The Stono Rebellion: The Establishment Of Slavery In North America

Colonists began to build a settlement in North America after gaining their independence from Great Britain. Slavery in North America began when African slaves were brought to Jamestown in order to aid in the production of crops that would later fuel the economic establishment of North America. The African Slave trade gained prominence in the seventeenth century when African American slaves began to replace the bulk of indentured servants. Eventually slaves and their decedents made up majority of the population in some states. In fact, “New World plantation agriculture came to depend on the labor of enslaved workers…” (Created Equal 80). Though being enslaved as an African American in the New World was inevitable, most slaves were determined to fight back against such injustice even if it meant using violence to gain their freedom. The Stono Rebellion, (1739), was marked as the largest slave rebellion in the newly founded colonies. A first account reported by Lieutenant Governor William Bull stated, “a great number of Negroes arose in rebellion… [and] killed twenty one White Persons…burning several houses as they passed along the road” (VCE 58). Later, in the same report, Bull claims that it would be effective to pay Indians to bring back the African

This being enacted caused uproar within the enslaved community and a woman, named Harriet Beecher Stowe, found her own way to revolt against this injustice. Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which is an anti-slavery novel that changed the way many Americans viewed slavery by showing the enslaved character in “the very depth of physical suffering” (VCE 198) at the hand of the slave owner. This novel was so influential to many Americans that it became one of the factors leading to the American Civil