Stono River Advocate
Cato's Conspiracy or Cato's Rebellion
e Stono Rebellion Suceeds
e Stono Rebellion
descriptions.
e Stono
Rebellion
Succeeds!!
e Stono Rebellion was the largest re‐
bellion mounted by slaves against slave
owners in colonial America. e Stono
Rebellion's location was near the Stono
River in South Carolina. e details of
the 1739 event are uncertain, as docu‐
mentation for the incident comes from
only one firsthand report and several
secondhand reports. White Carolinians
wrote these records, and historians have
had to reconstruct the causes of the
Stono River Rebellion and the motives of
the slaves participating from these biased
Early on the morning of Sunday,
September 9, 1739, 20 black slaves met
in secret near the Stono River in South
Carolina to plan their escape to freedom.
M i n u t e s l a t e r, t h e y b u r s t i n t o
Hutcheson's store at Stono's bridge,
killed the two storekeepers, and stole the
guns and powder inside.
e group of slaves grew in number as
they headed south. Stono's Rebellion,
the largest slave uprising in the Colonies
prior to the American Revolution, was
under way.
Stono's rebellion was only one among
the 250 rebellions documented in the
Colonies and later in the southern Unit‐
ed States. In 1822, a conspiracy to incite
9,000 slaves became known as Vesey's
Rebellion. Aer Nat Turner's Rebellion
in 1831, where nearly 60 white people
were killed, Turner was executed.
When the slave owners caught up with
the rebels from the Stono River in 1739,
they engaged the 60 to 100 slaves in a
battle. More than 20 white Carolinians,
and nearly twice as many black Carolini‐
ans, were killed. As a result, South Car‐
olina's lawmakers enacted a harsher
slave code. is new code severely limit‐
ed the privileges of slaves. ey were no
longer allowed to grow their own food,
assemble in groups, earn their own mon‐
ey or learn to read. Some of these restric‐
tions were already in place, but they had
not been strictly enforced.
Causes
e rebelling slaves were headed for
Florida. Great Britain and Spain were at
war (the War of Jenkin's Ear), and Spain,
hoping to cause problems for Britain,
promised freedom and land to any
British colonial slaves who made their
way to Florida. e slaves themselves
were from an area of Africa, either An‐
gola or the Kongo, that was Catholic and
Portuguese-speaking. e offer from
Catholic Spain might have been more at‐
tractive to the escaping slaves as a result.
Reports in local newspapers of impend‐
ing legislation may have also prompted
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Stono Rebellion
the rebellion. South Carolinians were
contemplating passing the Security Act,
which would have required all white
men to take their firearms with them to
church on Sunday, presumably in case
unrest among a group of slaves broke
out. Sunday had been traditionally a day
when the slave owners set aside their
weapons for church attendance and al‐
l owe d t he i r sl ave s to work for
themselves.
e End of the Rebellion
Aer journeying around 10 miles, the
group, around 60 to 100 strong, rested,
and the militia found them. A firefight
ensued, and some of the rebels escaped.
e militia rounded up the escapees, de‐
capitating them and setting their heads
on posts as a lesson to other slaves. e
tally of the dead was 21 whites and 44
slaves killed. South Carolinians spared
the lives of slaves who they believed were
forced to participate against their will by
the original band of rebels.
How It Goes
e Negro Act
e rebels fought well, which, as histori‐
an John K. ornton speculates, may
have been because they had a military
background in their homeland. e ar‐
eas of Africa where they had been sold
into slavery were experiencing intense
civil wars, and a number of ex-soldiers
found themselves enslaved aer surren‐
dering to their enemies.
South Carolinians thought it was possi‐
ble that their African origins had con‐
tributed to the rebellion. Part of the 1740
Negro Act, passed in response to the re‐
bellion, was a prohibition on importing
slaves directly from Africa. South Caroli‐
na also wanted to slow the rate of impor‐
tation down; African Americans out‐
numbered whites in South Carolina, and
South Carolinians lived in fear of insur‐
rection.
e Negro Act also made it mandatory
for militias to regularly patrol, to prevent
slaves from gathering the way they had
in anticipation of the Stono Rebellion.
Slave owners who treated their slaves too
harshly were subject to fines under the
Negro Act, in an implicit nod to the idea
that harsh treatment might contribute to
rebellion.
e Negro Act severely restricted the
lives of South Carolina's slaves. No
longer could a group of slaves assemble
on their own, nor could slaves grow their
own food, learn to read or work for
money. Some of these provisions had ex‐
isted in law before but had not been con‐
sistently enforced.
Significance of the Stono Rebellion
Students oen ask, "Why didn't slaves
fight back?" e answer is that they
sometimes did. In his book American
Negro Slave Revolts (1943), historian
Herbert Aptheker estimates that over
250 slave rebellions occurred in the
United States between 1619 and 1865.
Some of these insurrections were as ter‐
rifying for slave owners as Stono, such as
the Gabriel Prosser Slave Revolt in 1800,
Vesey's Rebellion in 1822 and Nat Turn‐
er's Rebellion in 1831. When slaves were
unable to rebel directly, they performed
subtle acts of resistance, ranging from
work slow-downs to feigning illness. e
Stono River Rebellion is tribute to the
ongoing, determined resistance of
African Americans to the oppressive sys‐
tem of slavery.
Stono Rebellion
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Stono Rebellion