Bruce Chadwick - The Creole Rebellion: The Most Successful Slave Revolt in American History

THE MOST SUCCESSFUL SLAVE REVOLT IN AMERICAN HISTORY

Bruce Chadwick

University of New Mexico Press / Albuquerque

2022 by Bruce Chadwick

All rights reserved. Published 2022

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 978-0-8263-6347-3 (cloth)

ISBN 978-0-8263-6348-0 (e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021948224

Founded in 1889, the University of New Mexico sits on the traditional homelands of the Pueblo of Sandia. The original peoples of New MexicoPueblo, Navajo, and Apachesince time immemorial have deep connections to the land and have made significant contributions to the broader community statewide. We honor the land itself and those who remain stewards of this land throughout the generations and also acknowledge our committed relationship to Indigenous peoples. We gratefully recognize our history.

PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR : Timothy Stuckey

COVER ILLUSTRATION

Slave ships on the ocean. Wood engraving by Smyth. Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images. Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Vintage engraving shows a crowd of African men, women, and children who had been rescued by the British navy from a slaving vessel in 1884. istockphoto.com

DESIGNED BY Mindy Basinger Hill

FOR MY LATE WIFE,

Marjorie,

THE INSPIRATION

OF MY LIFE

A Slave Ship in Uncharted Waters

I STUMBLED ACROSS THE STORY of the slave ship Creoleand its mutiny while researching another book. I was immediately transfixed by the sea saga of the 135 people aboard in bondage and how they rose up to take over their ship, killing one man and injuring several others, including the captain, while it sailed down the coast of Florida on its way to New Orleans in the early winter of 1841. The slaves were led by a huge, muscular Virginian, Madison Washington, named after two US presidents, who had been captured while trying to spirit his wife away from his old plantation, from which he had escaped a year earlier. The rebel slaves took control of the Creoleafter a bloody scuffle and forced the crew to sail to the Bahamas, a group of islands in the Caribbean where African Americans, and all people of color, were free. The crew knew how to get there and so did thousands of white mariners who sailed the waters of the Atlantic. But the slaves were headed into uncharted waters, toward islands where their fate, as either mutineers and murderers or as heroes, would be sealed.

The tale of the Creolehad been overshadowed in history by that of the Amistad, a slave ship that was taken on the high seas by its African prisoners in 1839 and whose case wound up in the United States Supreme Court and was made famous in song, story, and a successful movie. The Creole