Black Rebellion
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Thomas Wentworth Higginson >> Black Rebellion
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[Transcriber's note: This text contains five chapters of T.W. Higgison's
'Travellers and Outlaws'. This collection is commonly referred to as
'Black Rebellion: five slave revolts'.]
TRAVELLERS AND OUTLAWS
Episodes In American History
by THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
With An Appendix Of Authorities
* * * * *
NOTE
The author would express his thanks to the proprietors and editors of the
_Atlantic Monthly_, _Harper's Magazine_, and the _Century_, for their
permission to reprint such portions of this volume as were originally
published in those periodicals.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
* * * * *
CONTENTS.
THE MAROONS OF JAMAICA
THE MAROONS OF SURINAM
GABRIEL'S DEFEAT
DENMARK VESEY
NAT TURNER'S INSURRECTION
APPENDIX
* * * * *
THE MAROONS OF JAMAICA
The Maroons! it was a word of peril once; and terror spread along the
skirts of the blue mountains of Jamaica when some fresh foray of those
unconquered guerrillas swept down from the outlying plantations, startled
the Assembly from its order, Gen. Williamson from his billiards, and Lord
Balcarres from his diplomatic ease,--endangering, according to the
official statement, "public credit," "civil rights," and "the prosperity,
if not the very existence, of the country," until they were "persuaded to
make peace" at last. They were the Circassians of the New World, but they
were black, instead of white; and as the Circassians refused to be
transferred from the Sultan to the Czar, so the Maroons refused to be
transferred from Spanish dominion to English, and thus their revolt
began. The difference is, that while the white mountaineers numbered four
hundred thousand, and only defied Nicholas, the black mountaineers
numbered less than two thousand, and defied Cromwell; and while the
Circassians, after years of revolt, were at last subdued, the Maroons, on
the other hand, who rebelled in 1655, were never conquered, but only made
a compromise of allegiance, and exist as a separate race to-day.
When Admirals Penn and Venables landed in Jamaica, in 1655, there was not
a remnant left of the sixty thousand natives whom the Spaniards had found
there a century and a half before. Their pitiful tale is told only by
those caves, still known among the mountains, where thousands of human
skeletons strew the ground. In their place dwelt two foreign races,--an
effeminate, ignorant, indolent white community of fifteen hundred, with a
black slave population quite as large and infinitely more hardy and
energetic. The Spaniards were readily subdued by the English: the negroes
remained unsubdued. The slaveholders were banished from the island: the
slaves only exiled themselves to the mountains; thence the English could
not dislodge them, nor the buccaneers whom the English employed. And when
Jamaica subsided into a British colony, and peace was made with Spain,
and the children of Cromwell's Puritan soldiers were beginning to grow
rich by importing slaves for Roman-Catholic Spaniards, the Maroons still
held their own wild empire in the mountains, and, being sturdy heathens
every one, practised Obeah rites in approved pagan fashion.
The word Maroon is derived, according to one etymology, from the Spanish
word _Marrano_, a wild boar,--these fugitives being all boar-hunters;
according to another, from _Marony_, a river separating French and Dutch
Guiana, where a colony of them dwelt and still dwells; and by another
still, from _Cimarron_, a word meaning untamable, and used alike for apes
and runaway slaves. But whether these rebel marauders were regarded as
monkeys or men, they made themselves equally formidable. As early as
1663, the Governor and Council of Jamaica offered to each Maroon, who
should surrender, his freedom and twenty acres of land; but not one
accepted the terms. During forty years, forty-four Acts of Assembly were
passed in respect to them, and at least a quarter of a million pounds
sterling were expended in the warfare against them. In 1733, the force
employed in this service consisted of two regiments of regular troops,
and the whole militia of the island; but the Assembly said that "the
Maroons had within a few years greatly increased, notwithstanding all the
measures that had been concerted for their suppression," "to the great
terror of his Majesty's subjects," and "to the manifest weakening and
preventing the further increase of strength and inhabitants of the
island."
The special affair in progress, at the time of these statements, was
called Cudjoe's War. Cudjoe was a gentleman of extreme brevity and
blackness, whose full-length portrait can hardly be said to adorn
Dallas's History of the Maroons; but he was as formidable a guerrilla as
Marion. Under his leadership, the various bodies of fugitives were
consolidated into one force, and thoroughly organized. Cudjoe, like
Schamyl, was religious as well as military head of his people; by Obeah
influence he established a thorough freemasonry among both slaves and
insurgents; no party could be sent forth, by the government, but he knew
it in time to lay an ambush, or descend with fire and sword on the region
left unprotected. He was thus always supplied with arms and ammunition;
and as his men were perfect marksmen, never wasted a shot, and never
risked a battle, his forces naturally increased, while those of his
opponents were decimated. His men were never captured, and never took a
prisoner; it was impossible to tell when they were defeated; in dealing
with them, as Pelissier said of the Arabs, "peace was not purchased by
victory;" and the only men who could obtain the slightest advantage
against them were the imported Mosquito Indians, or the "Black Shot," a
company of Government negroes. For nine full years this particular war
continued unchecked, Gen. Williamson ruling Jamaica by day and Cudjoe by
night.
The rebels had every topographical advantage, for they held possession of
the "Cockpits." Those highlands are furrowed through and through, as by
an earthquake, with a series of gaps or ravines, resembling the
California canons, or those similar fissures in various parts of the
Atlantic States, known to local fame either poetically as ice-glens, or
symbolically as purgatories. These Jamaica chasms vary from two hundred
yards to a mile in length; the rocky walls are fifty or a hundred feet
high, and often absolutely inaccessible, while the passes at each end
admit but one man at a time. They are thickly wooded, wherever trees can
grow; water flows within them; and they often communicate with one
another, forming a series of traps for an invading force. Tired and
thirsty with climbing, the weary soldiers toil on, in single file,
without seeing or hearing an enemy, up the steep and winding path they
traverse one "cockpit," then enter another. Suddenly a shot is fired from
the dense and sloping forest on the right, then another and another, each
dropping its man; the startled troops face hastily in that direction,
when a more murderous volley is poured from the other side; the heights
above flash with musketry, while the precipitous path by which they came
seems to close in fire behind them. By the time the troops have formed in
some attempt at military order, the woods around them are empty, and
their agile and noiseless foes have settled themselves into ambush again,
farther up the defile, ready for a second attack, if needed. But one is
usually sufficient; disordered, exhausted, bearing their wounded with
them, the soldiers retreat in panic, if permitted to escape at all, and
carry fresh dismay to the barracks, the plantations, and the Government
House.
It is not strange, then, that high military authorities, at that period,
should have pronounced the subjugation of the Maroons a thing more
difficult than to obtain a victory over any army in Europe. Moreover,
these people were fighting for their liberty, with which aim no form of
warfare seemed to them unjustifiable; and the description given by
Lafayette of the American Revolution was true of this one,--"the grandest
of causes, won by contests of sentinels and outposts." The utmost hope of
a British officer, ordered against the Maroons, was to lay waste a
provision-ground, or cut them off from water. But there was little
satisfaction in this: the wild-pine leaves and the grapevine-withes
supplied the rebels with water; and their plantation-grounds were the
wild pineapple and the plantain-groves, and the forests, where the wild
boars harbored, and the ringdoves were as easily shot as if they were
militiamen. Nothing but sheer weariness of fighting seems to have brought
about a truce at last, and then a treaty, between those high contracting
parties, Cudjoe and Gen. Williamson.
But how to execute a treaty between these wild Children of the Mist and
respectable diplomatic Englishmen? To establish any official relations
without the medium of a preliminary bullet, required some ingenuity of
manoeuvring. Cudjoe was willing, but inconveniently cautious: he would
not come halfway to meet any one; nothing would content him but an
interview in his own chosen cockpit. So he selected one of the most
difficult passes, posting in the forests a series of outlying parties, to
signal with their horns, one by one, the approach of the
plenipotentiaries, and then to retire on the main body. Through this line
of dangerous sentinels, therefore, Col. Guthrie and his handful of men
bravely advanced; horn after horn they heard sounded, but there was no
other human noise in the woods, and they had advanced till they saw the
smoke of the Maroon huts before they caught a glimpse of a human form.
A conversation was at last opened with the invisible rebels. On their
promise of safety, Dr. Russell advanced alone to treat with them; then
several Maroons appeared, and finally Cudjoe himself. The formidable
chief was not highly military in appearance, being short, fat,
humpbacked, dressed in a tattered blue coat without skirts or sleeves,
and an old felt hat without a rim. But if he had blazed with regimental
scarlet, he could not have been treated with more distinguished
consideration; indeed, in that case, "the exchange of hats" with which
Dr. Russell finally volunteered, in Maroon fashion, to ratify
negotiations, might have been a less severe test of good fellowship. This
fine stroke of diplomacy had its effect, however; the rebel captains
agreed to a formal interview with Col. Guthrie and Capt. Sadler, and a
treaty was at last executed with all due solemnity, under a large
cotton-tree at the entrance of Guthrie's Defile. This treaty recognized
the military rank of "Capt. Cudjoe," "Capt. Accompong," and the rest;
gave assurance that the Maroons should be "forever hereafter in a perfect
state of freedom and liberty;" ceded to them fifteen hundred acres of
land; and stipulated only that they should keep the peace, should harbor
no fugitive from justice or from slavery, and should allow two white
commissioners to remain among them, simply to represent the British
Government.
During the following year a separate treaty was made with another large
body of insurgents, called the Windward Maroons. This was not effected,
however, until after an unsuccessful military attempt, in which the
mountaineers gained a signal triumph. By artful devices,--a few fires
left burning with old women to watch them,--a few provision-grounds
exposed by clearing away the bushes,--they lured the troops far up among
the mountains, and then surprised them by an ambush. The militia all
fled, and the regulars took refuge under a large cliff in a stream, where
they remained four hours up to their waists in water, until finally they
forded the river, under full fire, with terrible loss. Three months after
this, however, the Maroons consented to an amicable interview, exchanging
hostages first. The position of the white hostage, at least, was not the
most agreeable; he complained that he was beset by the women and children
with indignant cries of "Buckra, Buckra," while the little boys pointed
their fingers at him as if stabbing him, and that with evident relish.
However, Capt. Quao, like Capt. Cudjoe, made a treaty at last; and hats
were interchanged, instead of hostages.
Independence being thus won and acknowledged, there was a suspension of
hostilities for some years. Among the wild mountains of Jamaica, the
Maroons dwelt in a savage freedom. So healthful and beautiful was the
situation of their chief town, that the English Government has erected
barracks there of late years, as being the most salubrious situation on
the island. They breathed an air ten degrees cooler than that inhaled by
the white population below; and they lived on a daintier diet, so that
the English epicures used to go up among them for good living. The
mountaineers caught the strange land-crabs, plodding in companies of
millions their sidelong path from mountain to ocean, and from ocean to
mountain again. They hunted the wild boars, and prepared the flesh by
salting and smoking it in layers of aromatic leaves, the delicious
"jerked hog" of buccaneer annals. They reared cattle and poultry,
cultivated corn and yams, plantains and cocoas, guavas, and papaws and
mameys, and avocados, and all luxurious West-Indian fruits; the very
weeds of their orchards had tropical luxuriance in their fragrance and in
their names; and from the doors of their little thatched huts they looked
across these gardens of delight to the magnificent lowland forests, and
over those again to the faint line of far-off beach, the fainter
ocean-horizon, and the illimitable sky.
They had senses like those of American Indians; tracked each other by the
smell of the smoke of fires in the air, and called to each other by
horns, using a special note to designate each of their comrades, and
distinguishing it beyond the range of ordinary hearing. They spoke
English diluted with Spanish and African words, and practised Obeah rites
quite undiluted with Christianity. Of course they associated largely with
the slaves, without any very precise regard to treaty stipulations;
sometimes brought in fugitives, and sometimes concealed them; left their
towns and settled on the planters lands when they preferred them: but
were quite orderly and luxuriously happy. During the formidable
insurrection of the Koromantyn slaves, in 1760, they played a dubious
part. When left to go on their own way, they did something towards
suppressing it; but when placed under the guns of the troops, and ordered
to fire on those of their own color, they threw themselves on the ground
without discharging a shot. Nevertheless, they gradually came up into
reputable standing; they grew more and more industrious and steady; and
after they had joined very heartily in resisting D'Estaing's threatened
invasion of the island in 1779, it became the fashion to speak of "our
faithful and affectionate Maroons."
In 1795, their position was as follows: Their numbers had not materially
increased, for many had strayed off and settled on the outskirts of
plantations; nor materially diminished, for many runaway slaves had
joined them; while there were also separate settlements of fugitives, who
had maintained their freedom for twenty years. The white superintendents
had lived with the Maroons in perfect harmony, without the slightest
official authority, but with a great deal of actual influence. But there
was an "irrepressible conflict" behind all this apparent peace, and the
slightest occasion might, at any moment, revive all the old terror. That
occasion was close at hand.
Capt. Cudjoe and Capt. Accompong, and the other founders of Maroon
independence, had passed away; and "Old Montagu" reigned in their stead,
in Trelawney Town. Old Montagu had all the pomp and circumstance of
Maroon majesty: he wore a laced red coat, and a hat superb with gold lace
and plumes; none but captains could sit in his presence; he was helped
first at meals, and no woman could eat beside him; he presided at
councils as magnificently as at table, though with less appetite; and
possessed, meanwhile, not an atom of the love or reverence of any human
being. The real power lay entirely with Major James, the white
superintendent, who had been brought up among the Maroons by his father
(and predecessor), and who was the idol of this wild race. In an evil
hour, the Government removed him, and put a certain unpopular Capt.
Craskell in his place; and as there happened to be, about the same time,
a great excitement concerning a hopeful pair of young Maroons, who had
been seized and publicly whipped on a charge of hog-stealing, their
kindred refused to allow the new superintendent to remain in the town. A
few attempts at negotiation only brought them to a higher pitch of wrath,
which ended in their despatching the following peculiar diplomatic note
to the Earl of Balcarres: "The Maroons wishes nothing else from the
country but battle, and they desires not to see Mr. Craskell up here at
all. So they are waiting every moment for the above on Monday. Mr. David
Schaw will see you on Sunday morning for an answer. They will wait till
Monday, nine o'clock, and if they don't come up, they will come down
themselves." Signed, "Col. Montagu and all the rest."
It turned out, at last, that only two or three of the Maroons were
concerned in this remarkable defiance; but meanwhile it had its effect.
Several ambassadors were sent among the insurgents, and were so favorably
impressed by their reception as to make up a subscription of money for
their hosts, on departing; only the "gallant Col. Gallimore," a Jamaica
Camillus, gave iron instead of gold, by throwing some bullets into the
contribution-box. And it was probably in accordance with his view of the
subject, that, when the Maroons sent ambassadors in return, they were at
once imprisoned, most injudiciously and unjustly; and when Old Montagu
himself and thirty-seven others, following, were seized and imprisoned
also, it is not strange that the Maroons, joined by many slaves, were
soon in open insurrection.
Martial law was instantly proclaimed throughout the island. The fighting
men among the insurgents were not, perhaps, more than five hundred;
against whom the Government could bring nearly fifteen hundred regular
troops and several thousand militiamen. Lord Balcarres himself took the
command, and, eager to crush the affair, promptly marched a large force
up to Trelawney Town, and was glad to march back again as expeditiously
as possible. In his very first attack, he was miserably defeated, and had
to fly for his life, amid a perfect panic of the troops, in which some
forty or fifty were killed,--including Col. Sandford, commanding the
regulars, and the bullet-loving Col. Gallimore, in command of the
militia,--while not a single Maroon was even wounded, so far as could be
ascertained.
After this a good deal of bush-fighting took place. The troops gradually
got possession of several Maroon villages, but not till every hut had
been burnt by its owner. It was in the height of the rainy season; and,
between fire and water, the discomfort of the soldiers was enormous.
Meanwhile the Maroons hovered close around them in the woods, heard all
their orders, picked off their sentinels, and, penetrating through their
lines at night, burned houses and destroyed plantations far below. The
only man who could cope with their peculiar tactics was Major James, the
superintendent just removed by Government; and his services were not
employed, as he was not trusted. On one occasion, however, he led a
volunteer party farther into the mountains than any of the assailants had
yet penetrated, guided by tracks known to himself only, and by the smell
of the smoke of Maroon fires. After a very exhausting march, including a
climb of a hundred and fifty feet up the face of a precipice, he brought
them just within the entrance of Guthrie's Defile. "So far," said he,
pointing to the entrance, "you may pursue, but no farther; no force can
enter here; no white man except myself, or some soldier of the Maroon
establishment, has ever gone beyond this. With the greatest difficulty I
have penetrated four miles farther, and not ten Maroons have gone so far
as that. There are two other ways of getting into the defile, practicable
for the Maroons, but not for any one of you. In neither of them can I
ascend or descend with my arms, which must be handed to me, step by step,
as practised by the Maroons themselves. One of the ways lies to the
eastward, and the other to the westward; and they will take care to have
both guarded, if they suspect that I am with you; which, from the route
you have come to-day, they will. They now see you, and if you advance
fifty paces more, they will convince you of it." At this moment a Maroon
horn sounded the notes indicating his name; and, as he made no answer, a
voice was heard, inquiring if he were among them. "If he is," said the
voice, "let him go back, we do not wish to hurt him, but as for the rest
of you, come on and try battle if you choose." But the gentlemen did not
choose.
In September the House of Assembly met. Things were looking worse and
worse. For five months a handful of negroes and mulattoes had defied the
whole force of the island, and they were defending their liberty by
precisely the same tactics through which their ancestors had won it. Half
a million pounds sterling had been spent within this time, besides the
enormous loss incurred by the withdrawal of so many able-bodied men from
their regular employments. "Cultivation was suspended," says an
eye-witness; "the courts of law had long been shut up; and the island at
large seemed more like a garrison under the power of law-martial, than a
country of agriculture and commerce, of civil judicature, industry, and
prosperity." Hundreds of the militia had died of fatigue, large numbers
had been shot down, the most daring of the British officers had fallen;
while the insurgents had been invariably successful, and not one of them
was known to have been killed. Capt. Craskell, the banished
superintendent, gave it to the Assembly as his opinion, that the whole
slave population of the island was in sympathy with the Maroons, and
would soon be beyond control. More alarming still, there were rumors of
French emissaries behind the scenes; and though these were explained
away, the vague terror remained. Indeed, the lieutenant-governor
announced in his message that he had satisfactory evidence that the
French Convention was concerned in the revolt. A French prisoner, named
Murenson, had testified that the French agent at Philadelphia (Fauchet)
had secretly sent a hundred and fifty emissaries to the island, and
threatened to land fifteen hundred negroes. And though Murenson took it
all back at last, yet the Assembly was moved to make a new offer of three
hundred dollars for killing or taking a Trelawney Maroon, and a hundred
and fifty dollars for killing or taking any fugitive slave who had joined
them. They also voted five hundred pounds as a gratuity to the Accompong
tribe of Maroons, who had thus far kept out of the insurrection; and
various prizes and gratuities were also offered by the different
parishes, with the same object of self-protection.
The commander-in-chief being among the killed, Col. Walpole was promoted
in his stead, and brevetted as general, by way of incentive. He found a
people in despair, a soldiery thoroughly intimidated, and a treasury not
empty, but useless. But the new general had not served against the
Maroons for nothing, and was not ashamed to go to school to his
opponents. First, he waited for the dry season; then he directed all his
efforts towards cutting off his opponents from water, and, most effectual
move of all, he attacked each successive cockpit by dragging up a
howitzer, with immense labor, and throwing in shells. Shells were a
visitation not dreamed of in Maroon philosophy, and their quaint
compliments to their new opponent remain on record. "Damn dat little
buckra!" they said, "he cunning more dan dem toder. Dis here da new
fashion for fight: him fire big ball arter you, and when big ball 'top,
de damn sunting [something] fire arter you again." With which Parthian
arrows of rhetoric the mountaineers retreated.
But this did not last long. The Maroons soon learned to keep out of the
way of the shells, and the island relapsed into terror again. It was
deliberately resolved at last, by a special council convoked for the
purpose, "to persuade the rebels to make peace." But as they had not as
yet shown themselves very accessible to softer influences, it was thought
best to combine as many arguments as possible, and a certain Col.
Quarrell had hit upon a wholly new one. His plan simply was, since men,
however well disciplined, had proved powerless against Maroons, to try a
Spanish fashion against them, and use dogs. The proposition was met, in
some quarters, with the strongest hostility. England, it was said, had
always denounced the Spaniards as brutal and dastardly for hunting down
the natives of that very soil with hounds; and should England now follow
the humiliating example? On the other side, there were plenty who eagerly
quoted all known instances of zooelogical warfare: all Oriental nations,
for instance, used elephants in war, and, no doubt, would gladly use
lions and tigers also, but for their extreme carnivorousness, and their
painful indifference to the distinction between friend and foe; why not,
then, use these dogs, comparatively innocent and gentle creatures? At any
rate, "something must be done;" the final argument always used, when a
bad or desperate project is to be made palatable. So it was voted at last
to send to Havana for an invoice of Spanish dogs, with their accompanying
chasseurs; and the efforts at persuading the Maroons were postponed till
the arrival of these additional persuasives. And when Col. Quarrell
finally set sail as commissioner to obtain the new allies, all scruples
of conscience vanished in the renewal of public courage and the chorus of
popular gratitude; a thing so desirable must be right; thrice they were
armed who knew their Quarrell just.
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