Amid the rainstorm, Charles shouted orders to his fellow slaves. They assembled in the clover field in front of Andry’s plantation, falling into line behind Charles, who was now mounted on horseback. They were familiar with military discipline: their work on Andry’s sugar plantation had taught them to follow orders with alacrity. But now they were motivated not by fear of the lash, but by the hope of freedom. They were forty-one miles from the gates of New Orleans, which they hoped to conquer in two days’ time. Asked later why he had left the Andry plantation that night, the rebel Jupiter replied that he wanted to go to the city to kill whites.
Charles and his men began to march. Charles shouted, “On to New Orleans!” and the newly formed rebel army shouted it right back. The revolt had begun. As the twenty-five rebels gathered guns, knives, and horses on the Andry plantation, rumors of the insurrection’s inception flashed like lightning through the German Coast. In those dark early-morning moments, the slave quarters for miles around erupted. Slaves ran from door to door, whispering the news, and small conferences gathered in tight quarters as men and women weighed their options: to risk death and join Charles and his men or stay behind in safety.
Charles and his fellow leaders had planted the seeds for the revolt well over the past few months. In cautious conversations on the edges of the sugar fields, in the Spanish taverns along the levees, and at the weekly Sunday dances, Charles had built a strong organization. Inspired by the stories of the Haitian revolution and flush with the philosophies of the French Revolution, the diverse band of slaves that joined insurrectionary cells believed they could secure freedom, equality, and independence through violent rebellion. As the heads of the whites rolled through the streets, they could form a new republic—a black outpost on the Mississippi, guaranteed by force.
Armed with plantation tools and primed by revolutionary ideals, roughly one-quarter of the slaves on the plantations along the River Road gathered on the levee to meet the marching rebels and join the insurrection. In those predawn hours, the slaves shivered with cold and anticipation, the rain soaking their cotton clothes. In military formation, the slaves marched along completely flat land on a well-trodden road toward New Orleans.
To the right, the rough waters of the Mississippi surged by past the four-foot-high levees. To their left stood the plantation mansions. Live oaks, trimmed to regular shapes, young orange trees, deciduous Pride of China trees with bursting yellow flowers, and other tropical trees and bushes decorated the plantation lawns. Side roads marked by avenues of laurel trees cut into pyramids led to the mansion houses that adorned each plantation. Behind the mostly two-story-high mansions, with their piazzas and covered galleries, stood the slave cabins—and behind the slave cabins, the sugar fields stretched for a mile before finally giving way to the marshy cypress swamps.
In front of them lay the road they would take on the two-day journey to the city gates. Wooden bridges covered the worst spots, the ditches that provided irrigation for the fields. But in many places the road was almost knee-deep in mud. As the road wound its way toward New Orleans, it passed dozens of plantations in quick succession.
The rainstorm could not drown out the feelings of pride and power the rebels felt as they looked in front and back of them and saw the ranks of the committed swell. The beating of an African drum keyed the men to excitement. About five miles down the road, as they rounded another turn of the Mississippi River, the rebel army saw a heartening sight through the fields where only a month before sugar cane had stood higher than a man’s head. A group of ten slaves stood under the tall oaks fronting the plantation of the local judge, Achille Trouard. The slave Mathurin now sat on one of Trouard’s horses, commanding a group of about ten slaves. Waving his saber in the air, Mathurin pledged his troops to Charles’s cause. The two leaders formed the heart of the incipient cavalry—leaders on horseback that would snowball into a full-blown troop as the men proceeded closer to New Orleans.
Over the sound of the horses’ hoofs, Mathurin shouted some bad news. Achille Trouard, his master, had heard about the revolt before he and his men could attack. Led by a loyal house slave, Trouard and his two nieces had fled into the swamps to hide. The rebels had made their first moves, but they were not the only players.
* * *
The slave Pierre awoke Alexandre Labranche around dawn, not to kill him, but to save his life. Another slave, François, rushed in a few moments later, advising Labranche to “flee immediately into the woods back of [the] farm.”
François had heard about the revolt just as many newly minted insurgents had—through the grapevine telegraph of news and information that coursed through the slave quarters. But François had made a different calculus from his more hot-headed comrades. He chose to betray the revolt, most likely not for any love of the planters or of being a slave, but out of pragmatism. All the odds were against the slave-rebels, and François knew well that his best chance of survival amid the brutal work of sugar planting came from siding with the powerful and pledging allegiance to the white men who controlled the entire world as he knew it, from the slave ships that picked him up in Africa to the great city of New Orleans to the small worlds of the plantations.
François was not alone. The majority of slaves chose not to fight. All knew that the clearest path to freedom was not to join a revolution but to betray one; the planters had made that much clear. In the face of such might, most slaves decided that rebelling was simply not worth the cause, and some sought to profit by betraying the rebels they believed were making a foolish and wrongheaded decision. So François chose to tell his master, Alexandre Labranche—a decision that might even mean the reward of freedom if Labranche survived.
In a panic, Labranche awoke his wife and children and gathered a few key possessions—a musket, some warm clothes, and a few biscuits. Then they hurried downstairs to meet François. Casting backward glances to the levee and the River Road, François and the Labranches hurried through the fields toward the cypress swamps, and the dark trees that would hide them until the revolt had passed. The planter family and their black guide fled in terror along paths first blazed by escaping slaves.
Other planters did the same. In what one planter described as a “torrent of rain and the frigid cold,” the white elite of the German Coast flew on horseback to New Orleans, concealed themselves in the swamps, or took boats to the other side of the river where order still prevailed. Hermogène Labranche (Alexandre’s brother) and his family holed up in the woods until the slave-rebels passed. They then took a boat to the other side of the river. Adelard Fortier escaped to New Orleans. As they left their plantations, the planters handed over authority to black slaves they trusted to be loyal—ordering these men to guard their mansions and prevent the slave army from wreaking destruction on their stockpiles of sugar.
* * *
The planters’ decisions to flee emboldened the rebels. The slaves were not used to seeing black men using violence to control white men—and the effect was intoxicating. “Freedom or death,” they shouted. Impressed slaves rallied to the rebel flags.
Nowhere was this new-felt power more evident than on the plantation of James Brown, only a few miles southeast along the river from the Andry plantation. Here the Akan warriors Kook and Quamana watched as their master mounted his horse and spurred it along the road toward New Orleans. As his figure vanished into the rain and mist, Kook and Quamana must have spoken of a government of black men, the execution of the white planter class, and the impact their weapons would have on the Mississippi River colony of New Orleans. This was not the first time these slaves had heard such talk, but Brown’s departure reassured the wavering that this might be their great opportunity to finally realize what only days before had seemed to be mere wild dreams.
Inspired by Kook’s and Quamana’s silver tongues and fiery passion, half of James Brown’s slaves chose to join the seventy-five rebels who arrived soon after their master’s departure. Kook, Quamana, and their men formed a new, more
radical core to the slave insurgency. At over six feet tall, with the etchings of an Akan warrior inscribed in his face, Kook towered above his fellow slaves. At the time, the average height of African males was 5 feet 3 1/2 inches, so Kook must have stood out as a giant. His rippling biceps, swollen from years of swinging a machete in the cane fields, made him a force to be reckoned with. He commanded easy and instant respect, even among the most hardened and rebellious slaves.
The slaves on the Brown plantation would have known Kook and Quamana both for their Asante heritage and their political fervor. In 1806, the same year Kook and Quamana were sold into slavery, the Danish governor of the region wrote, “The Assianthes, with sword and fire murder and destroy everything they meet with . . . A great battle was lost in the ninth of this month, at which four towns were laid in ashes and many thousands of people, not shot in battle, but murdered in cold blood.” Perhaps Kook and Quamana told their fellow slaves of these great battles, assuring them that New Orleans would soon burn like the defeated towns of subdued African tribes.
With the addition of Kook and Quamana’s detachment of Akan warriors, the slave army now numbered well over a hundred men. Beating drums and shouting with the joy of freedom, they urged each other on. They were a motley crew. Drawn in small groups from over a dozen plantations, the slave army boasted men from Virginia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Cuba, Senegambia, the Asante kingdom, and Kongo. Eleven separate leaders rode on horseback, each representing a different ethnic faction: the Muslim Senegambians, the Akans, the Sierra Leonians, the French Louisianans, and the Anglo-Americans were all involved.
With the evacuation of most white planters, the slaves had met few serious tests of their resolve. Charles and his fellow leaders must have worried that when faced with armed white men, their army might melt away. They must have hoped the uniforms, the disciplined regiments, the flags, and the drums would add confidence, but they were in uncharted waters.
The slave army had another problem as well—continuing betrayals. The slave Dominique, who belonged to Bernard Bernoudy, was staying at the Trépagnier estate with his wife. Hearing of the revolt from slaves who lived near his wife, he saw an opportunity to enhance his own status among the planters. Dominique rushed to tell François Trépagnier that “there was a large number of rebel slaves moving down the river, pillaging the farms and killing whites.” After warning Trépagnier, Dominique departed, ostensibly to warn Bernard Bernoudy of the impending danger. On his way to Bernoudy’s plantation, Dominique passed through the plantations of Delhommes Rilleaux, James Brown, Pierre Pain, and Alexandre Labranche, where he passed the word directly or through enslaved intermediaries. When Dominique arrived back at Bernard Bernoudy’s plantation, Bernoudy sent Dominique to New Orleans, who alerted whites along the way. Most would choose to flee.
But despite Dominique’s warning, François Trépagnier made the decision to stand his ground in the face of men he considered little better than canines. His contempt for his slaves was well known. Local legend had it that he kept a slave boy named Gustave as a house pet. As Trépagnier ate, he would toss food from the table onto the floor, where Gustave would pick it up and eat it. Other men had dogs, went the story, but Trépagnier had a black child.
Trépagnier did not think the slave-rebels would pose much of a threat. His wife and children begged him to accompany them into the swamps to hide, but he refused. Sending them off, he resolutely loaded his fowling pieces with buckshot. Amid the bitter chill of January rain, he locked his doors and took up a position on the second-floor gallery. There he waited for the slaves to arrive.
Trépagnier did not have to wait long. In the morning light, he could see the smoke from four or five burning plantations curling into the sky. He could hear the ominous beat of the African drums, pounding and pounding. But Trépagnier was not afraid. He had heard similar drums at slave dances, and he imagined he would be more than a match for a ragtag band of slaves. Quickened by the shouts and calls of the rebels, Trépagnier did not expect to see what he saw next.
Around the bend of the levee came a veritable army. Divided into companies, each under an officer, black men in militia uniforms advanced toward his plantation. Marching along the levee, they shook their fists and their weapons in the air. At the sight of the slaves, Trépagnier leveled his double-barreled gun and began to fire. The smoke of his weapon engulfed the second-floor gallery that skirted his mansion. Buckshot was notoriously inaccurate, and the smoke obscured the shooter’s visibility. But Trépagnier hoped the slaves would be intimidated by his presence and turn back.
Trépagnier’s estimation of the slaves’ strength and his decision to stay behind proved dead wrong. Kook led a party behind the plantation house, up to the second story. As other slaves lit fire to the foundations, Kook took his axe and hacked François Trépagnier to pieces. Local legend has it that Gustave too swung an axe, exacting final vengeance for years of patronizing mistreatment.
The rebel army had passed its first test. They had annihilated one of the most hated men on the German Coast. But Charles and Kook and all the others knew they needed more blood to baptize their incipient revolution. The slave army knew that the obstacles remained extreme. The leaders of the revolt knew the stories of prior acts of resistance—and their consequences. They knew what was at stake. No white man, no American official, no French planter, would brook the survival of a black army anywhere near white power centers. Slavery was too intertwined with the political economy of the Atlantic world to allow for any sort of black political existence.
Only through extermination and extreme violence could they earn the right to form a separate political community—to be recognized as men rather than slaves. Violence was simply the price they had to pay for freedom, and Gilbert Andry and François Trépagnier were the down payment.
Charles, Kook, Quamana, and their compatriots hoped that their swelling army would grow exponentially as they neared the dense and rich plantation zone right around New Orleans, and their aim was to conquer the city from the weak American military force there, forming a base to which slaves from far and near could flock. Inspired by the Haitians’ victory over Napoleon’s army, the rebel leaders were not unreasonable in imagining that they could defeat the Americans’ small colonial army.
They had driven their masters into hiding and thrown down a bloody gauntlet to the authority of the sugar masters, burning down several sugar plantations. Now, with an army several hundred strong and buoyed by victory, the slaves continued their march toward New Orleans. As the sun began to light up the fields from behind the storm clouds, a fearsome rebel army stood just outside the most densely populated plantation region in North America. In just a few miles, the slaves would arrive at the Red Church, then the Destrehan plantation, and then the new American plantations erected just outside of the city, with their huge populations of recently purchased Africans. Fear, rage, and violation lay as deep as the January mud, and the clash between the incipient forces loomed imminent on the horizon.
January 9, 1811
Chapter Nine
A City in Chaos
Morning came slowly in the city. In a driving rain, the sun could only slowly illuminate the dirt streets and brick sidewalks of New Orleans on the morning of January 9. The white spires of the cathedral and tall masts of the ships crowding the harbor topped the center of the city. In the dense neighborhood around the Place d’Armes, small brick houses two or three stories high clustered about grand old Spanish houses. Once a palisade and a ditch ran around the center of the city, forming a parallelogram with the river. Four redoubts stood at the corners to protect the city’s inhabitants—though all but the fort at the entrance of Faubourg Marigny had since been demolished. Since the American acquisition, the ditch had been filled up and planted with trees, leaving a ring of open space between the city and the suburbs. A boulevard called Rue de Rampart ran where the ancient town wall used to stand. Parallel to the river, roads lined with reflecting lamps passed from the center of the c
ity out toward the plantation zone to the northeast. Here the old houses of the present-day Garden District gave way slowly and almost indistinguishably to the rich sugar plantations of the German Coast.
The black slaves of New Orleans were the first to arise on January 9. As their masters slept, the slaves began preparing for the day: readying the horses, lighting the fires, and cleaning the houses. Slaves formed the great underclass of the city, serving as laundrywomen, delivery boys, cleaners, construction workers, carriage drivers, cooks, peddlers, stevedores, boatmen, and manual laborers of all sorts. Slaves walked hurriedly along the city’s brick sidewalks. The rain had washed out the roads, leaving prodigious quantities of mud and large puddles where hard-packed dirt usually lay. In crossing these watery streets, the slaves faced a difficult task. They could either search for stones properly placed for jumping or risk sticking fast in the mud as they waded from one side to the other. Few of these early risers knew just what the day ahead would hold.
* * *
The military scouts at the western gates of the city were the first to hear the news. The warning came from galloping horsemen who notified the garrison of the revolt. But they could not say how close the slaves might be or just what was unfolding. Within hours, fleeing refugees in carts and carriages crowded the road into the city, forming a traffic jam nine miles long.
American Uprising Page 8