Daniel Rasmussen: "American Uprising"
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-01-13/daniel-rasmussen-american-uprising
Two hundred years ago this month, hundreds of slaves along the Mississippi River set out to conquer New Orleans. They were willing to die rather than continue the grueling labor on their masters’ sugar cane plantations. This makeshift army was ethnically diverse, politically savvy, and highly organized. And for two days they staged the largest slave rebellion in U.S. history. But unlike the uprisings of Nat Turner and John Brown, most people have never heard of the slave revolt of 1811. That fact prompted an undergraduate student at Harvard to find out why. The story of America’s largest slave revolt…and the reasons it has been largely forgotten.
Guests
Daniel Rasmussen
He is the winner of the Kathryn Ann Huggins Prize, the Perry Miller Prize, and the Thomas Temple Hoopes Prize for his research on the 1811 New Orleans slave revolt.
Comments
Please familiarize yourself with our Code of Conduct and Terms of Use before posting your comments.
The Constitution had been "ratified" only 20 years before. The 3/5 person measure of the slave population and the 2nd Amendment about militias were an integral part of compromise. The well-regulated militia was set to spring on slave uprising in response to the needs of the slave-owning class. Maybe we wouldn't need militias, now national guards and reserve corps, any longer if we no longer had slaves. Two hundred years later the intelligent person understands that guns and society are radically changed. And yet we are a barbaric nation (similar to Pakistan) where public officials who advocate change expect to be shot. (continued)
Here are some rational observations.
1. The level of military technology and the confined nature of citizen existence today mean that citizen uprisings would be easily repelled by government. Only people power can repel unpopular policies.
2. As Jefferson and Madison early predicted the average American citizen today is a dependent wage slave, with 80% of households having no meaningful assets and no access to any useful means of self-sufficiency.
3. Hunting cannot be a right in a nation of 300 million people where the natural ecosystems are in peril. Gun holding provides only an illusion of independence and subsistence. A few people could live by hunting but not a meaningful number.
4. Considering the repression we suffer through economic duress and insecurity and the fragmentation of social bonds necessary to our predatory economy, gun ownership invites violent escalation. Violent images in media are a major aspect of social control through diversion.
5. Political rhetoric has now become part of the frenzy. Maybe the time for former Sen. Zell Miller's idea has come, when political and media figures can fight duels in prepared facilities without endangering innocent people and without recruiting deranged proxies.
6. As the hiding of this slave uprising illustrates, a tiny wealthy minority fears public reaction when we realize the futile nature of our mock freedom and our hopeless wage slavery. There is no meaningful difference between our two pro-business political parties.
7. If we educated students and media watchers rather than brainwashing and intimidating them most people would be Neo-Abolitionists and advocate for a new Constitution by peaceful means. We would laugh at the old ideas of sacred great property and big corporate contract.
Grady, can't you think of anything better to say then to simply regurgitate communists diatibes.
J. - So opposing slavery is communist?
Whew! You better turn off this Rasmussen bolshevik before he seduces you. You know that once a person is recruited into perversion there is almost no chance of resuming a normal sexlife, er, a normal political attitude. Please watch the works of Adam Curtis for your edification. Every critique of capitalist fascism is not a communist. Many are scholarship.
Wow! What a fascinating tale...and how heartbreaking. Would that the outcome had been very different.
I am quite eager to read this book.
Thank you Diane and Daniel!
I must commend you for uncovering a part of America's history that has shaped so much of our economic and social development. American history has a habit of covering up and dismissing the political sophistication among slaves. I am thankful that my mother being a teacher made us study African American history because it was not taught in our school systems. Rasmussen must be applauded for revealing the ingenuity, strength, braveness that these slaves displayed. These political revolutionaries must be celebrated! Your book will encourage other to study people like Nat Turner, Vessey and many others. I again thank you for sharing the same pride that I have in the contribution of slaves and slavery to this country!
Cecily
Flagstaff Arizona
I must commend you for uncovering a part of America's history that has shaped so much of our economic and social development. American history has a habit of covering up and dismissing the political sophistication among slaves. I am thankful that my mother being a teacher made us study African American history because it was not taught in our school systems. Rasmussen must be applauded for revealing the ingenuity, strength, braveness that these slaves displayed. These political revolutionaries must be celebrated! Your book will encourage other to study people like Nat Turner, Vessey and many other. I again thank you for sharing the same pride that I have in the contribution of slaves and slavery to this country!
It is revelatory that a caller termed Daniel's historic research revisionism. Uncovering real events and assessing them is educational, not revision. Fear that the truth about our past will change attitudes now is what we call reactionary. My wish is that Rasmussen's honorable effort will change attitudes and cause us to reexamine present day complacency toward injustice so that insurrections won't become necessary. The caller seems to be an advocate of ineffectual counter-insurgency against moral progress. Not to say moral progress is automatic. It often needs a push. And it seems to be backsliding at present.
I am a descendant of slave owners in KY and have a Masters of AMerican History with a specialty in the institution of slavery during the antebellum period. In my studies and in my investigation into my family's past -- both my mother's and father's families were slaveholders -- I have often wondered about the role guilt played in informing the fearful reactions of slaveholders when contemplating slave revolts. I believe from my own family lore that slaveowners felt tremendous guilt about their role in enslaving Africans and their descendants despite the fact that they maintained publically that slavery was legal and right.
Wouldn't it be a great idea to have a reenactment at the same time as the Confederate celebrations?
Wow, Daniel, absolutely fascinating. Bravo to you for all your research. You did a fabulous job speaking on the DR Show. I cannot wait to read the book (because I was one of those people who had never heard of this revolt) and I think that, in the right hands, this could be a fantastic movie. This would get the word out to many, many more people. Continued success to you in your career. You have been blessed with great intelligence and a wonderful ability to communicate. I know you will use it to make our world a better place.
In 1835 The Seminole Indians and Black Seminoles revolted in Florida. This may well have been the largest number of black slaves and blacks living with the Florida Indians ever to revolt. The story was much suppressed and not well known in history. I did write a new book about it, called
"Osceola His Capture and Seminole Legends". Famous Seminole Osceola was very much a leader of the escaped slaves and Black Seminoles. Unfortunately he was taken under a white flag of truce which created much publicity, although the story of the escaped and revolting black plantation slaves was much suppressed. There is a film about all of this at
http://www.oldkingsroad.com
Bill Ryan
The Osceola insurgency you mention was during the "Trail of Tears" era in which several nations were forcibly removed on foot to Oklahoma (not that they were unmolested there). President Andrew Jackson violated a Supreme Court decision to carry our this policy. Jackson had previously conducted several Indian Wars in Florida.
This show was such a load. The "story" amounted to a bunch of slaves getting almost nowhere. They were defeated by the same slave owners the writer kept insisting were "terrified of them". These slaves had military experience? Yea, it showed. They were apparently outsmarted and wiped out by fat, lazy landowners.
Did anyone else notice the callers? They were worse than the writer. AS USUAL, the calls from those people immediately turned to *reparations* and *labeling issues*. One caller insisted he deserved reparations, since the Japanese Americans who were held in camps during WW2 were compensated. Sorry, pal...the time to repay those who suffered is long gone. YOU don't get anything. Another caller was offended at the mention of the people involved being "slaves"...which led the writer, plagued with guilt, to edit himself. HILARIOUS!
It's interesting how easy it is to dismiss the parts of history we don't like.
It never ceases to amaze me how some historians are unable to shed their chronocentricity-- They attribute motives and "reasons" to those in the past based on their OWN present-day views- which have been further formed and informed by subsequent history.
Everyone in Louisiana was well aware of the success of the Haitian Revolt led by Tousaint and others. Many of the refugee planters came to Louisiana after the revolt with their slaves. These slaves surely related to story of the revolt to the slaves in Louisiana just as their masters had shared the story with other Louisiana planters.
As for planters and authorities considering the slaves in revolt as "brigands"- they were in fact law-breakers. It was against the law for slaves to revolt or run away. That was simply the law at the time. It was also against the law for anyone- slave or free- to commit arson, destroy another's property, or committ assault, battery or rape.
Oral histories of some of the planter families contain instances of assault or even rape committed by the rebellous slaves. Naturally these were "hushed up" and not spoken of outside the family- and such rumors were denied to the point of provoking a duel --after the fact because victims of such violence would not be able to marry and would be shunned by a society that valued sexual purity in its women to an extreme.
As for the harshness and beheadings- well for the times beheadings, drawing and quartering and other such tortures were still accepted forms of punishment for high crimes and treasons almost world-wide.
The story of the revolt needed to be told. But it was not as "forgotten" here in Louisiana as the author might like people to think. Many of us were aware of this revolt or "mass escape and rampage" as it was often called in my family.
fleur:
It is amazing that the study of history could be impaired by alleged rape(s) that occurred 200 years ago. I expect most of the raping then (during that chrono) was White on Black and occurred during times of order rather than rampage. The implication of your complaint, though you might not see it, is that candid discussion of this slave rebellion could encourage Black on White rape in your own chrono.
It's probably too late to worry about that. I was hanging out in a Clover gas station this afternoon looking for a healthy cold drink. Two handsome and prosperous-appearing young African American men (25?) were being flirted with at the counter by the 40ish white woman (had large diamond engagement and wedding rings) store manager as a 20-ish female clerk looked on. After the young men left in their new BMW the clerk showed the manager a rainbow tattoo on her arm with a female derriere lined in below it. "I know all about that," bragged the manager. "I have the rainbow necklace and the rainbow bracelet, and a rainbow tube top to let Black guys know I'm available for a date." Maybe I'm sheltered, but I never knew this kind of signaling went on in South Carolina. I doubt the "slaves" today are curious or angry enough to commit racial spite rape. They've seen and done it all consentually. Sleep soundly fleur-di-lis. Tomorrow you may see the perfect signal jewelry in the finest Louisiana boutique.