The Denmark Vesey Affair: A Documentary History

A vast collection of documents that illuminate one of the most

sophisticated acts of collective slave resistance in the history of the U.S.

In

1822, thirty-four slaves and their leader, a free black man named Denmark

Vesey, were tried and executed for "attempting to raise an

insurrection" in Charleston, South Carolina. In The Denmark Vesey Affair,

Douglas Egerton and Robert Paquette annotate and interpret a vast collection of

contemporary documents that illuminate and contextualize this complicated saga,

providing the definitive account of a landmark event that played a role in the

nation’s path to Civil War. The editors ultimately argue that the Vesey plot

was one of the most sophisticated acts of collective slave resistance in the

history of the United States.

A volume in the series Southern Dissent, edited by Stanley Harrold and Randall

M. Miller



Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining

the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National

Endowment for the Humanities.