The Abaco and The Bahamas — How the most successful slave revolt in US history actually occurred in the Bahamas
By dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
The story of the most successful slave revolt in US history was a rather convoluted international affair and actually occurred in the Bahamas. In 1840 on the Bahamian island of Abaco a revolt started on the American slave ship the Creole. The series of events that lead up to the revolted started when a black man named Madison Washington who had previous escaped slavery (and had made it to Canada) tried to return to the US to free his wife. Madison was caught in Maryland by slave catchers taken to Virginia, and put on the slave ship, the Creole, with other slaves destined for sale in Louisiana. Madison was onboard a slave ship that contained 135 Africans and 17 white people. The white slavers only carried one gun because of the fear slave would revolts and arm themselves.
I first heard of this story during the 2019 Hurricane Dorian that devastated the Bahamas. I considered myself somewhat of an expert on Caribbean history but this was story I was not previously familiar with. I was aware the Bahamas had long cultural ties with African-Americans, and many Floridian slaves had escaped there, but I didn’t know how active the Bahamas had been in opposing US slavery.
First a little of the backstory on the Bahamas, and why the islands became a beacon for enslaved African-Americans to escape to. The Bahamas became a British crown colony in 1718, when the British clamped down on piracy and formally occupied the archipelago of 200 some islands. After the American Revolutionary War, the British Crown resettled many of the white Southerners who were loyal to Britain, numbering thousands of American Loyalists, to the Bahamas which was largely uninhabited at that time. Many of these white settlers brought their enslaved Africans with them. They then established plantations on British land grants. But harsh weather conditions and tropical diseases made many of the white settlers leave after a couple of decades, without the large number of blacks they had taken there.
Because of this history, African slaves and their descendants constituted the majority of the population from this period to the present. Then in 1807, the British abolished the trans-Atlantic slave trade. During the following decades, the British Royal Navy intercepted any slave trade ships, the navy then resettled emancipated slaves in The Bahamas. Many of those freed Africans who were liberated on the open seas went to the Bahamas as free people, they numbered thousands of Africans liberated from the slave ships.
In 1818, the British Home Office in London had ruled that "any slave brought to the Bahamas from outside the British West Indies (Caribbean) would be manumitted (emancipated)."Up to the point the British Home Office had ruled escaped African slaves were emancipated if they reached the Caribbean, the Bahamas had been a regular stop in the Atlantic slave trade. Furthermore shipwrecked US vessels had often ended up there.
In 1891 when America bought Florida from Spain, it created a legal vacuum. In the ensuing legal chaos thousands of enslaved Africans and Black Seminoles escaped to the Bahamas. Later during the 1820’s Seminole Wars in Florida, hundreds of North American slaves and African Seminoles escaped from Cape Florida to the Bahamas. Eyewitness accounts of the time write of 300 slaves escaping in a mass flight in 1823. They were aided by Bahamians in 27 sloops, with others using canoes for the journey. These escapees mostly settled on northwest Andros Island, where they developed the village of Red Bays.
So many slaves ran to freedom that the US government in 1825 had to build a lighthouse in Cape Florida. As a side note this flight is commemorated in 2004 by a large sign at Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park. Some of their descendants in Red Bays continue African Seminole traditions in basket making and grave marking. Furthermore the British home office ruling led to a total of nearly 300 slaves owned by US nationals being freed from 1830 to 1835 when they docked in British controlled islands.
On August 1, 1834, Britain freed all the slaves in its territories (known as Emancipation Day in the Caribbean). British slave emancipation set off a tidal wave of events that challenged the American slave trade. On December 1830 and later on February 1834, two American slaves ships Comet and Encomium used in the United States domestic coastwise slave trade, were wrecked off the Bahamian island of Abaco. When the lifeboats took the masters, passengers and slaves into Nassau, customs officers seized the slaves and British colonial officials freed them, over the protests of the American crew. There were 165 slaves on the Comet and 48 on the Encomium. The United Kingdom finally paid an indemnity to the United States in those two cases in 1855, under the Treaty of Claims of 1853, which settled several compensation cases between the two countries.
Then in 1835 British colonial officials again freed 78 North American slaves from the Enterprise, which then sailed to Bermuda in 1835. Finally in 1840, the Hermosa, a US slave ship headed from Richmond going to New Orleans, wrecked in Abaco. The ships captain tried to explain that slavery was legal in the US, so technically these enslaved people were cargo. But the Bahamians instead again forcible emancipated the entire ship full of slaves freeing 38 people. The result of all these salves being forcibly freed from bondage being trickling down to enslaved blacks on American plantations. News started circulating that the Bahamas was a place of refuge. All this lead up 1841 and to what would be the most successful slave rebellion in American history.
All this lead up to the story that I opened up this diary with. In 1840 a Virginian, Madison Washington escaped slavery and successfully used the underground railroad to made it to Canada. Before he had escaped Washington who was “employed” as a cook, had earned the reputation as a rebellious troublesome slave. Washington was described as a man with “extraordinary features” and “leadership qualities”. But because he had escaped alone Madison valiantly tried to return to free his wife. In Southern Maryland Washington was caught by slave catchers and taken to Virginia. Madison was then put on a ship, the Creole, with other slaves from Virginia destined for sale in New Orleans Louisiana. The Creole contained 135 Africans and 17 white people , but the ships crew only carried one gun because of the fear of slave revolts if they slaves armed themselves.
The slaves were kept in the forward hold of the ship. On November 7, 1841, when one the crew carelessly lifted the grate, Madison pounced and he gained the deck. Washington and eighteen other male slaves rebelled; they overwhelmed the crew and killed John R. Hewell, one of the slave traders, with a knife. The crew and passengers had only one gun among them, which they never used. The captain, who was wounded, and two mates had gone up into the rigging to escape the fighting. One of the slaves was badly wounded and later died. Some others of the crew were wounded but all survived.
The rebels first tried to force the Creole’s captain to take them to what is Liberia in West Africa, but the captain refused. Then one of the rebels who had heard about the Hermosa incident and how the Bahamas had freed them forced the captain to sail them to the islands instead.
On November 9, 1841, the Creole reached the port of Nassau Bahamas
, the slave ship was surrounded by a “fleet” of tiny little boats manned by local Bahamians.
The ship was
first boarded by the harbor pilot (a boat designed to helo other ships navigate a difficult harbor) and his navy crew, all local black Bahamians. The captain tells the soldiers that the people on board were his property but, the captain
tells the American slaves that, under Bahamian colonial law, they were free. The harbor pilot’s crew advised them to go ashore at once. The Quarantine Officer also came aboard, as the captain Robert Ensor was badly wounded, the officer took First Mate Zephaniah Gifford to inform the American Consul of the events. At the Consul's request, the governor of the Bahamas ordered a guard to board the Creole to prevent the escape of the men implicated in Hewell's death. The 24 black soldiers were led by a white officer. This action prevented the slaves from dispersing into the city, but black Bahamians wisely not trusting the American kept a vigil of small boats surrounding the Creole.
Fearing the British would apply their ban on slavery to the American slaves, the American consul tried to organize American sailors on the island to take back control of the ship. He intended to have them sail the ship out of British jurisdiction with the slaves still aboard. An American group of sailors approached the ship on November 12, intending to sail it away, but were foiled by a Bahamian who shouted a warning to the officer on the guard aboard the Creole. He threatened to fire into the Americans in their boat, and they withdrew.
After an investigation by magistrates, on Friday, 13 November 1841, the Bahamian Attorney-General went aboard. He told the nineteen rebels that they would be detained. He informed the remainder: "You are free, and at liberty to go onshore, and wherever you please."
A fleet of small boats manned by locals, who had still surrounded the brig at a distance, immediately came forward. The Attorney-General warned the people against boarding the Creole, but said they could provide passage to those slaves who wished to go to shore. Most did so, although three women, a girl, and a boy stayed in hiding on board. They eventually sailed with the ship to New Orleans and back to slavery, but less than a year later, the Creole would sail no more after it wrecked again this time in a hurricane.
The local Bahamian government then arranged for a ship bound for Jamaica, then also under British control, to take passengers to that island for free, announcing it in the local newspaper. Numerous American blacks from the Creole left for Jamaica aboard it.
When the US state department heard about the revolt, and received a copy of the newspaper’s decree they were OUTRAGED. But after the Bahamian government informed them they arrested the conspirators, the United States government dropped its claims for all the slaves to be returned to its custody. But the US Secretary of State still demanded a trial. The British agreed. But the Bahamian Attorney General ruled that since the Bahamas didn’t have an extradition treaty with the US the trial would have to be in the Bahamas.
As trial date approached it became an international incident. Several Southern politicians in the US tried to organize an attack to recapture the slaves, but Bahamian who still had their own boats organized looking out parties and prevented armed American ships from approaching the Islands.
The British authorities determined that the rebel slaves had not committed any breach of British or maritime law. As under British law they were free men, they were considered to have the right to use force in self defense to escape the detention of illegal slavery. The Bahamians Crown officials, the Admiralty Court in Nassau held a special session in April to consider to charging the 17 Creole rebels instead for piracy. At the trial the court ruled, in essence, “a man can not be charged for pirating his own body”. The Bahamian officials then freed Madison Washington and the 17 slaves. who chose to stay on the islands with the remainder of the crew.
The Creole case has been described as the "most successful slave revolt in U.S. history". The abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet praised Madison Washington in his 1843 "Address to the Slaves of the United States," calling Madison Washington a "bright star of freedom" who "took his station in the constellation of true heroism." Frederick Douglass wrote a novella The Heroic Slave (1853) whose lead character was inspired by and named, Madison Washington. As Douglass wrote a fictional account, his work is now considered the first known piece of African-American fictional literature.
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These incidents, in which a total of 447 slaves belonging to US nationals were freed from 1830 to 1842, increased tension between the United States and the United Kingdom. The two countries had been co-operating in patrols to suppress the international slave trade. However, worried about the stability and value of its large domestic slave trade, the United States argued that the United Kingdom should not treat US domestic ships that under duress came to UK colonial ports as part of the international trade. The United States worried that the success of the Creole slaves in gaining freedom would encourage more slave revolts on merchant ships. Tensions between the US and UK continued to rise until the American Civil War, which then lead to the Emancipation Proclamation ending legal slavery in the United States.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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The contracts totaled $86,100 this school year. They were for programs primarily serving Black students in the majority-white district, many of whom are St. Louis kids voluntarily bused to Rockwood, the largest area district and one of the highest-rated and most affluent.
“I don’t feel like they serve all of our students,” newly elected board member Izzy Imig said that night.
“I agree,” said board member Tamara Jo Rhomberg.
There was no more discussion. The vote broke 4-3, to applause from some in the crowd.
The events of that night, Oct. 6, were a culmination of years of discontent among a contingent of parents in the west St. Louis County school district. It began with opposition to COVID-19 health orders and grew, in Rockwood and across the country, to include challenges to diversity and equity initiatives and library book content.
Rockwood had been working on a more inclusive curriculum, with a goal of closing racial disparities in discipline and test scores, even before racial justice protests in 2020 prompted a national reckoning. But where advocates saw progress, opponents accused the district of reverse discrimination and an effort to shame white teachers and students.
The conflict put Rockwood in the middle of a trend sweeping the country.
“We have seen a loose network of very conservative philanthropies, legal advocacy organizations and then nonprofit groups who are dedicated to challenging efforts of public schools to address issues of diversity, equity and inclusion,” said John Rogers, a professor at the University of California-Los Angeles who co-authored a November study surveying more than 600 U.S. principals. “Some of that energy was then funneled toward particular communities, and I think at least early on Rockwood was one of those communities.”
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In a major contract win, Howard University has been awarded $90 million for military research.
The school is the first HBCU (Historically Black College and University) to secure a Pentagon contract for research development, officials announced Monday, ABC 7News reports.
The U.S. Air Force and Department of Defense will fund a university-affiliated research center (UARC) where Howard University will study “tactical autonomy” technology for military systems, according to a release.
“The contract will establish a Historically Black Colleges and Universities-led University Affiliated Research Center consortium to execute research focused on tactical autonomy that will aid in the transition of research into practical applications,” the release states.
HBCUs produce about 30% of all professional STEM workers, according to the ABC 7News report, but receive a small percentage of military research funding. This newly announced UARC center symbolizes the much-needed support for STEM-related programs at these schools. Currently, the Pentagon has 14 UARCs.
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Although we’re months out from any rulings, many voting rights advocates have their eyes on the Supreme Court, which is likely to rule on a few cases this term that could affect the strength of the Voting Rights Act.
The act was passed and signed in 1965, but it was a long time in the making. Its roots trace back to the end of Reconstruction. Federal troops withdrew from the South after the Compromise of 1877, ushering in what’s known as the nadir of race relations in America. Jim Crow laws were enacted, the Ku Klux Klan rose to power, and many of the attempts Black people made to vote and exercise full citizenship were met with violence. That violence persisted well into the 1960s.
After the VRA passed, Black voter registration in the South rose immensely, and throughout the nearly six decades since it was enacted, the legislation has been both strengthened and weakened. According to Atiba R. Ellis, a Case Western Reserve School of Law professor, “In some ways, the way the Voting Rights Act has changed has been, in part, a conversation between Congress and the Supreme Court.”
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Florida's Department of Education has rejected an Advanced Placement course covering African American studies — saying the class indoctrinates students to "a political agenda."
"As submitted, the course is a vehicle for a political agenda and leaves large, ambiguous gaps that can be filled with additional ideological material, which we will not allow," said Bryan Griffin, Gov. Ron DeSantis' press secretary.
But scholars who were involved in creating the curriculum say that's far from the truth.
"There's nothing particularly ideological about the course except that we value the experiences of African people in the United States," Christopher Tinson, the chair of the African American Studies department at Saint Louis University, told NPR.
The course is the latest addition to the AP program, which helps high school students earn college credit. The class is currently undergoing a pilot phase. Sixty schools across the U.S. were participating in that trial run, including at least one high school in Florida. But state officials have taken issue with the possibility that the course would teach about Black Lives Matter and the reparations movement.
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To pay for the shipments, which can cost about $10,000 to fill a tractor-trailer, the sisters' Child2Child Book Foundation has raised more than $64,000. Atlanta Journal Constitution: Teen sisters send 60,000 books to Africa
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When Atlanta teen sisters Azzarree and Amirrah Uwhubetine were growing up in Nigeria, they either chose their favorite titles on iBooks or depended upon relatives going abroad to bring back suitcases stuffed with books.
There were no big box bookstores, no easy access to libraries or Amazon deliveries.
“When I came here, Barnes & Noble was like a culture shock,” said 17-year-old Azzarree. “I had never seen so many books in one place.”
The sisters and their family moved to Atlanta in 2016, and were soon joined in the states by their friends, Sedinam and Eline Asase. The Asase sisters moved with their family from Ghana to Washington, D.C. The four girls were classmates at a private school in Nigeria and have remained friends.
As avid readers, the four formed a book club and often thought about children in Africa and how difficult it was for them to have books for a well-rounded education. So often, textbooks are outdated, or one classroom will have 30 to 40 children studying from a single book, explained 16-year-old Sedinam.
“We realized if it was hard for us to get these books, it was harder for people in underserved communities to get that access,” said 16-year-old Amirrah. “Even though we were really young, we still wanted to make that change.”
In 2019, the girls formed the Child2Child Book Foundation and started raising money to send books to Africa.
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