The Slave Revolt of 1811The seeds of the 1811 revolt, begun on the plantation of Col. Manuel Andry near present-day Norco on the night of Jan. 8, had been planted long before with the slaveholders’ concerted attempts to dehumanize their “chattel.” According to historian Albert Thrasher, whose self published On to New Orleans: Louisiana’s Historic 1811 Slave Revolt remains the only text dedicated to the revolt, the dehumanizing began by dividing families, scattering mothers, fathers, and their children and relatives across different plantations and regions, reducing the definition of a slave “family” to a mother and her child up to age 10. Diets were limited to meager rations. Clothes were scant rags. The rape of female slaves was commonplace, and slaves’ community life was strictly regulated. Meetings without a white person present were forbidden. Travel rights were monitored with passes. Rebellions, when they occurred, were met with swift and brutal force. Insurgents were burned alive, hanged, shot and subjected to unspeakable tortures, all to be made an example, to remind slaves of the ridiculous impossibility of their freedom. Things did not improve when the American flag rose over the Cabildo in 1803. Even New Orleans’ rare community of free people of color was reined in under the prevailing force of white supremacy. “The Americans took over and imposed all of this new legislation limiting the freedom of free people of color, limiting their economic and legal rights and legislating against miscegenation,” says historian Edie Ambrose of Xavier University. And yet, there were revolts. Almost immediately after the first African slaves were brought to Louisiana in the 1720s, many escaped to the swamps or remote areas, forming communities of “maroons” who armed themselves and formed makeshift militias against recapture. The 18th century was marked by repeated, if isolated, attempts by slaves to kill their masters or escape. The boldest attempt at revolt in that century was at Pointe Coupee Parish, where, Thrasher notes, a plot was uncovered to overthrow the white masters. At least 45 slaves were convicted of plans to rebel. They were summarily executed. But on other shores, a revolution was taking place that would echo later on a cold January night only 36 miles from New Orleans. The 1793 insurrection in St. Domingue (present-day Haiti) brought white refugees and many of their slaves into New Orleans with tales of carnage and defeat, many escaping with barely more than their lives. For white Louisiana slaveholders, the refugees’ presence was a constant reminder of their greatest, bloodiest fears. For the slave population, into which many of these St. Domingue slaves were now delivered, it was a beacon of possibility and hope. For slave Charles Deslonde, a buggy driver from St. Domingue in the possession of the widow Deslonde, it was only a matter of time. White slave owners had done everything they could to suppress the possibility of slave revolution, but the intensity of their oppression had only inflamed the need to stand against it. A network of communication developed across plantations and into New Orleans, facilitated by the fact that slaves were regularly loaned to neighboring plantations. “Deslonde was in constant contact with individuals who helped to lay the plans for the revolt,” Ambrose says. “They were able to exchange information by passing the word from one plantation to the next, a word-of-mouth pipeline – when to strike and when to wait.” So as plantation owners and their families celebrated the fruits of their harvest in the Christmas season, Deslonde spread word that the move was imminent. American troops, Thrasher writes, were embroiled in conflict in West Florida. The possibility loomed that they would be deployed for a war with Spain. Slaveholders along the River Road were distracted by the merriment and feasting of the holidays. The slaves were ready. Deslonde's plan was methodical yet simple. It would start at the Andry plantation in St. John the Baptist Parish, where he was temporarily employed. The plantation would be destroyed, its munitions taken, and the liberated slaves would march southeast toward New Orleans, stopping at each plantation along the road, picking up guns, ammunition and slaves. Momentum would grow as the slave army pushed forward, swelling and strengthening with each stop. New Orleans was Deslonde’s eventual target. From there, slaves within the city would join with his approaching army, helping them to seize the arsenal at Fort St. Charles and liberate the city, establishing it as a promised land for slaves all over the South. So darkness settled over the Andry plantation early in the evening of Tuesday, Jan. 8, and the revolution began. Though details are sketchy, according to Thrasher everything proceeded as planned. Slaves descended on the Andry family and their overseers, killing Andry’s son Gilbert Thomassin Andry, wounding Andry himself and forcing the family to flee. They took weapons and ammunition, though in fewer amounts than they had hoped, as Andry’s personal arsenal had secretly been moved. So when rifles and gunpowder ran out, hoes, machetes and clubs were taken in hand. The newly freed slaves started on the road to New Orleans. What is most extraordinary about the march that followed was its orderliness. Slaves divided themselves into companies under officers who had participated in the Haitian revolt, raising flags and beating drums as though they were reservists called to follow a structure they knew by rote. Oral history, Thrasher writes, records this new army as shouting cries of “Freedom or death!” As they moved into St. Charles Parish, Deslonde and several lieutenants leading on horseback, the long column of troops behind them grew. Details of the march are incomplete and sketchy, but it is known to have proceeded steadily through Jan. 9, passing numerous plantations. Traveling somewhat uncomfortably in advance of this army was another long and steady group – fleeing white plantation owners and their families who had received advance word of the revolt. “Indeed, the first word of the outbreak arrived in New Orleans by way of the panic flight to the city and the protection it afforded,” writes historian James H. Dormon in The Persistent Specter: Slave Rebellion in Territorial Louisiana. “Carriage after carriage, loaded with white families and a few personal belongings, began pouring into town within hours of the initial rising.” White flight, indeed. At the plantation of Francois Trepagnier, meanwhile, another life was taken with the execution of Jean Francois Trepagnier, who failed to evacuate in time. The slave army pushed farther downriver, covering almost 25 miles from Andry’s plantation by day’s end. But that was as far as Deslonde's army would get. Less than a day after Andry’s home had been destroyed and his son killed, he had raised a local militia some 80 men strong. He had also sent an urgent communication to Claiborne, who called in U.S. troops under the command of Gen. Wade Hampton to stop the insurrection. Troops from Baton Rouge were also dispatched with haste. As Dormon writes, “What followed was hardly a battle at all; it was more in the form of a mass execution, an open season on blacks in the vicinity.” The slaves, who had insufficient weapons from the outset of their revolt, were soon badly outgunned. When the bulk of Hampton’s forces reached Deslonde's army at Jacques Fortier’s plantation, skirmishes followed that left the slaves virtually weaponless. The U.S. militia mowed through them brutally and efficiently. Many of those who weren’t killed in battle met their deaths almost immediately afterward, including Deslonde and his leaders, who were swiftly executed and decapitated, their heads put on pikes as an example to other slaves. Trials followed at Destrehan Plantation, where 21 of some 30 accused were found guilty and executed. Again, heads rolled and were fixed to pikes as savage, crude messages. None of the participants was able to make a record of his participation, illuminating the three-day revolt from his own perspective. Their legacy survives in their collective action only, their determination, their lives added to the tally of so many dispatched with extreme prejudice. And it resonates, curiously, in the silence with which white people subsequently dealt with the revolt. Within months, it had made international news, but in New Orleans and among the shattered plantations along River Road, it was only the subject of whispered asides, fast governmental reassurances and expansive self-delusion, according to Dormon. “Yet even as whites evidenced so vividly their fear and loathing,” he writes, “they also manifested what the social psychologists call a ‘rationalization need’ to believe that actual slave rebellion did not really occur, at least not among the good, tried and true, utterly reliable homegrown blacks; at least not sizeable, carefully planned insurrections, representing any real danger to the white population or to the slave system.” Later that year during the holidays, word of another revolt again spurred plantation owners and their families to fearful flight. No impromptu army cut through their homes and their lives that time, but the legacy of January 1811 had already wrought its quiet, insidious damage. Deslonde and his fellow slaves did not topple the institution of slavery in their three-day march, but they did pierce an irreparable hole into its veneer of self-assured control.• The original article can be found by clicking on the link below, but it is formatted so poorly as to be unreadable. • Lousiana Life: winter 2000/01 - Vol. 20 - Issue 4 - Page 30 - #204 A second related article can be found at • The National Catholic Reporter |