Chapter Eight: Slavery and Resistance

Resistance in the Early Republic: Dividing the Dispossessed

Bacon’s Rebellion and the Birth of Race – In 1676 Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia forced poor white farmers, indentured servants and enslaved Blacks to fight together against the colonial government. After it was crushed, Virginia’s elite changed course. They enslaved Africans for life and created a new “white race” identity. Now poor European laborers got small privileges (like land or voting) because they were white, while Black people were kept enslaved. In effect, race became a tool to split the poor. Whites were given a stake in the system, and Black and Native people were excluded. This divide-and-conquer tactic (“divide the dispossessed”) became a long‑term strategy.

Laws and Policies of Division (1790s–1830s) – In the early United States, the federal government and states passed laws favoring white citizens and excluding nonwhites. For example, the Naturalization Act of 1790 limited U.S. citizenship to “free white persons”. Native Americans and people of African or Asian descent could not become citizens. Likewise, new state constitutions gave the vote only to white men (often with property requirements), so free Blacks and Native peoples could not vote or hold office. In effect, the law drew a sharp line: “whites” vs. others.

Meanwhile the country expanded westward. The Louisiana Purchase (1803) doubled U.S. territory, and most of those new lands were soon opened to slavery. Congress banned the slave trade in 1808, but by then hundreds of thousands of enslaved people already lived here. Black people remained excluded from full equality by law, while most white men (later in this period) gained the vote. In these decades the government was built to protect slavery and privilege whites.

Rebellions by the Dispossessed – Despite these divisions, many rural and enslaved people resisted. Some major uprisings and protests included:

  • Shays’ Rebellion (1786–1787) – In western Massachusetts, thousands of poor farmers led by Daniel Shays took up arms. They were angry about high taxes and debt collectors foreclosing on farms. Shays and his followers shut down courthouses and marched on the national arsenal at Springfield. The state militia crushed the revolt, but it showed the anger of poor white farmers.

  • Whiskey Rebellion (1794) – In the Pennsylvania frontier, farmers who made whiskey attacked tax collectors. The federal government’s new whiskey tax (needed to pay war debts) hit them hard because they had little cash. When rebels threatened Pittsburgh and even burned the house of a tax official, President Washington sent 12,000 militia to stop them. The show of force ended the revolt and proved the federal government would enforce its laws.

  • Gabriel’s Uprising (1800) – In Virginia, an enslaved blacksmith named Gabriel Prosser planned a large slave rebellion. He recruited hundreds of enslaved people and free Blacks, hoping to march on Richmond and demand freedom. On a rainy night in August 1800 the plot fell apart: two enslaved men warned the authorities, and Gabriel’s forces dispersed. Gabriel and 25 others were hanged. This was one of the biggest slave conspiracies in U.S. history. Even though it failed, it terrified Virginia’s leaders. They tightened slave codes and treated free Black communities with more suspicion, revealing how desperate enslaved people were to win freedom.

  • German Coast Uprising (1811) – Just north of New Orleans in Louisiana, the largest slave revolt in U.S. history occurred. In January 1811 up to 500 enslaved people marched from plantation to plantation burning crops and sugar houses. They hoped to reach New Orleans, but local militia and U.S. troops caught up with them. In the battle and its aftermath, around 95 rebels were killed (some killed in action, more executed later). Only two white men were reported killed. The brutal suppression included beheadings displayed on pikes.

  • Northwest Indian War (1785–1795) – A confederation of Native tribes (Ottawa, Miami, Shawnee, etc.) led by chiefs like Little Turtle fought U.S. settlers for control of the Ohio country. At first the Native alliance won several victories, but in 1794 General “Mad” Anthony Wayne defeated them at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. In the Treaty of Greenville (1795) the tribes surrendered most of what is now Ohio (and parts of Indiana, Illinois and Michigan) to the United States. Thousands of white settlers soon flooded the Northwest Territory.

  • Stono Rebellion & the Black Seminoles (1739–1800s) – In 1739 near Charleston, South Carolina, about 20 enslaved Africans launched the Stono Rebellion, marching with weapons and calling for freedom in Spanish Florida — where Spain promised freedom to enslaved people fleeing British colonies. Dozens joined as they moved south, killing slaveholders along the way, until colonial militia ambushed them. Brutal reprisals followed, but Stono exposed how slavery required constant terror to survive.

    Many who continued to flee into Florida joined Seminole Native communities. These Black Seminoles formed armed maroon settlements and fought alongside the Seminole Nation to protect freedom. During the Seminole Wars (1816–1858), the U.S. spent more money and lives trying to capture Florida than in any other Native conflict — partly because Black and Native resistance united across racial lines. This alliance directly threatened the system of racial division that elites depended on.

    Tecumseh’s Confederacy (1810–1813) – Shawnee leader Tecumseh built on Greenville by trying to unite all Native nations east of the Mississippi. He and his brother Tenskwatawa (“the Prophet”) called for a Pan-Indian alliance against U.S. expansion. In November 1811, U.S. forces led by William Henry Harrison defeated Tecumseh’s warriors at the Battle of Tippecanoe (in present Indiana). Tecumseh then joined the British in the War of 1812. He  was killed in 1813 at the Battle of the Thames in Canada. With Tecumseh’s death, the confederacy collapsed.

U.S. Presidents and Their Policies – From 1789 through the 1830s, America’s leaders largely came from slaveholding backgrounds and carried forward these divide-and-rule policies:

  • George Washington (1789–1797): America’s first president owned slaves and approved the new country’s first laws on slavery. As commander of the army, he led forces in the Northwest Indian War and secured the Treaty of Greenville. Washington’s government also violently put down the Whiskey Rebellion, showing that rural protest would not be tolerated.

  • John Adams (1797–1801): A New Englander who did not own slaves, Adams nonetheless protected slavery by supporting Southern senators. He feared the danger of revolution in Haiti and elsewhere, so he kept strict control at home. As president, he also oversaw the early funding of what would become the expansion into the Ohio and Mississippi valleys.

  • Thomas Jefferson (1801–1809): Jefferson was a slaveholder who famously wrote “all men are created equal,” yet he expanded slavery’s reach. He doubled the nation’s size with the Louisiana Purchase (1803), adding vast new lands that planters eventually filled with plantations and enslaved people. Jefferson restricted the slave trade but did not challenge slavery itself. He also made Americans pay Indigenous tribes to “civilize” and convert them, hoping to absorb or push aside the rest (he once called for moving tribes west of the Mississippi). Jefferson’s policies set the stage for widening slavery and continued Indian land loss.

  • James Madison (1809–1817): Madison, another Virginian slaveholder, led the nation through the War of 1812. In that war, southern battles like the Creek War saw Madison’s commanders (notably Andrew Jackson) kill many Natives. At the Battle of Horseshoe Bend (1814) Jackson forced the Creek nation to surrender 23 million acres of their land. The Treaty of Fort Jackson (1814) gave the U.S. control of most of what is now Alabama and Georgia. Madison thus oversaw massive Native land cessions (effectively an early genocide of Creeks) while continuing to expand the nation.

  • James Monroe (1817–1825): Monroe, born in Virginia, was another slave-owning planter-president. Monroe also promoted sending freed Blacks to Africa (the American Colonization Society), reflecting the belief that whites and Blacks could not live together as equals. He and Congress negotiated more land from tribes in treaties, setting patterns for removal policies soon to come.

  • John Quincy Adams (1825–1829): Adams did not own slaves and had freed those he inherited in 1801, but he was an imperialist who reformed largely after he was out of office.

  • Andrew Jackson (1829–1837): A slaveholder from Tennessee, Jackson was the great symbol of “Jacksonian Democracy.” He proudly gave all white men the vote by the time he was elected. But his democracy excluded Blacks and Natives entirely. Jackson violently enforced slavery and racial exclusion: he supported laws to punish abolitionists and printed speeches claiming slavery was divine. He also crushed a slave revolt in 1811 (New Orleans) and deported several alleged plotters. As president, Jackson used federal power to steal Native land. He pushed the Indian Removal Act (1830), which led to the Trail of Tears in the 1830s (Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw and others forced west). In short, Jackson expanded democracy for poor whites while waging a war of genocide against Native peoples. His party even outlawed any talk of ending slavery in Congress through the gag rule.

References

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