.xVI, 135.]
[Footnote 36: _Niles' Register_, XLIV, 124.]
[Footnote 37: _Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies_, 1701, pp. 721, 722.]
[Footnote 38: _South Carolina Gazette_ (Charleston), Jan. 29, 1837.]
[Footnote 39: _Gentleman's Magazine_, XXII, 477.]
[Footnote 40: _Ibid_., x.x.xV, 533.]
[Footnote 41: Charleston, S.C., _Morning Post and Daily Advertiser_, Jan.
26, 1786.]
[Footnote 42: Henry Bolinbroke, _Voyage to the Demerary_ (Philadelphia, 1813), pp. 200-203.]
[Footnote 43: _Louisiana Gazette_, Oct. 12, 1825.]
[Footnote 44: New Orleans _Bee_, Aug. 7, 1848.]
[Footnote 45: _Ibid_., Aug. 16 and Dec. 15, 1848.]
Everything else of such nature, however, was eclipsed by the prodigious upheaval in San Domingo consequent upon the French Revolution. Under the flag of France the western end of that island had been converted in the course of the eighteenth century from a nest of buccaneers into the most thriving of plantation colonies. By 1788 it contained some 28,000 white settlers, 22,000 free negroes and mulattoes, and 405,000 slaves. It had nearly eight hundred sugar estates, many of them on a huge scale. The soil was so fertile and the climate so favorable that on many fields the sugar-cane would grow perennially from the same roots almost without end.
Exports of coffee and cotton were considerable, of sugar and mola.s.ses enormous; and the volume was still rapidly swelling by reason of the great annual importations of African slaves. The colony was by far the most valued of the French overseas possessions.
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