The Denmark Vesey Affair

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.