Thread by @ErikLoomis

This Day in Labor History: September 9, 1739. The Stono Rebellion takes place in South Carolina, the largest slave rebellion and the largest instance of labor resistance in colonial America. Let's talk about the centrality of this to American labor history.

We sometimes don’t immediately think of the history of slavery as labor history, but of course, it’s absolutely fundamental to any understanding of labor history in the American South (and to a lesser extent in the North) both before and after the Civil War.

Slavery was a racialized system, yes, but the whole point of chattel slavery was to provide a labor system. When other methods to acquire that failed, Europeans turned to Africans in large numbers. We simply have to center slavery in our labor histories.

September 9, 1739 was a Sunday. The South Carolina legislature had recently passed the Security Act of 1739, which made it law that plantation owners must carry weapons to church on Sunday, fearing slaves would revolt on Sunday when their masters were at church.

A group of recently arrived slaves from Africa, probably the Congo, under the leadership of a man named Jemmy, discovered this. Determined to have freedom, they chose one of the last remaining Sundays before the was to go into effect to rise up.

Probably Jemmy’s men had military experience, as the slave trade had encouraged raiding and kidnapping and the Congo was heavily affected by this during the early 18th century.

One interesting part of this history is that you can make a strong argument that the modern slave trade was in part a result of better nutrition.

This argument goes that corn was imported into west Africa during the Columbian Exchange, when organisms were moving all over the world. It grew well there, leading to higher survival rates, population growth, overcrowding, and peoples butting heads for available land.

This led to war and an increase in traditional African slavery. Thus when the Europeans decided to turn to African labor, they found ready sellers of human labor, which the traders then transformed into the destructive practice that devastated western Africa for two centuries.

Of course, there are many factors that went into creating the slave trade, but this is probably one big one that we don't really think about.

Arming themselves by robbing a gunsmith, Jemmy and the others had no intention of accepting their status as slave laborers. They hoped to reach the Spanish fort at St. Augustine, hoping that the enemies of the English would grant them freedom.

Over the next couple of days, the Stono freedom fighters killed somewhere between 22 and 25 whites before being defeated in a bloody battle by a group of South Carolina militia near the Edisto River; 20 whites and 44 blacks died that day.

After their defeat, some of the rebellious slaves were executed, others sent to the death traps of the Caribbean. One did however remain free for three years before he was finally captured.

The South Carolina legislature responded harshly to the Stono Rebellion, inaugurating some of the first truly restrictive slave laws in the North American colonies. Their labor force threatened them and they responded in kind.

The Negro Act of 1740 banned reading in English for slaves, the right to assemble in groups. raise food, earn money, and allowed slaveowners to kill their slaves.

South Carolina also made it more difficult to free slaves, forcing slaveowners to ask the legislature for permission in order to manumit their human property.

Some of this wouldn’t be enforced much. For instance, owners of South Carolina’s lowcountry rice plantations found they could make more money if they allowed their slaves to have rifles and hunt for themselves rather than provide food.

But the Negro Act became one of the first steps toward making South Carolina not only the center of North American slavery, but the leader in suppressing black rights and the use of maximum violence toward slaves.

Another outcome of the Stono Rebellion was that slaveowners intentionally began mixing the ethnic background of their slaves, rightfully assuming that rebellion would be more difficult if people couldn’t understand each other, or even better, came from enemy tribes.

This later became a strategy for capitalists in America’s 19th and early 20th century industries to prevent unionization. It also helped convince slaveowners that keeping slaves alive had value, since American-born slaves were less likely to revolt than recent purchases.

Stono was not the first or only slave rebellion in colonial America. New York saw a couple of pretty big rebellions. But it was the first one that really frightened slavers throughout the English North American colonies.

Stono was not only the biggest slave revolt in pre-revolutionary America, it was the largest moment of labor resistance, as hard labor increasingly became associated with people of color.

If you want to read more on this critical moment in early U.S. history, Peter Wood's classic Black Majority still holds up well.

amazon.com/dp/0393314820/…

I also discuss Stono and slave revolts and key moments in American labor history in my forthcoming book, A History of America in Ten Strikes, with @thenewpress, which you can preorder here.

amazon.com/History-Americ…

Back tomorrow to discuss the Lattimer Massacre of 1897, one of many murders of striking coal miners in our history.