On May 10, 1740, the colony of South Carolina’s General Assembly enacted the “Bill for the better ordering and governing of Negroes and other slaves in this province,” also known as the Negro Act of 1740.
The law prohibited enslaved African people from growing their own food, learning to read, moving freely, assembling in groups, and earning money. It also authorized white enslavers to whip and kill enslaved Africans for being “rebellious.”
South Carolina implemented this act after the unsuccessful Stono Rebellion in 1739, during which about 80 enslaved Black people waged an uprising that killed between 20 and 25 white people.
The revolt began on September 9, 1739, in South Carolina and was the largest slave rebellion in the Southern Colonies. South Carolina had been majority black since about 1700, most people in the state were enslaved.
Those revolting were most likely led by men from the Central African Kingdom of Kongo. They were Catholic and some spoke Portuguese.
They carried a flag with the word “Liberty!” and hoped to reach Spanish Florida about 150 miles away, which had issued several proclamations guaranteeing freedom for escapes slaves who reached their territory.
They had probably hoped to reach Fort Mose near St. Augustine, the first legally sanctioned free black settlement in what would become the United States. Along the way they stole weapons and burned several plantations.
Proceeding about 30 miles, they were met by a well-armed mounted militia and were defeated. About 30 who escaped fought a second battle a week later about 30 miles away. Most of those who survived were executed. Their heads were mounted on spike along major roadways. (Publicly displaying heads and bodies in this manner as a warning to others was relatively common in America, until the end of the lynching era 100 years ago).
The Stono Rebellion is believed to have inspired several more slave revolts from Georgia to New York, although more recently historians have argued that many of these were probably the result the increasing brutality of slavery itself and the expression of white fears.
Among these was the The Conspiracy of 1741, a purported plot by slaves and poor whites in the city of New York to revolt and burn the city to the ground. Historians disagree as to whether this plot actually existed or its scale.
During the resultant court cases, the prosecution changed their accusations to link the insurrection with a “Popish” plot by Spaniards and other Catholics.
By the end of the trials, 161 black and 20 white people had been arrested. From May 11 to August 29, 1741, seventeen blacks and four whites were convicted and hanged, 13 black people were burned at stake, and 70 were banished from New York. Seven white people were deported.
The executions were conducted near the Poor House at the north end of the city and its boundary of Chambers Street, just south of the African Burial Ground.
In addition to establishing a racial caste and property system in the South Carolina, that colony’s colonial assembly sought to prevent any additional rebellions by including provisions that mandated a ratio of one white person for every 10 enslaved people on a plantation.
The Assembly also tried to prevent slaves from being freed, believing free black people encouraged rebellion. It required slaveholders to apply to the legislature for permission for each case of manumission.
South Carolina kept these restrictions against manumission until slavery was abolished during the Civil War. South Carolina’s law served as a model for other states; Georgia reauthorized slavery within its borders in 1751 and enacted its own “slave code” five years later.
At the start of the Civil War in 1861, there were 34 states in the United States, 15 of which were slave states, all of which had slave codes.
In 1865, the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment legally abolished slavery in the U.S. except as punishment for crime, but discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow laws developed to maintain the oppression of Black people, ensuring that the legacy of the Negro Act of 1740 and similar laws remained present throughout the country for more than two centuries.
You can read the Negro Act of 1740 here.
Illustrations, from above: Period illustration of the Stono Rebellion (Library of Congress), Map detail showing Stono River from A compleat description of the province of Carolina in 3 parts, 1711?, (Library of Congress); Representation du Feu terrible a Nouvelle Yorck, an illsutration of the fires that started the Conspiracy of 1841 (New York Public Library).
Leave a Reply