The Creole Rebellion
The Creole Rebellion
The Most Successful Slave Revolt in American History
The Creole Rebellion tells the suspenseful story of the bloody mutiny on board the slave ship Creole. Bound out of Richmond, Virginia, the Creole was seized in a violent takeover by its captives in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in November 1841. Sailing en route to a New Orleans slave-auction block, nineteen of the captives mutinied. Led by enslaved bondsman Madison Washington, the mutineers killed one man and injured several others. After taking control of the vessel, Washington forced the crewmen to redirect their course to Nassau in the Bahamas, then a colony of Great Britain, which had abolished slave trading eight years earlier. Despite much local hysteria upon their arrival, all of the 135 slaves aboard the ship eventually won their freedom.
The harrowing mutiny triggered a political firestorm that was unprecedented in American history. The United States and Great Britain rushed to the brink of war over the slave ship seizure, President John Tyler’s presidency was nearly ruined over it, Congressional rules were overturned by it, and numerous public figures were wrecked while others were glorified. The revolt significantly fueled and amplified the slave debate within a divided nation that was already hurtling toward a Civil War.
Part history, part adventure, and part legal drama, historian Bruce Chadwick’s The Creole Rebellion chronicles the most successful slave revolt in the pages of American history.
In this eminently readable and meticulously researched book, Bruce Chadwick examines the revolt as well as its political, legal, and diplomatic fallout. This will be the definitive study for years to come.’—Kerry Walters, author of Harriet Tubman: A Life in American History
The Creole mutiny was a blazing landmark in the torturous journey toward the abolition of slavery in the United States. This informative and well-written book provides a rendering of this turning point that must not only be read, but studied.’—Gerald Horne, author of Negro Comrades of the Crown: African Americans and the British Empire Fight the U.S. Before Emancipation
Bruce Chadwick is a historian who never forgets that his chief task is to tell a good story. The story of the Creole, no doubt the most successful of all slave insurrections, presents what may be one of the few bright spots in the grim history of American slavery. It is fascinating in itself, but it also illuminates the other slave insurrections, on land and sea, of which too many Americans might otherwise be unaware.’—Michael Aaron Rockland, author of An American Diplomat in Franco Spain
Bruce Chadwick is a history professor at New Jersey City University and a retired part-time lecturer at Rutgers University. He is the author of thirty books, including several books on the Antebellum and Civil War periods. His most recent book is Law & Disorder: The Chaotic Birth of the NYPD.
List of Illustrations
Preface
Chapter One. Cruising down the Atlantic Coast
Chapter Two. Sandy Beaches, Swaying Palm Trees, and Hoped-for Freedom in Nassau Town
Chapter Three. 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Chapter Four. Into the Whirlwind
Chapter Five. Ashore in New Orleans
Chapter Six. In the Creole’s Wake, the Abolitionists Storm Washington, DC
Chapter Seven. The Crucifixion of Joshua Giddings, the Abolitionists, and Anybody Who Supported the Mutineers aboard the Creole
Chapter Eight. The Last Fight—Texas
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
