On January 14, 1811, 30-year-old enslaved man Gros Lindor appeared before a six-person tribunal at Jean-Noël Destréhan’s plantation in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana. Gros was one of 24 enslaved men who testified that day at the Destréhan plantation for their parts in the massive slave rebellion that broke out on January 8 at Manuel Andry’s plantation in the adjacent St. John the Baptist Parish. The 1811 insurrection, a rebellion that historians commonly cite as the largest in United States history, sparked widespread fear among the white population in Louisiana and authorities cracked down on the rebels. In front of the six white planters who presided over the tribunal, including Gros’s owner Jean-Noël Destréhan, Gros testified that his twin brother, Petit Lindor, was “amongst the brigands when he fled from them.” Gros also testified that he saw other men marching with the rebels, but he had clearly connected his brother to the rebellion. According to trial transcripts, Petit did not even mention his brother but instead inculpated several others for participating in the insurrection. The next day both men were condemned to die. After their executions, their heads were cut off and displayed on pikes to deter other enslaved people from rebelling again. Their brotherhood had come to an end.

Whitney Plantation Memorial to 1811 German Coast Uprising.
Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Memorial at Whitney Plantation.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Memorial_at_Whitney_Plantation.jpg&oldid=518416423 (accessed September 13, 2024).

Gilbert Andry was also convicted and sentenced to die for his role in the massive rebellion in January 1811. Whereas other rebels like Gros and Petit were hanged, beheaded, and had their heads placed on pikes to remind other enslaved people the foils of insurrection, Gilbert and his family received a scintilla of reprieve. On account of good conduct by Louis Meilleur, Gilbert’s uncle who had also turned Gilbert into authorities, magistrates ordered Gilbert to be shot to death instead and his body returned to his family. Gilbert’s family lost an important member of their kin, but they were spared the humiliation and torture of seeing Gilbert’s head on a pike and watching it rot after weeks of exposure to the Louisiana weather.[1]

The people on trial for the 1811 insurrection outside New Orleans’ periphery were among as many as 500 rebels who marched through several German Coast plantations along the Mississippi River and who killed two white planters from January 8–10 before white authorities brutally suppressed the rebels. Yet as the executions of Gros, Petit, and Gilbert make clear, the consequences of the two-day-long rebellion could be felt for years in its aftermath. Black family members were forced to testify about their relatives’ involvement, and Black families were destroyed after summary executions.[2]

In the last half century, historians have begun to unpeel many of the hidden details of the United States’ most well-known and deadly enslaved rebellions and conspiracies. Rebellions were seminal events that both galvanized abolitionist radicals and entrenched the plantocracy alike. Abolitionists rallied behind rebellion and tried to find more ways to attack the chattel system. Planters, meanwhile, were determined to stamp out revolt and reinforce controls on the enslaved population. And while we now know much more about these violent episodes of resistance and how they shaped American society, there is still much to learn about how rebellion both influenced and was affected by Black communities that endeavored in it. Did charismatic leaders drive people to rebellion? Did vocational roles and social status on plantations inform insurrection? Were Africans with kinship ties that survived the Middle Passage more likely to rebel than American-born Creoles? Did the size of enslaved communities relative to the white population encourage more people to rise against their enslavers? How did families affect resistance?

An official report of the trials of sundry Negroes…. Charleston: James R. Schenck, 1822. https://www.loc.gov/item/90107205/.

In my recent JER article, “A Family Affair: Black Family Networks and the 1822 Vesey Conspiracy,” I examine the family lives of alleged conspirators involved in another well-known incident of slave rebelliousness in U.S. history: the infamous plot that Denmark Vesey led in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1822. When we look closer at Black family networks, we see how important kinship ties were to mobilize rebellion. Conspirators could, and did, use their family relationships to pass along information about rebellion. They used their relationships as alibis to avoid white suspicion and detection. They sometimes relied on their connections and their commitment to each other to reinforce their commitment to insurrection. Conspiring together could also reinforce their family bonds. On the other hand, rebellion and conspiracy could also strain relationships as husbands and wives, parents and children, siblings, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, were all confronted with filial power dynamics that changed when one family member became enmeshed in the violent quest for freedom. Trials also tested these relationships as authorities looked to turn family member against family member.

Summary executions or criminal transportation destroyed these relationships altogether. In Charleston in 1822, as was the case for so many other slave rebellions throughout the Atlantic world, resistance to the chattel system was a family affair.

Endnotes

[1] The Territory of Orleans vs. Gilbert, the Slave of Mr Andry, Inventory of Criminal Cases tried by Orleans County and City Courts January 21, 1811 (1807–1812), Case No. 193, New Orleans Public Library.

[2] Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America’s Largest Slave Revolt (New York, 2011), 2.