Denmark Vessey succeeds

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One of the numberless

Slave revolts in the Ante-Bellum American South, that's what.
 

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As far as I know, not THAT much bigger...

And the reason you DON'T see a Haiti is that all the slaves are spread out and have no communication with each other.
 
Well, heck...

I went and read the Wikipedia summary, and apparently the plan, had it succeeded, was basically for a lot of slaves to free themselves by killing their masters (and I hardly think that is outrageous) and then immediately flee to Haiti from Charleston.

So, had all gone according to plan, the impact would have been hardly worse for the slaves of the South than it was OTL, at least some slaves would be freed but they'd immediately remove themselves from mainland North America. Consequences might be bad for Haiti if the USA mobilized to attack, with the island nation giving the fugitives refuge as the excuse, but then again I think an American invasion of Haiti would have become a Vietnamesque quagmire (as it had for the French), which is presumably why the US held off from trying it until our imperialistic period well after the Civil War.

For American slaves who did not escape in the plot, things would be bad as the white government cracked down hysterically. But that's pretty much what did happen OTL anyway. With the example of a successful revolt before them, perhaps there would have been more insurrections, and I say goody. Perhaps the whole question of whether slavery is really something the United States should have at all would be revisited with more force, even in the South, where profits would be weighed more exactly against the danger of getting murdered one fine night. Again, good.

Frankly I'm kind of disappointed, I always figured plots like Vessey's were aimed at trying to establish themselves in permanent residence here in the USA as some kind of maroon republic bastion. Which possibility is ridiculed and possibly ridiculous, but then again in some regions of the South the slaves outnumbered the whites, and the assumption they'd surely be put down relies on the Union as a whole acting to quell them. Which is clearly something the framers of the Constitution had in mind, but the possibility exists of the ex-slaves fighting their attackers off well enough to secure some kind of negotiated truce, allowing them restricted territory the Union doesn't intrude into, and the eventual prospect of the self-liberated zone re-integrating into the Union having set the precedent that African-Americans are indeed free Americans too. No chance of that happening as long as slavery prevailed of course, but ending slavery is the point.

Escaping and running en masse is a more realistic if less heroic plan (still pretty bold though) and my hat is off to Denmark Vessey. Too bad it didn't work.
 
If you go to the Wiki, and look on the right at the Slave Uprisings -- The only two not suppressed are the two Shipboard ones.

and apparently the plan, had it succeeded, was basically for a lot of slaves to free themselves by killing their masters
This was the big problem with Indian Slaves, and why enslaving Indians was dropped in favor of Whites from King Jame's Prisons.
 
If you go to the Wiki, and look on the right at the Slave Uprisings -- The only two not suppressed are the two Shipboard ones.

This was the big problem with Indian Slaves, and why enslaving Indians was dropped in favor of Whites from King Jame's Prisons.

The key element of success is to have someplace to run to, to take refuge.

That's why Vessey's plan had some hope, if they could carry off the first step, which is where they failed. However, other African slaves in America did sometimes succeed in step one, and step two--the getaway--was accomplished by taking refuge with Native Americans. In North America, Spanish Florida was sometimes such a refuge. Which is one reason Andrew Jackson was so motivated to take Florida from the Spanish.

No cahnce of a Spartacus style revolt?

That would be the hard part, in North America--finding a secure place to live afterwards. Suppressing slave revolts by denying them any hope of ultimate safety was a major attraction for southern states to sign off on the Constitution; even if some Southern state were in fact overwhelmed by a massive and well-organized revolt, surely troops from other Southern states (and if things were enough out of hand, northern ones too) would descend on the zone. It never got that far OTL, in the USA. I still don't think we should dismiss the possibility completely though because maroon settlements did form and survive elsewhere in the Americas.

Well, Spartacus obviously didn't ultimately prevail either. It's always a long shot. Still I think even failed slave revolts are rather inspirational in that they demonstrated to slave owners the fallacy of the notion that slavery was an easy path to riches; sometimes the masters had to pay with their lives and I think it's good they at least had to lose some sleep over the possibility.
 
Much depends on exactly how large you believe his conspiracy was, and how many of his co-conspirators were willing to risk it all. I honestly hadn't encountered the 'fraudulent accusation' theory before, so I'm going to go with the larger extent I had always heard previously.

In that case, it's very big indeed. South Carolina plantation owners normally spent spring and summer in Charleston to avoid malaria, and only spent autumn and winter on their plantations. Vesey's followers numbered in the thousands and while they had few weapons and little or no training in their use, they had plenty of poison and a precise plan and timetable for using it. They understood they were going to have to kill most of the whites in Charleston to succeed and had a realistic plan for doing so. Succeed or fail, Vesey's rebellion wipes out the propertied class of South Carolina at a stroke.

Reprisals against slaves are going to be horrific. But how exactly does South Carolina rebuild? It will have no choice but to lower the property requirements to hold office, perhaps radically. The participation of poor whites in government will change the state's political character significantly, probably liberalising it. No more Senator Calhoun. This in turn is likely to prevent secession.
 
Shawn Endresen: "Succeed or fail, Vesey's rebellion wipes out the propertied class of South Carolina at a stroke."

What a cheery thought. ;) And I say that in ALL seriousness.

Shawn Endresen "But how exactly does South Carolina rebuild? It will have no choice but to lower the property requirements to hold office, perhaps radically. The participation of poor whites in government will change the state's political character significantly, probably liberalising it. No more Senator Calhoun. This in turn is likely to prevent secession."

That's a very interesting bit of analysis, especially since I've read that South Carolina's state constitution was the least populist of any in the nation.

By the way, there are some alt history novels that might appeal to the folks interested in this topic:

Terry Bisson's "Fire on the Mountain" looks at the effects of John Brown and Harriet Tubman together leading a successful raid on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry. In real life, Tubman fell ill and could not join the raid as originally planned.

Eric Flint's "1812: The Rivers of War" and "1824: The Arkansas War." In the first novel, the War of 1812's British raid on Washington, D.C. and Battle of New Orleans take place but with significant differences, as well as long-term consequences that are explored in the second book. I believe that Mr. Flint has begun writing the third book in the series.
 
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