“A chilling and suspenseful account [of] the culmination of a signal episode in the history of American race relations.” —Adam Goodheart, The New York Times Book Review
In January 1811, five hundred slaves, dressed in military uniforms and armed with guns, cane knives, and axes, rose up from the plantations around New Orleans and set out to conquer the city. Ethnically diverse, politically astute, and highly organized, this self-made army challenged not only the economic system of plantation agriculture but also American expansion. Their march represented the largest act of armed resistance against slavery in the history of the United States.
American Uprising is the riveting, long-neglected story of the rebel army's dramatic march on the city, and its shocking conclusion. No North American slave uprising—not Gabriel Prosser's, not Denmark Vesey's, not Nat Turner's—has rivaled the scale of this rebellion either in terms of the number of the slaves involved or the number who were killed. More than one hundred slaves were slaughtered by federal troops and French planters, who then sought to write the event out of history and prevent the spread of the slaves' revolutionary philosophy.
Through groundbreaking research, Daniel Rasmussen offers a window into expansionist America, illuminating the early history of New Orleans and providing new insight into the path to the Civil War and the slave revolutionaries who fought and died for the hope of freedom.
“Crisp, confident . . . Rasmussen tells this story with verve.” —John Stauffer, The Wall Street Journal
“Breathtaking. . . . [A] fascinating narrative of slavery and resistance [that] tells us something about history itself—about how fiction can become fact, and how ‘history’ is sometimes nothing more than erasure.” —Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Daniel Rasmussen graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University in 2009, winning the Kathryn Ann Huggins Prize, the Perry Miller Prize, and the Thomas Temple Hoopes Prize.
Table of Contents
Prologue 1
One Carnival in New Orleans 9
Two Paths to Slavery 19
Three A Revolutionary Forge 39
Four Empire's Emissary 51
Five Conquering the Frontier 61
Six Masks and Motives 71
Seven The Rebels' Pact 83
Eight Revolt 97
Nine A City in Chaos 115
Ten A Second Wind 123
Eleven The Battle 135
Twelve Heads on Poles 147
Thirteen Friends of Necessity 167
Fourteen Statehood and the Young American Nation 177
Fifteen The Slaves Win Their Freedom 187
Sixteen The Cover-Up 199
Epilogue 211
Acknowledgments 219
Notes 223
Bibliography 251
Index 265
What People are Saying About This
Eric Foner
“A deeply researched, vividly written, and highly original account of the largest slave revolt in the nineteenth-century United States. . . . Thanks to Rasmussen, we now have the full story of this dramatic moment in the struggle for freedom in this country.”
From the Publisher
"Impressive work by an up-and-coming historian." —-Kirkus
Evan Thomas
“New Orleans has been the scene of many dark adventures, but none so shocking as the slave rebellion of 1811. Daniel Rasmussen has unearthed a stunning tale of freedom and repression and told it in gripping fashion.”
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