Denmark Vesey Insurrection Scare DIED 1922 JUL 2
Denmark Vesey Insurrection Scare DIED 1922 JUL 2 In June 1822 slave informants tipped Charleston whites to rumors of an insurrection plot of significant proportions. By the time the city’s investigators and its so-called trial court had finished their work, most white Charlestonians believed they had uncovered a large-scale plot led by a free black carpenter named Denmark Vesey. Charleston authorities concluded that the Vesey plot projected not only an uprising of city blacks, slave and free, but also the arrival of slaves from the countryside to join the insurrection. The resulting investigation and trials resulted in the execution of 35 blacks, slave and free, and the deportation of 32 others. The guilt of those convicted—even if judged according to the standards whites typically used to determine the guilt of slaves and free blacks in the 1820s, much less those of modern jurisprudence—remains almost impossible for historians to determine. In the weeks and months fol...