Amy H. Sturgis: Rediscovering the most successful slave revolt in American history
[Amy H. Sturgis (amyhsturgis.com) teaches Native American studies at Belmont University and is a member of the Scholarly Board of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. Her newest book is The Trail of Tears and Indian Removal (Greenwood Press).]
John Horse's story feels like an answer to every Hollywood studio's wish list: a mix of Spartacus, Braveheart, Amistad, and Glory, with just a pinch of Dances With Wolves. A sweeping tale of a decades-long struggle against oppression, the movie would show how Horse and the Black Seminoles created the largest haven for runaway slaves in the American South, led the biggest slave revolt in U.S. history, won the only emancipation of rebellious North American slaves before the Civil War, and formed the largest mass exodus of slaves in U.S. history. In the 1830s Horse's people journeyed from the Florida Everglades to what is now Oklahoma and then across the border to Mexico, where they ultimately secured title to their own land.
What is perhaps most amazing about this story is how it has been overlooked so consistently, not just by filmmakers and popular audiences but by almost every historian of slavery. Now a nonprofessional historian--J.B. Bird, an administrator at the University of Texas--has written and produced an engrossing multimedia Web documentary, Rebellion: John Horse and the Black Seminoles, the First Black Rebels to Beat American Slavery. (To see it for yourself, go to johnhorse.com.) In the process, Bird has illustrated not just an important part of the American past but also one of the ways cyberspace is changing how history is studied and taught.
Bird's narrative begins in Spanish Florida in the early 18th century, when two groups fled from the colonial South: Seminoles migrating from Alabama and Georgia to escape white encroachment and blacks fleeing the bonds of slavery. Both were welcome in Florida. The escaped slaves, in fact, were offered their freedom if they would defend the Spanish crown. Both the Catholic Church and Spanish law treated slavery as an unnatural condition, and both recognized blacks and American Indians as human beings (if not equals). More practically, offering sanctuary to English slaves created a human buffer zone and a free fighting force against the British colonists.
The mixed society that emerged in Florida produced "maroons" or "Indian negroes"--today known as Black Seminoles, people of Seminole cultural traditions and full or partial African descent. Mose, north of St. Augustine, was soon established as "the first legally sanctioned free black town in North America."
By the start of the American Revolution, Great Britain controlled Florida. The Seminoles and blacks living there overwhelmingly sided with the British during the conflict, as they had no love for the colonists who had dispossessed and enslaved them. At the end of the war, the Treaty of Versailles returned Florida to Spanish rule in 1783.
The Southern states did not rest easily with free and armed blacks living nearby and welcoming runaway slaves--especially since those communities were allied with thousands of equally free and armed Indians. From George Washington onward, presidents tried to deal with the "problem." In 1818, during the Monroe administration, Gen. Andrew Jackson invaded Florida, ostensibly to pursue justice against those who had attacked Fort Scott in Georgia. In the process he seized the peninsula for the United States, executing those who opposed him and "cleaning out" many Seminole and Black Seminole villages to make Florida more suitable for annexation. The United States formally purchased the peninsula from Spain the following year.
When Jackson became president, he decided to drive the remaining communities out of Florida by force. The result was the Second Seminole War (1835-1842), the largest and most costly of the Indian Wars.
By this time, 45 percent of Florida's population was enslaved. Not surprisingly, given the close links between the territory's black and Indian populations, the Seminole struggle spawned a slave revolt. As Bird explains, "Maroon warriors and plantation slaves played integral roles in the uprising. By April of 1836, the Black Seminoles and their Indian allies had sparked the largest slave rebellion in U.S. history, as more than 385 plantation slaves fled their masters and joined in the wholesale destruction of Florida's sugar mills--at the time some of the most valuable plantations in all of North America." One Seminole leader at this time was the legendary chief Osceola, who drew much of his support from the Black Seminoles and was reputed to have a black wife. During the war, another leader emerged: the former slave John Horse, half black and half Indian, who was destined to lead the Black Seminoles on a long, complex exodus in pursuit of freedom....
Read entire article at Reason.com
John Horse's story feels like an answer to every Hollywood studio's wish list: a mix of Spartacus, Braveheart, Amistad, and Glory, with just a pinch of Dances With Wolves. A sweeping tale of a decades-long struggle against oppression, the movie would show how Horse and the Black Seminoles created the largest haven for runaway slaves in the American South, led the biggest slave revolt in U.S. history, won the only emancipation of rebellious North American slaves before the Civil War, and formed the largest mass exodus of slaves in U.S. history. In the 1830s Horse's people journeyed from the Florida Everglades to what is now Oklahoma and then across the border to Mexico, where they ultimately secured title to their own land.
What is perhaps most amazing about this story is how it has been overlooked so consistently, not just by filmmakers and popular audiences but by almost every historian of slavery. Now a nonprofessional historian--J.B. Bird, an administrator at the University of Texas--has written and produced an engrossing multimedia Web documentary, Rebellion: John Horse and the Black Seminoles, the First Black Rebels to Beat American Slavery. (To see it for yourself, go to johnhorse.com.) In the process, Bird has illustrated not just an important part of the American past but also one of the ways cyberspace is changing how history is studied and taught.
Bird's narrative begins in Spanish Florida in the early 18th century, when two groups fled from the colonial South: Seminoles migrating from Alabama and Georgia to escape white encroachment and blacks fleeing the bonds of slavery. Both were welcome in Florida. The escaped slaves, in fact, were offered their freedom if they would defend the Spanish crown. Both the Catholic Church and Spanish law treated slavery as an unnatural condition, and both recognized blacks and American Indians as human beings (if not equals). More practically, offering sanctuary to English slaves created a human buffer zone and a free fighting force against the British colonists.
The mixed society that emerged in Florida produced "maroons" or "Indian negroes"--today known as Black Seminoles, people of Seminole cultural traditions and full or partial African descent. Mose, north of St. Augustine, was soon established as "the first legally sanctioned free black town in North America."
By the start of the American Revolution, Great Britain controlled Florida. The Seminoles and blacks living there overwhelmingly sided with the British during the conflict, as they had no love for the colonists who had dispossessed and enslaved them. At the end of the war, the Treaty of Versailles returned Florida to Spanish rule in 1783.
The Southern states did not rest easily with free and armed blacks living nearby and welcoming runaway slaves--especially since those communities were allied with thousands of equally free and armed Indians. From George Washington onward, presidents tried to deal with the "problem." In 1818, during the Monroe administration, Gen. Andrew Jackson invaded Florida, ostensibly to pursue justice against those who had attacked Fort Scott in Georgia. In the process he seized the peninsula for the United States, executing those who opposed him and "cleaning out" many Seminole and Black Seminole villages to make Florida more suitable for annexation. The United States formally purchased the peninsula from Spain the following year.
When Jackson became president, he decided to drive the remaining communities out of Florida by force. The result was the Second Seminole War (1835-1842), the largest and most costly of the Indian Wars.
By this time, 45 percent of Florida's population was enslaved. Not surprisingly, given the close links between the territory's black and Indian populations, the Seminole struggle spawned a slave revolt. As Bird explains, "Maroon warriors and plantation slaves played integral roles in the uprising. By April of 1836, the Black Seminoles and their Indian allies had sparked the largest slave rebellion in U.S. history, as more than 385 plantation slaves fled their masters and joined in the wholesale destruction of Florida's sugar mills--at the time some of the most valuable plantations in all of North America." One Seminole leader at this time was the legendary chief Osceola, who drew much of his support from the Black Seminoles and was reputed to have a black wife. During the war, another leader emerged: the former slave John Horse, half black and half Indian, who was destined to lead the Black Seminoles on a long, complex exodus in pursuit of freedom....