So let's talk about the Insurrection Act of 1807 for a minute, shall we? (1/)
2/ You might be asking yourself, "Self, what the hell was going on in 1807 that necessitated a federal law allowing the president to deploy the US armed forces to suppress insurrection or rebellion?" And that's a good question. Give yourself a pat on the back.
3/ Well, Aaron Burr's escapades in the trans-appalachian west had petered out by the end of 1806, and though it might have raised the specter of disunion in some quarters, this wasn't the prime concern of white Americans who were worried about "insurrection."
4/ Nope, the fear of "insurrection," and "riot," "tumult," etc., came from enslavers and the slave state political leadership (two classes which overlapped considerably). Why? Well, in 1805, the independent Black republic of Haiti promulgated its first constitution.
5/This closed a 14+ year revolution wherein Black and mulatto Haitians overthrew the colonial slaver regime (called St. Domingue, Haiti had been the largest French sugar plantation colony, where conditions were especially horrific) and expanded their fight over the entire colony
6/Then the Haitians repelled attempted invasions by the Spanish and a British naval detachment, before defeating Napoleon's final efforts to reconquer the once-colony. The Haitian Revolution is the most important event in modern world history you likely weren't taught in school
7/Haiti was the 2nd independent republic in the Americas, and the first state founded by former enslaved peoples who fought for their freedom *and* political sovereignty. And it scared the SHIT out of the slaveholding classes of the rest of the hemisphere--especially in the US.
8/French planters who fled St. Domingue early in the revolution landed in places like Charleston and New Orleans, bringing tales of horror & violence-the specter of race war that loomed in the back of every enslavers' mind, no matter how "justified" they proclaimed slavery to be.
9/US enslavers followed events in Haiti closely-it was literally a matter of life and death, in their eyes. And many of the enslaved Blacks knew quite well what was happening; as Julius Scott showed in "The Common Wind," Black communication networks stretched far and wide.
10/"Haiti," for the enslavers, became the "migrant caravans" or "ISIS sleeper cells" of the day; the bogeyman for white supremacists afraid their violence towards Black people would be repaid. And in any insurrection scare in this period, the whisper of "San Domingo" was there.
11/That was the case in the 1800-01 Gabriel's Rebellion plot in Virginia, betrayed at the last minute. The scope and violence of the rebels' plans (burn Richmond and butcher whites as they fled their burning houses) seemed to echo Haiti.
12/In their testimony, Black rebels averred that Gabriel Prosser himself alluded to "Santo Domingo" as both an inspiration for his rebellion and a possible source of reinforcements. White Virginians freaked the hell out: ZOMG a narrowly-averted Haitian Revolutionary invasion!
13/The first president of Haiti, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, had declared "independence or death" as his country's motto. And now it seemed as if enslaved Black people in the US were extending that mission. To jittery enslavers, it seemed like a contagion was spreading.
14/Across the slaveholding states and territories of the US South, whites' anxieties ran at fever pitch. Gov. William Claiborne mandated in 1804 that any ship entering his Louisiana Territory would be searched for "bad characters" and revolutionary agents.
15/that same year, in Virginia, an enslaved man accused of plotting insurrection declared "I have nothing more to offer than what George Washington would have had to offer if he had been taken by the British...I have adventured my life to obtain the liberty of my countrymen."
16/Even outside the South, in York, PA, an 1803 trial of an enslaved woman accused of poisoning her white enslavers led to a spate of arsons that burned down several buildings until a curfew was imposed on the town's Black population. There were more and more of these reports.
17/Examples abound in the first few years of the 19th century where rumors, whispers, and sometimes outright acts of defiance and rebellion from enslaved people continued to raise the specter of full-scale insurrection and another "Santo Domingo," this time in the United States.
18/*This* is the context in which we need to view the 1807 Insurrection Act: a demand from the enslaving class and its political representatives for federal protection in case the unthinkable (but seemingly more and more likely) event of a Black uprising occurred.
19/Enslavers already expected the fed govt to protect their interests, as the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act obligated federal officials to aid in the recapture of escapees. An Insurrection Act added an additional layer of security in a time of feverish anxiety about Black uprising.
20/We know the institution of policing grew largely out of the southern "Slave Patrols" (the prototype for later legal formulations of posse comitatus). But the use of federal force to suppress "insurrection" and "rebellion?" That's a product of enslavers' demands.
The most recent use of the 1807 Insurrection Act? Federal force being used to suppress the 1992 uprisings in LA after Rodney King. State power has a long history of suppressing Black freedom. That's why Trump's invocation of this law matters deeply, especially in this moment. /f
PS-Herbert Aptheker's work on slave rebellions (such as "American Negro Slave Revolts," as well as Vincent Harding's There is a River, are good places to start for a general treatment. @JuliaGaffield, @Soccerpolitics, David Geggus, and John Garrigus on the Haitian Rev.
PPS-if you haven't read CLR James's _Black Jacobins_, you should. It's essential in so many ways.
Also, I can't believe I left @bronaldbyrd's book off! Aarrrgg--it's fantastic. Thanks for the reminder, @ProvAtlantic
