Slave Resistance: From Armed Revolt to Spirituals
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Risking psychological, physical abuse, and even death, slaves
fought back against their owners and the institution of slavery in
both individual and coordinated efforts. Resistance of the enslaved
took many forms, the most obvious being armed revolt. One of the
most well-known examples of an uprising occurred in 1839, when
Joseph Cinquè led an insurrection of 39 captured Africans on the
schooner La Amistad. Other notable uprisings include John
Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry and Nat Turner’s Rebellion.
Most examples of slave rebellion, however, were not so dramatic
or definitive. Many slaves resisted the everyday violence of slavery
through ordinary means: they destroyed tools and property, feigned
illness, participated in work stoppages, stole food from their
owners, committed suicide and infanticide, and finally, ran away
(Rivers 11-12).
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But perhaps the subtlest expression of defiance occurred through
song. During the slave era, the Spiritual, one of America’s most
unique and classical music forms, was created. While the music
has deep religious meaning, it also served non-religious purposes
in the life of the African American slave community. Due to the
many laws forbidding the teaching of slaves to read and write, the
slaves utilized their music to reveal their hopes, desires,
aspirations, and struggle as slaves. Furthermore, the songs enabled
slaves to refute their master’s degrading ideas of them and create
their own sense of self-definition (Sanger).
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Print of Joseph Cinquè, leader of the Amistad Revolt in 1839.
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The Supreme Court decision of the Amistad Case, 1841.
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Cover to sheet music “The Fugitive’s Song” picturing Frederick Douglass, 1845.
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Slave Resistance: From Armed Revolt to Spirituals
Credits:
Osagie, Iyunolu Folayan. The Amistad Revolt: Memory, Slavery, and the Politics of Identity.
Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000.
Rivers, Larry Eugene. Rebels and Runaways: Slave Resistance in Nineteenth Century Florida.
Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2012.
Sanger, Kerran L. “Slave Resistance and Rhetorical Self-Definition: Spirituals as Strategy.”
Western Journal of Communication 59.3 (1995): 177-192.
Michigan Grade Level Content Expectations:
8-U5.1.5 -- Describe the resistance of enslaved people and effects of their actions before and
during the Civil War.
Questions:
1. What were the implications of the decision on the Amistad case?
2. Why was it possible to outlaw the slave trade while slavery itself was still legal?
3. Why is it important to take into account different forms of resistance?
4. What does Douglass seem to be saying about the ability of song to express defiance?
Links to Internet Websites
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/amistad/amistd.htm
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/experience/education/feature.html
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Slave Resistance: From Armed Revolt to Spirituals
Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-31280
In 1839, Cinquè broke free and led a mutiny on the schooner Le Amistad, killing most of the
crew and directing the two survivors to return them to Africa. Later captured by U.S. maritime
law, thirty-nine Mende men and women were imprisoned in New Haven under charges of
murder and piracy (Osagie 7).
This portrait of Joseph Cinquè was completed while he awaited trial. The text quotes Cinquè’s
speech to his fellow mutineers: “Brothers, we have done that which we purposed, our hands are
now clean for we have Striven to regain the precious heritage we received from our fathers. . . . I
am resolved it is better to die than to be a white man's slave.”
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Slave Resistance: From Armed Revolt to Spirituals
Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, mssmisc ody0127
At the time that the African men and women on the Amistad were captured and transported, the
international slave trade had already been outlawed. After a federal district court hearing, the
case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, with the defendants being represented by former
president John Quincy Adams. The Supreme Court ruled in their favor, stating that it was the
Africans’ right to resist “unlawful” slavery, and released them to their home in Sierra Leone.
This image shows the Court’s decision on the case, which reads: “It is plain beyond controversy,
if we examine the evidence, that these negroes never were the lawful slaves of Ruiz or Montez,
or of any other Spanish subjects. They are natives of Africa, and were kidnapped there, and were
unlawfully transported to Cuba, in violation of the laws and treaties of Spain, and the most
solemn edicts and declarations of that government. By those laws, and treaties, and edicts, the
African slave trade is utterly abolished; the dealing in that trade is deemed a heinous crime; and
the negroes thereby introduced into the dominions of Spain, are declared to be free.”
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Slave Resistance: From Armed Revolt to Spirituals
Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-7823
This sheet music cover from 1845 highlights the relationship between music and resistance.
Although slaveholders often referred to slave songs as proof of slaves’ contentedness, these
songs actually testified to a much different reality. As a unique method of expression and
communication, slave songs were a form of protest: they gave voice to sorrow and helped slaves
establish their own sense of self and community independent of their masters.
An often-quoted passage from the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass reads: “I did not,
when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs. I was
myself within the circle; so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear.
They told a tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were
tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the
bitterest anguish. Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for
deliverance from chains. The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled
me with ineffable sadness” (Douglass).
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