Early U.S. Slave Rebellion in Greene County, Georgia, Led by the Slave, Captain James - 1810 newspaper with Detailed Headline Report
Haverhill, MA: Merrimack Intelligencer, 1810. Very Good. Item #18187
An 1810 Haverhill, MA newspaper with a compelling inside-page detailed account of a planned Greene County, Georgia slave rebellion.
The report reprints a letter from one "NEGR0" man" to another at the time detailing the planned slave revolt, and the promise that word of the revolt has been passed along the way to sympathetic ears from Georgia, through the Carolinas into Tennessee, in hopes that the rebellion, scheduled for April 22, 1810 at midnight, might take hold.
The letter came into the hands of General Thomas Blount, a Revolutionary War hero and officer in the North Carolina militia, and reads -
"we have spread the nuse nearly over the continent in our part of the country, and have the day when we are to fall to work, and you must be sure not to fail on that day, and that is the 22nd of April, to begin about midnit. and do the work at hom first, and then take the armes of them you slay first and that will strengthen us more in armes--for freedom we want and will have..."
In April 1810, a suppressed slave revolt, planned by enslaved people between Greene County, Georgia, and Halifax County, North Carolina, aimed to liberate enslaved populations, led by enslaved man named Captain James, and was captured in a 1956 painting by 20th-century African-American artist Jacob Lawrence, and currently in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Jacob's painting of the event depicts the "brutal physical conflict between Black men and their oppressors, this painting represents the suppressed revolt planned by the enslaved Captain James to free populations between Greene County, Georgia, and Halifax County, North Carolina, in April 1810. Under ferocious attack, the central figure’s broad back, bearing gruesome scars from lashings, directly confronts the viewer. Lawrence derived the title caption from a letter written by James expressing his unrelenting desire to escape bondage and strike out for freedom. While the subject is ostensibly historical, the painting’s theme of racial strife resonated in the mid-1950s, during the nascent civil rights movement, when desegregation efforts were often met with violent resistance." - the Met
It was very rare for an African-American of the day to be able to read, let alone write so eloquently, or exchange letters amongst one another.
This historic piece is complete in four pages and is in Very Good condition, with mild edge wear.
#1M-010.
Price: $275.00