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The Untold Story of One of America's Largest Slave Revolts
By: Wendell Hassan Marsh
Posted: February 25, 2011 at 3:46 PM
Some history books try to tell a story. Others try to turn history
upside down, challenging preconceived notions about winners and
losers. American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest
Slave Revolt does the latter.
Some history books try to tell a story. Others try to turn those
stories on their heads, breaking apart what has been accepted as
truth in the process. Daniel Rasmussen's American Uprising: The
Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt (Harper) tries to
do the latter.
Through his account of the little-known 1811 Louisiana slave
rebellion, the 24-year-old recent Harvard grad challenges popular
narratives of docile and simple slaves who seldom engaged in
subversive activity to gain freedom. He does this by repositioning
slave struggles in larger intellectual and political movements of
the era. He also wreaks havoc on that well-worn archetype of the
tragic mulatto.
About the Louisiana rebellion, American historians generally have
agreed on a few things: In the middle of the night on Jan. 8,
1811, a small group of slaves entered the bedroom of plantation
owner Manuel Andry in his German Coast, La., home. After slaves
slung a few axes and other domestic weapons, a wounded Andry
managed to escape, but his son did not. The slaves then quickly
seized arms and marched to New Orleans, picking up fighters along
the way as whites fled in fear. The revolt, however, was quickly
put down by a local militia.
That's where the story splits. The official storyline that
then-Louisiana Gov. William C.C. Claiborne pushed and that most
historians have accepted was that the slaves were a simple band of
"brigands" out to pillage and plunder. The quick suppression and
subsequent un-due process in the courts proved a testament to the
power of American legality in the wake of the Louisiana Purchase.
But Rasmussen digs into the scant historical evidence that remains
and builds a different account. The author situates the events in
larger, international political and intellectual currents,
revealing the sophistication of his subjects that many histories
of slave rebels fail to portray. By the author's account, the 1804
Haitian revolution victory inspired slaves around the colonies to
rebel. The timing of the revolt -- when there was little work and
the white elites were preparing for Carnival celebrations, paired
with the absence of a significant force of order because of
American expansionism in Spanish West Florida -- speaks to the
slaves' political and organizational acumen.
A cosmopolitan black republicanism seems to have been ripe in the
region at the time of the revolt. Maroon colonies in the bayou
operated as effective bases from which rebels attacked in the
years leading up to the German Coast uprising. Copies of the
French Declaration of the Rights of Man were found in slave
quarters. Battle-hardened warriors from Ghana and Angola also make
an appearance in Rasmussen's version, in which the rebels march in
formation and in uniform with cavalry support, not simply to "give
us us free," as Cinqué asked, but to take control of New Orleans
and establish a black state.
Rasmussen's history does shift the focus from the "big house" in
traditional slave-rebellion narratives, but still struggles to
find those hidden voices of the washhouse in those histories.
Nevertheless, he does introduce new names to the historical account.
One such name is Charles Deslondes, with whom Rasmussen quite
successfully transforms the tragic mulatto trope -- a tormented
figure torn between two worlds -- into the heroic mulatto, a race
savior who uses the image of and access available to the oppressor
to liberate the oppressed. Deslondes, who emerges as one of the
main leaders of the rebellion, is high-yella and green-eyed.
Instead of enjoying the privilege that his mixed heritage affords
him, working as a slave driver in Creole Louisiana, Deslondes
raises arms to fight for freedom.
The bedroom scene in the book, when Andry is attacked, echoes the
actions of another heroic mulatto, Georges, who, despite meeting a
tragic end in The Mulatto by Victor Séjour (the first work of
short black American fiction), presents a symbol of heroic
African-American armed struggle. Somewhat jarringly, though,
Rasmussen inserts contemporary vocabulary into historical
discourse with terms like "sleeper cell" and "guerilla," almost
leaving the impression that slave rebellion was terrorist activity
with a sympathetic objective.
In that vein, the 1811 slave rebellion was a 9/11-like event that
enabled the American politicians to consolidate power in a
French-dominated region that had until then questioned American
control. Rasmussen asserts that the following reign of white
terror and militarization not only made New Orleans American but
also prepared the city to take victory during the Battle of New
Orleans during the War of 1812 against the British.
When thinking about American Uprising and its place challenging
the standard story of this rebellion, I can't help thinking of
what author Edward Said wrote: "Facts do not at all speak for
themselves, but require a socially acceptable narrative to absorb,
sustain, and circulate them ... as Hayden White has noted in a
seminal article, 'narrative in general, from the folk tale to the
novel, from annals to the fully realized "history," has to do with
the topics of law, legality, legitimacy, or, more generally,
authority.' "
By all accounts, Rasmussen's writing style is smooth; the story
sustains interest throughout. The academic language left over from
when the book was still his senior thesis might pique at points,
but its meta-level punches on the study of history are robust
flourishes. Let's just hope that wines of historical truth telling
to come -- like Rasmussen's -- will be received with open palates
by the public, as well.
Wendell Hassan Marsh is a D.C.-based journalist. Find him online
at the theafrabian.com.
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