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Episode: 399 Denmark Vesey's Bible

Author: Liz Covart
Duration: 00:55:49

Episode Shownotes

Denmark Vesey’s failed revolt in 1822 could have been the largest insurrection of enslaved people against their enslavers in United States history. Not only was Vesey’s plan large in scale, but Charleston officials arrested well over one hundred rumored participants. Jeremy Schipper, a Professor in the departments for the Study

or Religion and Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Toronto and the author of Denmark Vesey’s Bible: The Thwarted Revolt that Put Scripture and Slavery on Trial, joins us to investigate Vesey’s planned rebellion and the different ways Vesey used the Bible and biblical texts to justify his revolt and the violence it would have wrought. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/399 Sponsor Links Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Colonial Williamsburg Email Lists Complementary Episodes Episode 052: Early United States-Haitian Diplomacy Episode 124: Making the Haitian Revolution in Early America Episode 133: Nat Turner’s Rebellion Episode 165: The Age of Revolutions Episode 190: Origins of the American Middle Class Episode 226: Making the State of South Carolina Episode 384: Making Maine: A Journey to Statehood Episode 390: Objects of Revolution Listen! Apple Podcasts Spotify Google Podcasts Amazon Music Ben Franklin's World iOS App Ben Franklin's World Android App Helpful Links Join the Ben Franklin's World Facebook Group Ben Franklin’s World Twitter: @BFWorldPodcast Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_00
You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. Ben Franklin's World is a production of Colonial Williamsburg Innovation Studios.

00:00:09 Speaker_01
For instance, one text that is often attributed to VC's use was a text from Exodus chapter 21, verse 16, which says, I'm paraphrasing here, but whoever kidnaps a person or is found with a person in their hand or in their control should be put to death.

00:00:29 Speaker_01
Vesey, of course, said, okay, this is what we should practically do. The Bible says right there, Exodus 21, verse 16, it says right there that if you're a slaver, you should be killed. So he took that as marching orders.

00:00:51 Speaker_00
Hello, and welcome to episode 399 of Ben Franklin's World, the podcast dedicated to helping you learn more about how the people and events of our early American past have shaped the present day world we live in. And I'm your host, Liz Kovart.

00:01:07 Speaker_00
Historians estimate that British North America and the United States experienced somewhere between 250 and 311 slave revolts. Of those approximately 300 slave revolts, six tend to make our history books.

00:01:21 Speaker_00
the 1739 Stoner Rebellion in South Carolina, the 1741 New York Conspiracy in New York City, Gabriel Prosser's Conspiracy in Richmond, Virginia in 1800, the German Coast Uprising in Louisiana's Sugar Parishes in 1811, Denmark Vesey's Failed Revolt in Charleston, South Carolina in 1822, and Nat Turner's Southampton, Virginia Rebellion in 1831.

00:01:45 Speaker_00
Now, Denmark Vesey's failed revolt in 1822 could have been the largest insurrection of enslaved people against their enslavers in United States history.

00:01:54 Speaker_00
Not only was the plan for this revolt large in scale, but Charleston officials arrested well over 100 rumored participants. So what was Denmark Vesey's plan and how did he recruit so many potential participants?

00:02:07 Speaker_00
Jeremy Skipper, a professor in the Departments for the Study of Religion and Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto, joins us to investigate answers to these questions.

00:02:18 Speaker_00
In doing so, Jeremy shares his expertise as a scholar of biblical texts to show us how the Bible and Christian religion played a big role in Vesey's planned revolt and in Vesey's justification of his revolt and the violence it would have wrought.

00:02:33 Speaker_00
Now, during our investigation, Jeremy reveals

00:02:36 Speaker_00
What historians know about Denmark Vesey's life prior to his thwarted rebellion, how Denmark Vesey's literacy and ability to read and interpret the Bible played a significant role in his decision to plan an anti-slavery rebellion in Charleston, and details about Vesey's trial and the biblical interpretations employed by both Vesey and the white magistrates who tried, convicted, and executed Vesey for his planned rebellion.

00:03:01 Speaker_00
But first, happy holidays! The holiday season is once again upon us, and if you find yourself needing a break from all the festivities, be sure you check out the Ben Franklin's World Listener Community.

00:03:13 Speaker_00
The Ben Franklin's World Listener Community is a Facebook group.

00:03:16 Speaker_00
where you can connect and interact with fellow listeners, take deeper dives into different topics about early American history through conversations and through news articles, and post your episode requests and interview questions for our upcoming guest historians.

00:03:30 Speaker_00
The group is free to join. Just visit benfranklinsworld.com slash Facebook. That's benfranklinsworld.com slash Facebook. All right, are you ready to investigate the role that the Bible and biblical texts played in Denmark Vesey's thwarted revolt?

00:03:46 Speaker_00
Allow me to introduce you to our expert guide. Our guest is a professor in the Departments for the Study of Religion and Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto.

00:04:10 Speaker_00
He has written extensively on race and biblical interpretation in the United States. He is also the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, the co-author with Nysha Jr. of Black Samson, The Untold Story of an American Icon.

00:04:22 Speaker_00
And his most recent book is Denmark Vesey's Bible, The Thwarted Revolt That Put Scripture and Slavery on Trial. Welcome to Ben Franklin's world, Jeremy Skipper. Thank you, I'm pleased to be here.

00:04:34 Speaker_00
So Jeremy, in Denmark Vesey's Bible, your book, you introduce us to a black man from South Carolina who goes by the name of Telemache, who is the man that we know from our history books as Denmark Vesey.

00:04:46 Speaker_00
Would you remind us of who Denmark Vesey was and why he was an important historical figure?

00:04:51 Speaker_01
Okay, I'll just give the Kryptotes version, skip it over a lot of details I might return to. So we're not really sure where he was born, someplace probably in the Caribbean or possibly the west coast of Africa. In 1767 or thereabouts, he was born.

00:05:07 Speaker_01
In 1822, they make him about 55 years old. 1822 is the year he led a revolt against the slavers in Charleston. So he was probably born somewhere around 1767.

00:05:22 Speaker_01
In 1781, he was sold into slavery by an Indo-Caribbean, and then through a strange series of events, his enslaver thought he was epileptic. and therefore returned him to the captain of the slave ship that had sold him. His name was Joseph Vesey.

00:05:46 Speaker_01
Joseph Vesey eventually settled in Charleston, South Carolina. That's where we get the name Denmark Vesey. In 1799, Denmark V.C.

00:05:58 Speaker_01
extraordinarily hit the lottery numbers in a local lottery and won a good amount of money, enough to buy his freedom from his enslaver and then also set up a carpentry business in Charleston. So it's pretty remarkable how he got out of enslavement.

00:06:19 Speaker_01
His company business was thriving, at least relatively speaking, for a number of years.

00:06:24 Speaker_01
And then somewhere, we don't know exactly when, but probably somewhere 1818, 1820, somewhere thereabouts, he started to plan what could have been the largest revolt against enslavers in US history.

00:06:41 Speaker_01
Unfortunately, it was thwarted when two of the members who were recruited informed the slaveholders. And Denmark V.C. was arrested and a bunch of people, including V.C. over the next month or so, were hanged after a show trial.

00:06:59 Speaker_01
And even the numbers there, there were 35 people hanged. So just the amount of executions were fairly significant. And that was 1822, about 40 years or so, give or take, before Fort Sumter in South Carolina. So his significance there in terms of U.S.

00:07:16 Speaker_01
history, he's an important figure in that respect. And then the aftermath of the revolt really shook up the white slaveholding community.

00:07:25 Speaker_01
And then nine years later in Virginia, with Nat Turner, that only compounded further fears, which lasted several decades.

00:07:34 Speaker_01
In fact, when Frederick Douglass in the early 1860s was barnstorming across several states, recruiting black men to enlist in the Union Army, One of his slogans was, remember Denmark VC.

00:07:50 Speaker_01
Sort of the way we sometimes talk about Davy Crockett with the Alamo. So there was this invoking of his name by the time you got to the Civil War. So yeah, he did play a pretty significant part.

00:08:01 Speaker_01
Even if it's sort of obscure today, he played a pretty significant part in the years and decades leading up to the Civil War.

00:08:10 Speaker_00
So to start from the beginning, it sounds like Denmark Vesey experienced a fairly typical journey into enslavement in that he came from possibly Africa, possibly from the Caribbean, but he was definitely in the Caribbean by the 1770s before he made his way to Charleston with his enslaver, Joseph Vesey.

00:08:27 Speaker_00
And we know that a lot of enslaved people would typically make their way from Africa or the Caribbean before they entered North American port cities like Charleston.

00:08:38 Speaker_01
And Charleston as well. Charleston was a major port for selling enslaved folks.

00:08:43 Speaker_00
Now, you also mentioned that after V.C. won the local lottery, he purchased his freedom and opened his own carpentry business. Carpentry is a rather skilled trade. Do we think V.C. practiced carpentry during his period of enslavement?

00:08:56 Speaker_00
Was this a trade that we think V.C. was familiar with? Very likely.

00:09:01 Speaker_01
Yeah, it was considered skilled labor.

00:09:03 Speaker_01
It's very likely that he, at least when he had arrived in Charleston, when and where exactly he learned the skills of carpentry is not quite clear because Joseph Vesey continued to transport and save folks for quite some time.

00:09:16 Speaker_01
But because it's a skilled labor, you just don't say one day I'm going to be a carpenter and go at it. So he probably practiced it for a number of years before he had the opportunity to establish his own carpentry business.

00:09:30 Speaker_00
It must have been something for Vesey to win the lottery in 1799, because the lottery allows him to purchase his freedom and open his own carpentry business, as we said, but it also allowed him to make this transition from enslaved person who didn't really have any money to a free person who owned his own business.

00:09:49 Speaker_00
Do we know anything from the historical records that you looked at, Jeremy, about what it must have been like for Vesey to transition from an enslaved person to a free person with a little bit of money? There were probably difficulties.

00:10:02 Speaker_01
One thing, for instance, his family members were still enslaved. Several of his family members were still enslaved. So the fact that he hit the lottery doesn't mean, OK, well, everything's copacetic.

00:10:15 Speaker_01
But with his winnings, he was able to buy his own freedom and set up a carpentry business, but he didn't have enough money to buy all of his family members. He was married three times and had a number of children.

00:10:29 Speaker_01
So to buy his relatives out of slavery, he didn't have that kind of cash. Also, it seems that he was able to purchase his own freedom from the VCs at a discounted rate.

00:10:43 Speaker_01
Why exactly that is not quite clear, but VCs wife, who says that basically not quite good behavior, but she was sort of willing to discount price because of that.

00:10:53 Speaker_01
There were problems once he was bought his freedom and how he related to both the white and black communities in Charleston. You know, it's a little murky, but I would have to imagine that it probably wasn't the easiest of transitions.

00:11:10 Speaker_00
Yeah. And I know we're talking in understatements here because it must have been unbelievably difficult, beyond difficult, to transition to a life of freedom in a slave society and leave your family behind enslaved.

00:11:23 Speaker_00
Now, as we said, Vesey did establish roots in Charleston. He opened his own carpentry business. What was life in Charleston like by 1800?

00:11:31 Speaker_01
In terms of Charleston around the turn of the 19th century, there was a lot going on.

00:11:38 Speaker_01
especially considering that by 1805, the Haitian Revolution, it was well known, it had an impact on Charleston, both in terms of whether you feared something like what happened to Haiti repeating in Charleston, or you saw what happened to Haiti as a model for what could happen in Charleston.

00:12:01 Speaker_01
VC was also aware of larger debates and issues around anti-slavery movements in New England and elsewhere. So for instance, with the Missouri Compromise, he knew about that.

00:12:16 Speaker_01
And the way he presented it to some of his recruits was as they had actually ended slavery. And the white authorities just weren't telling us that. So he did draw, I mean, within Charleston itself, he did draw on the larger discourses.

00:12:32 Speaker_01
Also, you know, one of the fears that the white slaveholders had mentioned a few times around that time was the anti-slavery propaganda, as they saw it, entering into Charleston and exposing the enslaved people to what they saw as interferers.

00:12:49 Speaker_01
one document by a local clergyman. They don't know our ways. They don't know what they're talking about. They don't really understand the slavery system here. And they're just coming from the North and causing trouble.

00:13:02 Speaker_01
There's also a lot of concern about once the African Methodist Episcopal denomination was founded in Philadelphia. And then there was the second one, which is a forerunner for Emanuel Church of Tulsa, South Carolina.

00:13:17 Speaker_01
Once those churches were established, the white authorities saw them as, oh, they're just fronts for revolutionary ideas among our enslaved population.

00:13:29 Speaker_01
Around that time, around the turn of the century in Charleston, there was a lot of awareness of what was going on within the larger community, whether you feared that or saw hope in that would depend on which side of the debate you're on.

00:13:44 Speaker_00
I'm glad you brought up Philadelphia because I think it'll be a good comparison as we try to understand Charleston in the early 19th century. So Philadelphia was what some historians call a society with slaves.

00:13:56 Speaker_00
It wasn't a slave society like early Charleston, South Carolina. So Philadelphia had free Black neighborhoods in its city. You would have found enslaved people scattered throughout Philadelphia.

00:14:07 Speaker_00
And the social structure and economy of Philadelphia wasn't extremely dependent on slavery as a practice or institution. That's not to say that slavery didn't impact the economy and social structure of Philadelphia. It certainly did.

00:14:20 Speaker_00
But the social structure and economy of Philadelphia wasn't extremely dependent on slavery as it was in Charleston, South Carolina. And that's because Charleston, South Carolina was a slave society.

00:14:32 Speaker_00
So, Jeremy, what was the slave society of Charleston like?

00:14:38 Speaker_01
Yeah, it definitely was a slave society. And in terms of what Charleston was like, slavery was prevalent in many ways.

00:14:46 Speaker_01
Number one, of course, is the economy for the white folks was largely dependent on the trade of the slave folks, which was by the time we have historical records of VC, by that time, of course, the transatlantic slave trade was abolished, at least legally abolished.

00:15:05 Speaker_01
but you still have major plantations, major part of the economy was still very much dependent on slavery. And I think it's an accurate description.

00:15:16 Speaker_01
You said that in Philadelphia, it was a society with slaves, whereas in Charleston, it was very much a slave society, meaning the whole society was dependent on the slave system.

00:15:28 Speaker_01
It would be very hard to describe Charleston without focusing on enslavement as a major economic engine.

00:15:37 Speaker_00
It also seems like Charleston was a well-connected place. It was a place that received a lot of news by virtue of it being a major port city in the early to mid 19th century, because ships would come in and out of Charleston all the time.

00:15:50 Speaker_00
So, of course, Charlestonians like Denmark VC would learn about the Haitian Revolution and they would have been able to keep up with news from the federal government and from all the other states in the union as ships came in and out of ports from those different areas of the United States.

00:16:07 Speaker_00
But this does raise a question. How did a man, a free Black man, like Denmark Vesey, keep up with all of the news and information that's coming into Charleston?

00:16:17 Speaker_00
Do we know if Vesey was literate and read newspapers, or do we think that he got his news by word of mouth, as customers would come in and out of his shop, or as he would go about his everyday life in Charleston?

00:16:29 Speaker_01
Yeah, both. In the trial transcripts, there are mentions of Vesey by white witnesses who said we would talk with him and he would always bring up this whole slavery issue and the equality of all folks based on the creation story in Genesis.

00:16:48 Speaker_01
And he was literate. He was highly literate. There's good evidence that he could speak French as well. For instance, the original date that was proposed for his rebellion was Bastille Day. He was literate and he knew about that.

00:17:02 Speaker_01
So he probably got his information from written sources, but also oral sources as well. And even in his recruiting efforts, all of his recruits, by contrast, couldn't necessarily read or write.

00:17:16 Speaker_01
There's a lot of evidence that what they would know would be based more on oral traditions, about the Bible, for example, whereas Vesey would quote chapter and verse, at least according to trial records, since we don't have any recent sources authored by Vesey himself.

00:17:32 Speaker_01
So yeah, he was a highly literate, highly intelligent, very charismatic as well. And he relied on a lot of that in his recruiting efforts. I mean, he would even bring up Greek mythology.

00:17:42 Speaker_01
A few times he made appeals to the story of Hercules, for example. So he was very learned. And I have no doubt that he was highly literate.

00:17:51 Speaker_00
Speaking of Vesey's ability to read the Bible and interpret its text and to cite the Bible chapter and verse, in your book, Denmark Vesey's Bible, you connect Denmark Vesey to the Bible and Christian religion.

00:18:04 Speaker_00
What led you to explore this connection between Denmark Vesey, the Bible, and Christian religion?

00:18:10 Speaker_01
Yeah, it was almost accidental because I am a biblical scholar by training.

00:18:15 Speaker_01
And the book that you had mentioned in the introduction, the book that I wrote with Nysha Jr., Black Samson, one of the reviewers for the manuscript had said, oh, you know, I wonder if there are any comparisons between Vesey and Samson in the Bible.

00:18:32 Speaker_01
So I said, okay, I'll look into the trial transcripts. And I started reading through them and there's nothing new. There's maybe a couple of some vague allusions, but nothing substantial in terms of comparisons between Vesey and Samson.

00:18:45 Speaker_01
However, what sort of knocked my socks off was during the trial transcripts, just the amount of biblical material that Vesey and his supporters alluded to and also his opponents or his oppressors alluded to as well.

00:19:02 Speaker_01
When he's being sentenced to death, for instance, the magistrate who was sentencing him, in a sense, he says, okay, well, not only do you feel treason, which was a technical charge, which he was convicted, treason against the state, South Carolina, but also the magistrate said, I find your use of the Bible, your use of sacred scripture to be so twisted to support your, and there's a quote, he says, to support your, quote, crimes of the blackest hue.

00:19:30 Speaker_01
And it basically says, you pick and chose your scriptures to manipulate your recruits into thinking the Bible supports the killing of the revolt, to put it shortly.

00:19:41 Speaker_01
And then the message goes on to say, if you had read your Bible honestly, you would know that these texts from the New Testament epistles have passages that talk about enslaved folks obeying their slaveholders. St. Paul, for instance, mentions that.

00:19:59 Speaker_01
So, they got interested in interpretive or exegetical debate about VC as a way to bolster their own opinions, one way or the other. It was sort of rooted in biblical authority.

00:20:12 Speaker_01
What I found interesting was there are several great books on VC and the articles on VC, but when I was doing it, again, with my background in biblical scholarship, just the amount of biblical allusions, some of them hard to catch.

00:20:27 Speaker_01
The amount of biblical allusions to me was just sort of like, wow, this is tremendous. And what if we supplemented some of the previous scholarship with the use of the Bible and the whole Denmark Vesey affair?

00:20:40 Speaker_00
What was the role of the Bible and Christian religion in Charleston by 1822? I ask because Vesey attempts to carry out his revolt during this period, which historians refer to as the Second Great Awakening.

00:20:53 Speaker_00
And this period was an awakening of Christian religion throughout the young United States. So did the Second Great Awakening and its movement prompt this biblical debate between Vesey and the Charleston magistrates?

00:21:06 Speaker_01
The Bible is probably one of the few books that people own, if they owned a book. And also a primer for learning to read was often the Bible. But the Great Awakening, I think, played an important part. You see it very clearly in the trial.

00:21:21 Speaker_01
One thing the magistrates say not only to Vesey, but others who they sentenced to death, they give them an opportunity to repent. and deep-hearted repentance, very much in the spirit of the Great Awakening, of get yourself right with God.

00:21:37 Speaker_01
Now what they say is, you're still going to die, we're still going to execute you, but at least you have an opportunity to save your soul. so you don't need to spend eternity under damnation.

00:21:50 Speaker_01
So they would give them an opportunity to repent, sometimes delaying their death sentence for a few days. And they give them the opportunity to talk to clergy, white clergy, if they need to get anything off their tests and repent.

00:22:04 Speaker_01
And that was very much in the spirit of the Great Awakening, the idea that you need to get yourself right with God.

00:22:13 Speaker_00
That's interesting. But it's also another example of how the Second Great Awakening plays into the lives of white people. What options did African Americans, enslaved or free, have to participate in the Second Great Awakening?

00:22:26 Speaker_00
Because often when we hear scholars talk about the Second Great Awakening, they talk about how white men and women between 1790 and 1840 go out to revivals, hear a new itinerant preacher preach, or they go and join a new church or a new denomination.

00:22:42 Speaker_00
But what about religion and the lives of African Americans during this period? Actually, why don't you hold your answer for just a moment, let us check in with our episode sponsor, and let's dive deep into this topic.

00:22:54 Speaker_00
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00:23:53 Speaker_00
To sign up for a mailing list, visit benfranklinsworld.com slash cwsubscribe. That's benfranklinsworld.com slash cwsubscribe. Jeremy, what options did African Americans, enslaved or free, have to participate in the Second Great Awakening?

00:24:11 Speaker_01
I think you're right. I think the majority of scholarly discussion around the Great Awakening does sort of frame it as something that's happening with white people. Maybe someone should look at this.

00:24:20 Speaker_01
But I think where you get more evidence of the Great Awakening impacting black communities would be in Richmond, especially around 1800, where you had another thwarted revolt by a man named Gabriel.

00:24:36 Speaker_01
In the primary literature around that revolt, you do have black folks talking about repentance and those kinds of things very much in the spirit of the Great Awakening.

00:24:48 Speaker_01
It's hard to say with Denmark Vesey in regards to how the Great Awakening might have played out in the African-American community in Charleston, partly because the African-Americans had their own churches.

00:25:01 Speaker_01
had what's called the African Church in some of the trial transcripts, which again is a forerunner for manual AME, which is still in operation today.

00:25:11 Speaker_01
It's hard to say because we don't have many documents about what was actually going on at those services.

00:25:18 Speaker_01
Other than white demonizations of those services that are largely uninformed about what was actually going on, they sort of picture them as more of a front for itinerant preachers with propagandist ideas about abolition or the anti-slavery movement.

00:25:34 Speaker_01
But you don't really get much documentation in regard to VC. other than we know that VCE Noah originally had joined in 1818, had joined a local majority white Presbyterian church.

00:25:48 Speaker_01
And we know that a lot of the folks who were involved in his movement were also attending the churches of their slaveholders.

00:25:57 Speaker_01
But after mention of his baptism into this Presbyterian Church, that's all we hear ever about his involvement with the white Presbyterian Church. You do hear quite a bit about his involvement with what would become the AME Church.

00:26:12 Speaker_01
We know, for instance, that he led Bible studies at night. He was called a class leader in Bible studies, probably because he could read. And we know he was very active in that church in a leadership, not ordained, but a leadership position.

00:26:29 Speaker_01
But exactly what he taught beyond the stuff relevant to the revolt isn't quite as clear.

00:26:37 Speaker_00
Could you tell us more about the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the one that Denmark Vesey was a member of, and that was a forerunner to the famous Emanuel AME Church in Charleston? Because when we read your book, Denmark Vesey's Bible,

00:26:51 Speaker_00
It seems like Vesey's involvement in this church is what really fueled his ideas that slavery was wrong, that the Bible didn't support it, and that enslaved people should rise up against their enslavers.

00:27:02 Speaker_01
Yeah. Now, whether he was first exposed to those ideas in the church is hard to know, again, because he was getting information from a lot of different sources. But it could quite possibly be stuff that he heard within the church in those years.

00:27:17 Speaker_01
between when he was first baptized in a white church in 1818 to when he planned to pull off his revolt in 1822. But some of the biblical texts that he appealed to, he wasn't the first to appeal to them.

00:27:36 Speaker_01
So we do know that white anti-slavery organizations and people were appealing to some of those same biblical texts.

00:27:45 Speaker_01
For instance, one text that is often attributed to Vesey's use was a text from Exodus chapter 21, verse 16, which says, I'm paraphrasing here, but whoever kidnaps a person or is found with a person in their hand or in their control should be put to death.

00:28:04 Speaker_01
And so earlier anti-slavery folks, primarily white folks, had appealed to that text just to show this is how much God hates slavery. Vesey, of course, said, okay, this is what we should practically do.

00:28:18 Speaker_01
The Bible says right there, Exodus 21, verse 16, it says right there that if you're in slavery, you should be killed. So he took that as marching orders rather than just sort of use it rhetorically to criticize enslavement.

00:28:34 Speaker_01
But we do know that that particular text, it wasn't like he was flipping through his Bible one day and said, oh, my gosh, he probably heard about that from other sources, whether it was African-Americans or white folks. It isn't quite clear.

00:28:46 Speaker_01
He could have heard that within the church. He could have heard that from outside the church and brought it into the church. But since his recruiting efforts were also very widespread, they weren't limited to just Charleston.

00:29:00 Speaker_01
He had a massive recruiting network over several counties. He could have heard it from a whole bunch of places. But he did sort of use texts to not only criticize enslavement, but also call for decisive actions against slaveholders.

00:29:18 Speaker_01
He also used, for instance, the story when the Israelites invade the city of Jericho. And at one point in that story, which is fairly well known, the story where Joshua battles the Canaanites and the walls came tumbling down, as the song goes.

00:29:35 Speaker_01
One part of that story where God commands Joshua, don't leave anything living. Kill them all. Kill the men, the women, the children, the livestock, everything that breathes, you should eliminate.

00:29:48 Speaker_01
The way Vesey interpreted that text was, okay, well, we, the African-American community, are the Israelites, and Charleston is Jericho, so they should all die, which in a way was sort of flipping the script on some popular rhetoric, especially in the 18th century, where folks would often picture white Europeans settling in North America as were the biblical Israelites.

00:30:17 Speaker_01
what they viewed as sort of the unsettled American continent was full of Canaanites, meaning Native Americans.

00:30:25 Speaker_01
And they would justify the slaughter of Native Americans by saying, they're the Canaanites, we're the Israelites, North America is the promised land, so in order for us to take the promised land, we need to follow this biblical mandate, we need to exterminate them.

00:30:42 Speaker_01
Now, Vesey does a sort of very interesting flip on that by saying, no, the slave folks are the Israelites, you guys are the Canaanites, so we're going to wipe you out.

00:30:54 Speaker_01
Now, whether he was exposed to that idea or thought of that idea because he had heard that sort of trope of the white folks being the Israelites and the Native American population being the Canaanites from somewhere outside the AME church is interesting to consider.

00:31:11 Speaker_01
He was probably exposed to a whole bunch of different sources and ideas. It's very hard to pinpoint where exactly he came up with this one particular idea.

00:31:20 Speaker_01
I'm pretty sure that within the AME church, he certainly used those opportunities as recruiting opportunities. and would tell folks about these biblical attacks.

00:31:32 Speaker_01
And we have several places within the trial transcripts where enslaved witnesses, they're probably very much coerced testimony, but where they would say, like, you know, VC, before every planning meeting, he would read Exodus 21-16 to remind us of what he presented as a biblical mandate to carry out this revolt.

00:31:55 Speaker_00
It sounds like everyone in Charleston was reading the Bible and interpreting its passages at this time to support their views on slavery.

00:32:03 Speaker_00
So how important do you think the African Methodist Episcopal Church was for VC and for his co-planners to interpret the Bible in this pro-rebellion manner?

00:32:14 Speaker_00
Do you think they would have made these same interpretations if they had just been attending white churches? How important was this Black religious space for developing these pro-rebellion interpretations?

00:32:25 Speaker_01
I think it's crucial.

00:32:26 Speaker_01
Now, whether it's specifically AME or whether it's like Baptist churches, it's hard to say, but African-American faith communities I think were very much important to provide a space that obviously the white communities wouldn't have allowed or even the white communities probably wouldn't even have conceived of.

00:32:45 Speaker_01
More specifically, African Americans would be able to read and interpret the Bible. Not only probably correctly, but they probably just in general thinking like they couldn't come up with this idea.

00:32:56 Speaker_01
But I think a lot of the white folks were shocked when the plan came to light for them. Some of the sermons in the wake of Vesey's death were aimed at just sort of reassuring the white community that they're still in charge.

00:33:09 Speaker_01
And one way to do that would be saying like, okay, well, these biblical interpretations, they were just misguided. One clergyman writes, we need to come up with a catechism that we could teach the African Americans

00:33:23 Speaker_01
that doesn't mention all this stuff about revolt, but focuses on the parts that they saw in the New Testament as, unfortunately, whether it does or does not, it's another whole podcast.

00:33:35 Speaker_01
But they very much wanted to present it as sort of, even though they were reading the Bible, or at least interpreting the Bible, their readings were way off, they didn't know what they were talking about.

00:33:44 Speaker_01
I think to your point, it does very much suggest that there was an element of intellectual space, I'll call it, to interpret the Bible within African American faith communities.

00:33:56 Speaker_01
Again, you have a similar thing probably going on with Gabriel in Richmond 22 years earlier. And I'm pretty confident that his background was Baptist. So I wouldn't say it's necessarily denominational specific, but I think you're right there.

00:34:11 Speaker_01
It did probably provide a space for this intellectual activity among black folks in Charleston.

00:34:17 Speaker_00
So armed with these biblical interpretations that claim that slavery is wrong and that insurrection is called for, Denmark Vesey and his co-planners planned a rebellion.

00:34:27 Speaker_00
Jeremy, would you tell us about this planned rebellion and why Vesey and his followers never had a chance to carry it off?

00:34:34 Speaker_01
Yeah, the simple reason that it never came to fruition was because he was betrayed to the white authorities, and so it was squashed before it could ever get off the ground.

00:34:44 Speaker_01
But the plan, at least the plan as it was presented by the slave witnesses at the trial, The plan was that Vesey and his folks, his army, there's wildly different estimates as to how big the army was, but his army would march upon Charleston.

00:35:04 Speaker_01
I'm summarizing here, there's a few details where you don't need to get into the weeds of, but would march upon Charleston, would start a series of fires.

00:35:12 Speaker_01
And then when the white folks would come out of the house to put out the fires, then Vesey's army would slaughter them.

00:35:21 Speaker_01
It's not quite clear, you know, it's open interpretation, but then the idea would be that VC and his companions would board ships and sell to Haiti. They weren't sticking around, in other words.

00:35:34 Speaker_01
Again, that's not quite clear, but it was basically the idea was to start fires and draw the white folks out. And when they were out, VC's army would attack them and slaughter them all.

00:35:46 Speaker_01
Again, I'm skipping over a lot of the strategic details, but that was the basic plan. But again, it got thwarted because two of the folks who were recruited ratted him out to the white authorities.

00:35:58 Speaker_00
I think we can tell from the way that we've been talking and referencing historical documentation that there was a trial for Denmark Vesey and his co-planners and that a lot of the historical information that we have for Vesey and his rebellion comes from trial transcripts and records.

00:36:13 Speaker_00
Jeremy, would you tell us about this trial and whether it was a fair trial for VC and his co-planners or whether it was a show trial?

00:36:22 Speaker_01
Oh, no, no, no. It was a show trial, to be sure. I mean, they knew they being the magistrates knew they wanted to hang them. They tried to present it at times as a subjective open inquiry for the sake of justice. But that wasn't the case.

00:36:38 Speaker_01
So, for instance, they arrested a lot of folks, like 125, 130 folks. Many of them, they would say stuff like there wasn't enough evidence to convict this person or that person. And so they set them free.

00:36:51 Speaker_01
but a way that sort of shows like, okay, we're trying to establish this as a fair trial. Also, there's a biblical text in the book of Numbers that says, if you're going to put someone to death, you can't do it on the basis of one witness.

00:37:05 Speaker_01
You have to do it on the basis of at least more than one witness.

00:37:09 Speaker_01
And it's interesting, the mayor of Charleston, in his publication about the trial, which was like the earliest publication of the trial, he mentions repeatedly there were three witnesses against person X or three witnesses against person Y to sort of imbue the judicial process with a sense of biblical authority, in my opinion.

00:37:30 Speaker_01
But at the same time, every single juror or magistrate who tried Vesey was an enslaver. It wasn't like he was going to ever get off. There was no way he would ever get off.

00:37:44 Speaker_01
But, you know, you could present the trial as if we're doing this objective inquiry into forsaken justice, even though that was clearly not the case.

00:37:54 Speaker_01
Another thing, I can't say I have a lot of textual evidence to support this, but I'm using some stuff from Gabriel's trial and also Nat Turner's trial as well, is a concern for vigilante justice.

00:38:07 Speaker_01
So if there is no trial, and if the executions then are not performed by the state, then the concern would be that white vigilantes would take matters into their own hands and kill the folks they thought were involved with VC's trial.

00:38:23 Speaker_01
But if you're killing enslaved folks, you're costing their enslavers money. If the state kills them, you can get reimbursement.

00:38:31 Speaker_01
So we do have a couple of documents where they mention so-and-so appealed to the state for X amount of money because the state executed his slave.

00:38:42 Speaker_01
So one concern may be the need for trial would make it official so you could reimburse, so to speak, the enslavers for any monetary loss, which again is not justice by any means, but also might be a reason why they thought it would be a good idea to have published trials.

00:38:59 Speaker_01
Also, they published the trial transcripts, and they say this very specifically at several points, just to sort of set the record straight.

00:39:06 Speaker_01
You may have heard, you meaning the white community, may have heard that there were some shenanigans going on with this whole trial, but we want to set the record straight, so we're going to publish the trial transcripts for that reason.

00:39:18 Speaker_01
But again, there's probably very little support the idea that the reason for the trial was to determine whether VC was or was not guilty.

00:39:28 Speaker_00
Now, as we've talked about ways that Denmark Vesey and his co-planners used the Bible and biblical interpretations to justify their organization of a rebellion that would have led to the execution of enslavers, I'd like for us to turn now to the magistrates who also used the Bible and biblical interpretations to put Vesey and his co-planners on trial and then to execute them.

00:39:50 Speaker_00
So Jeremy, would you tell us how these magistrates who are all white and all enslavers, so the judges, jurors, and lawyers all own enslaved people.

00:40:00 Speaker_00
Would you tell us how these folks use the Bible and biblical interpretations to justify this show trial of Vesey and his co-planners and their execution?

00:40:11 Speaker_01
Yeah, definitely just support their reasons for killing V.C.

00:40:14 Speaker_01
Of course, it's a chicken and egg kind of thing in the sense, like, did they read the Bible and then decide that enslavement was justified or they already thought enslavement was a good idea and they were looking to the Bible to sort of find biblical support for that view?

00:40:30 Speaker_01
Probably the latter. Interestingly enough, with a couple of different exceptions, the enslavers would appeal almost exclusively to the New Testament.

00:40:40 Speaker_01
And in fact, to your earlier question about the Great Awakening, Lionel Kennedy, the magistrate who read the sentence to Vesey, he got his law degree at Yale 20 years earlier.

00:40:53 Speaker_01
And at Yale, very much encountered the ideas of Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening, that whole thing. So he wasn't formally trained in theology, but that line between law and theology at the time was probably pretty blurry.

00:41:09 Speaker_01
But I would say probably like with the enslavers, the way that they used the Bible was they probably looked for biblical texts to plug into their political framework rather than you read the Bible to construct a political framework.

00:41:25 Speaker_01
And without getting into the weeds, let's talk a little bit about how they read biblical texts to support their interpretations. In the book,

00:41:33 Speaker_01
HDNF with VC, with a couple of exceptions, there's almost exclusive reliance on the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament. And there is an interesting sort of dichotomy almost between the use of scripture, you know. So V.C.F.

00:41:47 Speaker_01
would appeal to the stories of Joshua and the Battle of Jericho. He would appeal to the law in Exodus, which the way it's framed in the Bible is it's Moses instructing the Israelites about the commandments that God gave Moses.

00:42:03 Speaker_01
So you do have the story of Moses, which of course, earlier parts of the story of Moses when he led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, that was very much influential at the time among African-American clergy and intellectuals and anti-slavery folks of all stripes.

00:42:21 Speaker_01
It's probably not entirely a coincidence that the parts of the Bible that Vesey tended to ground his interpretations in were different than the parts of the Bible that his oppressors were grounding their interpretations in.

00:42:40 Speaker_00
We touched on this a bit earlier, but at the same time the Denmark VC and the white magistrates who executed him were using the Bible and biblical interpretations to justify their causes, so were the anti-slavery and growing abolition movements of the 1820s and 1840s.

00:42:56 Speaker_00
These movements also used the Bible to prove their points about why God did not approve of or support slavery.

00:43:03 Speaker_00
Jeremy, how did members of these anti-slavery and abolition movements use the Bible and biblical interpretations to fuel their anti-slavery campaigns?

00:43:14 Speaker_00
Did you find that they were using the Bible even more intensely after Charlestonians executed Vesey and his co-planners?

00:43:21 Speaker_01
Oh yeah, I mean, you certainly get a lot of appeals to the Bible in both the anti-slavery and pro-slavery sides. And that continues, especially ramping up in the 1850s as we're marching further and further towards the Civil War.

00:43:36 Speaker_01
In the 1840s and the 1850s, but even the 1830s as well, you get a number of pamphlets about how the Bible is against slavery or for slavery, depending on who's writing the story.

00:43:50 Speaker_01
But even in the years right before Vichy's revolt, you do have white enslavers publishing books about how the practice of slavery is incompatible. with the Bible.

00:44:01 Speaker_01
So there's a white clergyman, I believe he was English if I remember correctly, who was a Presbyterian religion person in Virginia, and he published a book about the incompatibility of slavery with what the Bible says.

00:44:15 Speaker_01
His approach was to take a whole bunch of different verses and string them together as they see the Bible is consistently against enslavement,

00:44:24 Speaker_01
It was Virginia at the time, so he of course was defrocked and kicked out of his position as a minister, but he kept on writing for the next several decades versions of that article. So before VC, you do get appeals to biblical texts.

00:44:39 Speaker_01
By 1859, of course, and several decades later, if you look at some of the writings and letters of John Brown, they are just infused with biblical material.

00:44:52 Speaker_01
And like Gabriel, like Vesey, like Nat Turner, Brown was supporting radical violent action against the slavers. like VC, like Gabriel, like Nat Turner cost him his life.

00:45:07 Speaker_01
But you do get those new appeals to the Bible in a variety of ways, a variety of settings throughout the antebellum era.

00:45:16 Speaker_01
As far as I know, I haven't come across any interpretations before VC of the idea of the destruction of the Canaanites in Jericho called for as a biblical mandate for revolt against enslavement.

00:45:33 Speaker_01
With the white pro-slavery folks, I think they were a bit caught off guard by the notion that one could use the Bible to critique slavery. So one of the things that caught him off guard about Vesey was that he was using the Bible.

00:45:49 Speaker_01
I think it was just a common assumption, of course, the Bible supports enslavement. We don't need to appeal to the Bible to prove it. We can just assume it's there.

00:45:57 Speaker_01
Vesey comes along and makes a case for radical action against enslavement, violent action against enslavement, based on a whole bunch of different sources, including the Bible.

00:46:10 Speaker_01
From that point on, there's a growing sort of appeals on slaveholders' part of like, we need to ground this in the Bible. And again, by the 1850s, you have an explosion of biblical support or condemnation of slavery.

00:46:25 Speaker_00
Now, before we move into the time warp, in his book, Denmark Vesey's Bible, Jeremy suggests that interpretation of the Bible continues to be relevant in our own contemporary society.

00:46:37 Speaker_00
So, Jeremy, what lessons do you think we can learn from Denmark Vesey's Bible and from Vesey's biblical interpretations? How do you think these interpretations, these biblical interpretations, are relevant in our contemporary society?

00:46:50 Speaker_01
Oh, yeah. The clearest example, of course, might be what happened with the massacre at Emmanuel Church in 2015, which was selected for a very particular reason, that that particular church would be the object of a terrorist attack.

00:47:07 Speaker_01
So I think there are repercussions in very specific ways related to VC. The church was raised after VC's execution, and then it had a fire later on, and then the attack in 2015. It's been sort of a lightning rod for a lot.

00:47:26 Speaker_01
It didn't just stop in 1822 with VC, but continued on quite a bit. There's that very specific legacy, but then also one could talk about the role that the Bible has played in civil rights movements.

00:47:39 Speaker_01
Basically, for the 100, 150 years since V.C., well into the 1960s and beyond, you could talk about the role that the Bible has played in social movements, racial movements in the U.S. for a number of years.

00:47:57 Speaker_00
Let's move into the time warp. This is a fun segment of the show where we ask you a hypothetical history question about what might have happened if something had occurred differently or if someone had acted differently.

00:48:29 Speaker_00
In your opinion, what might have happened if Denmark V.C. and his co-planners had been able to move forward with their insurrection?

00:48:36 Speaker_00
How might the history of slavery in the early United States be different if there had been a rebellion led by Denmark V.C. ?

00:48:43 Speaker_01
That's a great question, if he was able to pull it off. I think the way that we talk about the Civil War would be different. I think, for instance, the reason for the Civil War or the main reason for Civil War was slavery.

00:48:57 Speaker_01
I think the way we think of the Civil War would be radically different because what was VC doing? VC was attacking Charleston, South Carolina as a revolt against slavery.

00:49:08 Speaker_01
So even though when we talk about the timeline of the Civil War, do we start it and limit it to the 1860s? Do we stretch it back to folks like Vesey?

00:49:20 Speaker_01
If he was successful, were the first shots fired on Fort Sumter or were they fired right across the street from Fort Sumter in 1822? Then do you stretch it back to Gabriel in 1800? When exactly was the US not involved?

00:49:38 Speaker_01
If folks like VC has succeeded, if folks like Gabriel has succeeded, when does civil war start in the US in terms of how we talk about the civil war?

00:49:50 Speaker_01
A lot of times we might talk about the Civil War as, well, John Brown, his revolt was a major catalyst for the Civil War, and this was a major issue. Would we talk about V.C. in the same way? Would we talk about Nash-Turner in the same way?

00:50:03 Speaker_01
So it's an interesting question, just like how we would write our history if V.C. made us push back the timeline of the beginning of the Civil War to decades earlier than we traditionally talk about it starting.

00:50:17 Speaker_01
If it was successful, it would be considered an act of war.

00:50:20 Speaker_00
Jeremy, what aspect of history and biblical interpretations are you researching and writing about now?

00:50:25 Speaker_01
I write mostly articles on various topics, more so than like a monograph length study of a particular person or event, like in the case of E.C. I've written a few articles on how Sojourner Truth interprets the Bible.

00:50:44 Speaker_01
I've written an article on some biblical interpretation in the late 18th century in England related to how the Bible factored into anti-slavery writings there.

00:50:55 Speaker_01
I've been writing recently about racialized biblical interpretation in the 19th century has read the Song of Solomon or sometimes called the Song of Songs.

00:51:07 Speaker_00
Now, if we have more questions about Denmark Vesey and the biblical interpretations used by both Vesey and white enslavers, where's the best place to contact you?

00:51:16 Speaker_01
Probably the easiest way would be to go to the University of Toronto and look for the Department for the Study of Religion. And then you can just pull up my faculty page and it has all my contact information, email address.

00:51:32 Speaker_01
That's probably the easiest way to contact me.

00:51:35 Speaker_00
Jeremy Skipper, thank you. Thank you for taking us through Denmark V.C. 's attempted revolt and the biblical interpretations and arguments used throughout this event.

00:51:44 Speaker_01
Thank you Liz, I really enjoyed it.

00:51:46 Speaker_00
If it had been carried out, Denmark Vesey's rebellion would have been the largest slave revolt in United States history. And one of the reasons it would have been the largest rebellion was because of Vesey's use of the Bible.

00:51:58 Speaker_00
Denmark Vesey used the Bible in its Old Testament to make a number of biblical interpretations that argued against the practice of slavery and justified the execution of American enslavers for their participation in the institution.

00:52:10 Speaker_00
No doubt, Denmark Vesey was a remarkable man. As we heard Jeremy relate, Vesey won the lottery, owned his own carpentry business, and he was highly literate and lived in a major port city that saw news and information arriving daily.

00:52:24 Speaker_00
Therefore, Denmark Vesey would have heard and read about the Haitian Revolution that took place between 1791 and 1804, and how the enslaved people of Saint-Domingue rose up, overthrew their enslavers, and started a new country called Haiti.

00:52:38 Speaker_00
Fisi would have also heard the news about the growing anti-slavery and manumission movements in the northern states, and he also would have heard and read about the events and sermons of the Second Great Awakening.

00:52:48 Speaker_00
Religion was an important aspect of everyday American life and culture. Early Americans went to church, they talked about God, and many learned to read using the Bible.

00:52:57 Speaker_00
And Denmark-Vecene enslaved people were no exception, although we do have to acknowledge that sometimes Black people's ability to attend church was limited, and their ability to read and interpret the Bible was often blocked by a growing number of anti-literacy laws for enslaved people.

00:53:12 Speaker_00
Now religion played an important role in African-American communities, free and enslaved.

00:53:17 Speaker_00
And the biblical interpretations Vesey used and created that related how God thought slavery was wrong and that violence against enslavers would be justified and approved of by God because holding people in forced bondage ran counter to God's intent and ideas really resonated with the free and enslaved African-American communities and with white anti-slavery advocates.

00:53:37 Speaker_00
This resonance and agreement that God hated slavery and would support its violent overthrow enabled Vesey to build a large following for his planned rebellion in 1822. But Vesey's planned uprising never came to fruition.

00:53:50 Speaker_00
Before it could be carried out, two of Vesey's supporters turned him in to Charleston enslavers and magistrates. Naturally, enslavers also read and interpreted the Bible, and their readings and interpretations were far different from Vesey's.

00:54:03 Speaker_00
Whereas Vesey and other anti-slavery advocates used and interpreted mostly the Old Testament to decry slavery, pro-slavery advocates used the New Testament to justify slavery and demonstrate how God intended for Americans to be enslavers.

00:54:18 Speaker_00
Now what's fascinating about Jeremy's work and book, Denmark Vesey's Bible, is that we can see these differing biblical interpretations spar against each other in Denmark Vesey's trial records.

00:54:29 Speaker_00
And early Americans would continue to use and see these clashing biblical interpretations, these early American ideas, they would continue to see them clash and spar with each other up through the United States' Civil War and into the periods of Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era.

00:54:45 Speaker_00
Look for more information about Jeremy, his book, Denmark Vesey's Bible, Plus notes, links, and a transcript for everything we talked about today on the show notes page. benfranklinsworld.com slash 3-9-9.

00:54:59 Speaker_00
The best way for podcasts to find new listeners is through word of mouth support. So remember, friends tell friends about their favorite podcasts. If you enjoy Ben Franklin's World, please tell your friends and family about it.

00:55:11 Speaker_00
Production assistance for this podcast comes from Morgan McCullough. Breakmaster Cylinder composed our custom theme music. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media Podcast Network.

00:55:22 Speaker_00
To discover and listen to their other podcasts, visit airwavemedia.com. Finally, what other aspects of religion in early America or slave revolts would you like to know more about? Tell me. Liz at benfranklinsworld.com.

00:55:37 Speaker_00
Ben Franklin's World is a production of Colonial Williamsburg Innovation Studios.