American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

Abstract

[...]a planter militia, led by a large slaveholder who had barely escaped with his life (his son did not) from the manor house where the rebellion began, routed the poorly armed slaves - although slaughter is probably a better descriptor for the massacre, mutilation, and beheading that occurred. Was this impressive solidarity more the result of planning aforethought, or more the muscle memory of "military-style discipline" on highly regimented sugar plantations redeployed for other purposes? (p. 75).

American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt. By Daniel Rasmussen. (New York: Harper, 2011. Pp. [x], 276. $26.99, ISBN 978-0-06-199521-7.)

First, the kudos. This compact book has several solid merits. It is well written. Author Daniel Rasmussen has a good eye for revealing detail. He turns a nice phrase and understands how to keep a narrative chugging along. Here and there one finds fresh insights. American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt deserves praise for what it is: an outstanding senior thesis from Harvard University.

But how does it stack up as a book? It has problems.

The subject matter - the slave revolt of 1811, which took place three leagues upriver from New Orleans, on a ribbon of land known as the German Coast - is certainly compelling. Spilling from the shadows of the Haitian Revolution and the upheavals tearing asunder Spain's New World empire, the uprising was hands down the largest slave rebellion in American history. Over a three -day period commencing on January 8, 1811, approximately two dozen slaves swelled into a disciplined phalanx of 150 to 500 rebels who marched to the rhythm of heavy rain and beating drums through knee-deep mud toward New Orleans. First, a military force commanded by U.S. general Wade Hampton turned them back near present-day Kenner. Then, a planter militia, led by a large slaveholder who had barely escaped with his life (his son did not) from the manor house where the rebellion began, routed the poorly armed slaves - although slaughter is probably a better descriptor for the massacre, mutilation, and beheading that occurred. Charles Deslondes, the rebellion's putative leader, was dismembered and roasted after bloodhounds apprehended him in the swamps. The victor's justice that followed was scarcely less sanguinary. A planter's tribunal ordered the shooting and beheading of eighteen additional slaves. Many more were decapitated following execution by gunfire on orders of a New Orleans court. The heads - more than a hundred in all - were impaled on poles to "decorate our Levee, all the way up the coast," as one planter wrote (p. 148). The reek of rotting flesh perfumed the air for weeks thereafter.

Not just the size of the rebel force but also its diversity and discipline are what make this event a compelling tale. Charles Deslondes, for example, a slave owner's light-skinned son, was a privileged slave driver. Yet he was in league with slaves with whom his class often maintained brittle relations. The other leaders, eleven by one count, reflected the heterogeneity of early Louisiana. So did the rank and file, made up of creole slaves and a vast miscellany of Africans recently imported from the Kongo, the Bight of Benin, and the Gold Coast. Yet instead of fracturing along ethnic or linguistic lines, this incipient slave army achieved a kind of martial orderliness. Was this impressive solidarity more the result of planning aforethought, or more the muscle memory of "military-style discipline" on highly regimented sugar plantations redeployed for other purposes? (p. 75). The records are too spotty to permit more than a couple of informed guesses.

Rasmussen, however, is not about to let fragmentary evidence stand in the way of a good yam. About the motivation of the rebels themselves very little is known. It is not clear whether they were embarking on a Haitian-style revolution, trying for a breakout, or avenging some terrible wrong. Save for a fugitive comment from a convicted slave about wanting to kill whites, the record is nearly mute. Even so, Rasmussen expatiates on how Deslondes and his confederates were inspired by the Haitian Revolution and the tenets of the French Revolution. Lacking proof, he refers more than once to "cells," calling Deslondes "the ultimate 'sleeper cell'" (p. 85). Equally promiscuous are Rasmussen's conjectures regarding two bozales (African-born slaves) by the names of Kook and Quamana. After surmising (plausibly) that they were ethnically Akan, the author concludes that because of warfare in their homeland these men were skilled in guerrilla tactics. He further muses how "Kook's and Quamana's silver tongues" and recollections of heroics in the Asante Kingdom must have enticed fellow slaves into enlisting in their slave army (p. 106).

And then there is the misleading subtitle of the book, "The Untold Story," and the equally dubious concluding chapter title, "The Cover-Up." There was no cover-up, nor has the story of the 1811 slave revolt gone untold. Understudied, perhaps; distorted by the first generation of Louisiana historians, themselves descended from the planters responsible for the brutal suppression of the revolt, most certainly. But vanished down the trapdoor of historical memory? Not hardly. Coming from a writer who appears to have done not one lick of unpublished primary research, it is chutzpah with attitude to claim the subject has remained mostly unknown until he came along, when the very historians from whose work Rasmussen has drawn heaviest have narrated this tale far better, and with greater circumspection. There is James H. Dormon's "The Persistent Specter: Slave Rebellion in Territorial Louisiana" (Louisiana History, 18 [October 1977], 389-404), based on courthouse records exhumed in St. Charles Parish. And there is the equally groundbreaking research of Robert L. Paquette, who has been laboring for two decades on this topic, excavating yet more judicial records and carefully crafting what will likely be the definitive history of this vitally important subject for generations to come. One only has to read their articles, particularly Paquette's, to appreciate how much Rasmussen is in their debt, far greater than thankful words in the acknowledgments can possibly convey.

Reviewers normally refrain from inflicting purchase advice on readers. This may be one case when the mie should be broken: save your money for Paquette's forthcoming book.