Overview

A vast collection of documents that illuminate one of the most sophisticated acts of collective slave resistance in the history of the U.S. In 1822, thirty-four slaves and their leader, a free black man named Denmark Vesey, were tried and executed for ""attempting to raise an insurrection"" in Charleston, South Carolina. In The Denmark Vesey Affair, Douglas Egerton and Robert Paquette annotate and interpret a vast collection of contemporary documents that illuminate and contextualize this complicated saga, providing the definitive account of a landmark event that played a role in the nation’s path to Civil War. The editors ultimately argue that the Vesey plot was one of the most sophisticated acts of collective slave resistance in the history of the United States. A volume in the series Southern Dissent, edited by Stanley Harrold and Randall M. Miller Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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9780813068992

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Reviews

Aims to prove that even if the revolt itself didn't actually happen, the plot did exist, and that it was the most sophisticated collective plot against slavery in the U.S. --Time A truly invaluable collocation of documents. Highly Recommended. --Choice Presents a panoply of documents pertinent to the Vesey conspiracy's origins, unraveling, and aftermath [and] . . . will provide specialists and lay readers alike with the tools they need to think critically about Denmark Vesey and his milieu. --H-Net This is the most comprehensive collection of source materials related to Denmark Vesey ever assembled. . . . An exhaustively researched volume that will prove indispensable to historians of slavery in the United States. --Slavery and Abolition A monumental achievement. . . . Essential reading for understanding not just race and slavery but also the entirety of the nineteenth-century Atlantic world. --Journal of the Early Republic A major contribution to the study of not only the Denmark Vesey conspiracy but also how white people from both the North and the South responded to possibility of racial violence. . . . This book will be one that all scholars of this era will want to have on their shelves. --Journal of Southern History This volume will prove a boon to future studies of the Vesey scare and the scholars doing those studies will greatly appreciate the richness and convenience offered by this impressive volume. --Reviews in American History An essential source for researchers and students--the first such edition capable of becoming a guide to themes and problems in the interpretation of the 1822 slave conspiracy and its archive. . . . No volume collecting Vesey documents has ever been as complete. --History: Reviews of New Books

[A]ims to prove that even if the revolt itself didn't actually happen, the plot did exist, and that it was the most sophisticated collective plot against slavery in the U.S. --Time A truly invaluable collocation of documents. Highly Recommended. --Choice This is the most comprehensive collection of source materials related to Denmark Vesey ever assembled. . . . An exhaustively researched volume that will prove indispensable to historians of slavery in the United States. --Slavery and Abolition A monumental achievement. . . . Essential reading for understanding not just race and slavery but also the entirety of the nineteenth-century Atlantic world. --Journal of the Early Republic

Author Information

Douglas R. Egerton professor of history at Le Moyne College, is the author of Death or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America. Robert L. Paquette president and executive director of the Alexander Hamilton Institute in Clinton, New York, is coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of Slavery in the Americas.

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