"Cariy the War Into Africa": Who Turned Negroes Into Revolutionaries and Why?

"Cariy the War into Africa": Who Turned Negroes into Revolutionaries and Why? by E. Michael Jones During the summer of 1830 Heinrich Heine cut his cast, descending as it did" from the enthusiast vacation on the island of Helgoland short and rushed millennialist sects which had proliferated in England off to join what came to be known as the revolution of during the 17'*' century, many of whom ended up emi 1831 in Paris. "Gone," he wrote, "is my longing for grating to America. peace andquiet. Once again I know what I want, what I Slave rebellions had occurred throughout history, ought, what I must do .. .1 am a son of the revolution probably as long as the exiscence of slavery icself One and will take uparms,"' could cite the rebellion of Spartacus in Rome or the On February 12, 1831, Nat Turner, a slave who had story of Moses and the Exodus as examples. The his been born in Southhampton, Virginia in 1800, cook a tory of Negro chattel slavery in the NewWorldwas no solar eclipse as the sign chat he was co begin planning different. Slave revolts had taken place in New York for a slave rebellion on che coming July 4. When an- City in 1712, at Stono, South Carolina in 1739, and in ocher eclipse cook place on Augusc 13, Turner, who had Southern Louisiana in 1811. Numerous conspiracies been receiving visions with increasing frequency, was had been broken up before they could emerge as full confirmed in his belief chat the Lord wanted him to blown revolts. The conspiracy at Point Coupee, Louisi lead a rebellion. One week later, on August 21, Turner ana in 1795 was one example. To that could be added freed 50 fellow slaves and urged them to "kill all the conspiracies of Gabriel Prosser in Richmond, Vir whites," regarc less ofage orgender. By the time the Vir ginia in 1800 and of Denmark Vesey in Charleston, ginia militia put down the rebellion 48 hours later, 57 South Carolina in 1822.- men, women and children had been murdered by But there was a new and disquieting element to Nat Turner's band of revolutionaries. Turners rebellion. The Turner rebellion sent a new wave Turner eluded capture for another two months, but of fear throughout the South because it included "the on October 30, he was found hiding in a cave, brought new forces that had been building since the American to trial, and hanged on November 11. His body was and French Revolutions."' These new forces "had secu then dismembered and its various parts distributed as larized thecause o^ national-popular liberation and pro souvenirs of the crushed rebellion. His lawyer, Thomas claimed the Rights of Man."' The slave revolt which Ruffin Gray, interviewed him in jail before his exccu- bestepitomized those"newforces" was the rebellion led cion, and published The Confissiom ofNut Turner after byToussaint COvercure in Haiti. his deach. In chis account, Turner recounted rhe visions Toussaint's rebellion had been set of} not so much by he had had throughout his life. As one has conic to ex the miserable conditions of servitude as by the arrival of pect, revolutionary fervor in Anicnca had a religious French troops on that island in rhe wake of the revolu tion in France. Fhearrival in Sant Domingue of French soldiers inihued with the principles of liberty, fraternity, L Michael Jones istheeditor ofCulture Wars magazine. and equality and determined to spread those principles rliroughout the world convinced 'Ibussaint I.'Overture 6 / CULTURE WARS Nat Turner howcvcr. che interest of revolutionaries of Paris ill breaking the counterrevolutionary .. rV .. - f-?.: 'i.-' t tionpowerof olilicirIfnglandown Girondists,and Spain,resultednot to inmenef forts. often carried hy French-speaking blacks, to encourage slave revolts and move ments for national liberation.'' Toussaint L'Ovcrture could invoke 'S^M j the Rights of Man, Denmark Vesey could claim thac he was actingon the principles ar- ticulaced in the Declaration of Indepen- wi"! dence. The fact chat the leaders of slave re- (v V bellions appealed to the Declaration in this 1 • Hp manner led Edwin Clifford Holland to de- ir'.. scribe blacks in the aftermath of the Vesey W\ plot as "Jacobins": "Let it never be forgotten that our Negroes are freely the Jacobins of the country; that they are the Anarchistsand the Domestic Enemy: the common enemy thac these revolutionary principles had a direct applica of civilized society, and the barbarians who tion to the lot of Haiti's black slaves, and he spent the would if theycould become the destroyers of our race."^ rest of his career creating a new revolutionary synthesis, The spectre of Toussaint in Haiti evoked fears in the and playing off the factions which opposed him against mind of the South which refused to go away. Playing on each other. The slave rebellions which had occurred those fears, William Watkins, told a meeting of free Ne since time immemorial now had a new ideological groes in Baltimore in 1825 that Toussaint's rebellion foundation in the principles which leaders of the French provided "an irrefutable argument to prove that the de Revolution had articulated in the wake of their success scendants of Africa were neverdesigned by their creator ful overthrow of the nnden regime. to sustain an inferiority, or even a mediocrity m the In the wake of Tous- saint's rebellion in Haiti in 1798. the world was a different place. W. E. B Du Bois argued that The Turner rebellion sent a new wave of fear Toussaint changed Amer throughout the South because it included "the ican history, largely bc- new forces that had been buildingsince the The interlocking French American and French Revolutions." and Haitian revolutions shattered the tranquil- ity ... ol'the .slave hold ing regions everwvhcre in the hemisphere and generated rational fear chain of being." Thonias Jefferson noticed the same among the slave-holders. I hcv stirred theslaves and thing when he .said, "the West hidies appears to have free Negroes t<i rebellion under a modern ideology given considerable inipidse to the minds of the slaves that poseii a new and more dangenms threai to the ... in the United Stare.s."'* old regimes than anything [ireviously encountereil. The contlicion of servitude among American blacks The threat lieclined alter the collapse of Toussaint's anti the ideology ol revolution then .sweeping through rapproehetneni with l-'ranee anil Napoleon's brutal luiro[>e consiiriiietl a binary weapon. As soon as the two attempi to re-enslave the islanil. Huring the I79()s, elements of that weapon niaile contact, an explosion Febniaiy 2008 / 7 would occur. Toussaincs revolution in Haiti was the ethnic political liberation movements, certainly not in first indication that the two elements had made contact. the 19''' centuryin America. "The Haitian revolution," writes Eugene Genovese, "in The Southwas of a different theological mind on this contradistinction to one more rising of slaves, would matter, but they had not descended from the Puritans, a have been unthinkable without the French Revolu group which their Cavalier ancestors had always identi tion. The revolutionary ideology that emerged in fied with regicide and revolution. This split between the 1790s was fed from both sides of the Adantic.'"' Cavaliers and Roundheads was present in America at The situation in America was compounded by the the moment of that nations birth. Intellectually the fact that that country was based on two documents United States were an uneasy alliance, held together at which contradicted each other when it came to the issue best by Enlightenment premises that papered over ( of slavery. The constitution of the United States ac deeperdivisions, divisions whichbecame moreapparent cepted slavery asone of theconditions of union, but the onlyas time went on. The South never got over its am Declaration! of Independence repudiated it when it bivalence toward the Declaration of Independence. And claimed that all men were created equal and had the the North never got over itsambivalent feelings abouta right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Thus constitution which accepted slavery. "The southern it was not jsurprising that slave-holders discouraged Federalists," according to Genovese, "... berated the black attendance at 4''' of July celebrations. Nor was it Jeffersonians for spreading a French gospel of liberty, surprising that the leaders of slave rebellions used the equality, and fraternity that the slaves would hear, inter language of rebellion found in the Declaration of Inde pret with deadly literalness, and rally around. Increas pendence a^inst their own masters. That and the fact ingly, during the 19''' century, slave-holders lectured that Puritanism had never been repudiated in America, each other on the need to keep blacks away from Fourth as it had in jEngland, led to astrain of revolutionary of July celebrations. ... Every election campaign ech thought thatj was uniquely America because it was made oed the language of the American Revolution and up of a mixture of Puritan and Enlightenment thought threatened to generate slave unrest, no matter how that in other:parts of the worldwasconsidered self-con much care was taken to control the rhetoric."'-' tradictory. Tom Paine perfected the rhetoricof this dual The Nat Turner rebellion was a sign that those hybrid vision in pamphlets like Common Sense. It was part of seeds were now germinating on American soil. It was the lingua franca of American lifeand so it should come also a sign of the fault lines within the revolutionary as no surprise that the leaders of slave rebellions in movement itself Unlike America, which retained the America would make use of it as well.

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