Analysis: Letter from Governor Bull Regarding the Stono Rebellion, October 1739

Date: October 5, 1739

Author: Bull, William

Genre: letter

Summary Overview

South Carolina Lieutenant Governor William Bull’s letter to the British Royal Council stands as the only surviving eyewitness account of the events surrounding the 1739 Stono Rebellion, the largest slave uprising in the British North American colonies. The revolt failed to win freedom for its participants and resulted in the deaths of more than sixty people—mostly enslaved Africans. It fed white colonial fears about the possibility of significant violent resistance by the people they kept as chattel. Modern historians agree that the scope of the Stono Rebellion itself paled in comparison to the long-term effects on white and black Americans alike.

Bull’s status as a firsthand witness was accidental. Traveling back to Charles Town in the South Carolina colony (now Charleston),he and a small group of companions encountered the rebels on the road. Several weeks later, Bull recounted his group’s flight, told of later efforts to crush the rebellion, and suggested further military steps to prevent similar rebellions.

Document Analysis

William Bull’s letter to the British Royal Council remains the sole and thus by default most important surviving eyewitness account of the 1739 Stono Rebellion. This uprising rocked South Carolina and reshaped race relations in the southeastern colonies for decades to come. Although this letter is supplemented by contemporary accounts written by people living in the region who experienced the events tangentially, the overall scarcity of primary sources—including a complete lack of representation of the enslaved rebels themselves—means that the historian must carefully consider both what Bull does and does not say in order to gain a fuller understanding of this event and its ramifications. Bull’s words and objective tone suggest a certain finality to the incident that presumably served to place him in a positive light but did not always reflect reality. Indeed, Bull’s brevity of description belies the scope of the rebellion that actually took place.

Considerable time passed between the dramatic events of the Stono uprising on September 9 and the composition of Bull’s letter on October 5. This letter had the dual purpose of informing the authorities who ultimately controlled the colony of the dramatic events that had taken place and, presumably, of placing Bull’s own involvement in the affair in the best possible light. Some historians have speculated that this latter goal kept Bull from providing a fuller report of the matter. The drive to protect his reputation as an effective governor able to keep peace within the colony may also have deterred Bull from discussing the true extent to which the rebels remained at large at the time of the letter’s composition. It has been noted that Bull had the time to perform his own investigation of the uprising by questioning planters and slaves and to consider the place of Stono in a larger colonial context. Yet the letter does not suggest that Bull did this, preferring—as might be expected—to serve his own interests by emphasizing mostly in his letter that the affair had been dealt with.

To open his discussion of the Stono uprising, Bull points a firm finger at Spain and the Spanish king’s promise of freedom to any slave who escaped from the English colonies to Spanish Florida. Before the growing conflicts between Spain and England, Spain had habitually returned escaped slaves form Spanish Florida to the English colonies. However, once England had declared war on Spain, Spanish Florida became a safe haven for fugitive slaves.

By May of 1739, the declaration had incited enough slaves to attempt escape that the English colonial government considered it a problem; a successful escape effort by a small group of slaves who had worked as cattle hunters and thus were especially familiar with the land caused great concern among slaveholders that April. Two runaways from the group were captured and publicly punished—one whipped and the other executed—but colonial authorities felt that stronger measures were needed to keep other slaves from attempting similar escapes.

Fears of slave insurrections and desertions grew among white South Carolinians through 1739. Bull had written to the Crown that the minority white colonists were afraid that the black majority population would rise up and overthrow them, and believed that the colonial government would be unable to withstand a concerted effort to achieve that end. Based on Bull’s comment that “several parties have deserted…[and] many attempts of others have been discovered and prevented,” were very real. The Spanish decision to grant freedom to British slaves bolstered by stories of successful escapes made liberty for those enslaved persons living within a reasonable distance of the border a real possibility. Bull thus connects the Stono Rebellion to the ongoing issue of slave desertions to St. Augustine, in Spanish Florida.

Next, Bull succinctly sums up the outbreak of the rebellion on September 9 by stating that the participants “broke open a store where they got arms killed twenty one White Persons and were marching in a daring manner out of the Province killing all they met and burning the Houses of the Road through which they passed,” but this short description fails in several respects. A rebellion of the size and scope of the Stono Rebellion seems unlikely to have been conceived and executed on the spot, implying that the rebels saw September 9 as an auspicious time to launch their uprising.

Unlike Bull—who placed the blame exclusively on the attraction of St. Augustine and freedom without consideration for the reason why the event happened precisely when it did—historians have suggested several possible factors contributing to the outbreak of the rebellion on September 9. Among these causes is the Spanish decision to assure liberty to escaped slaves, which had contributed to runaway attempts for several months previously. In addition, however, historians have pointed to potential factors closer to home. In August, word had spread of the Security Act, requiring white men to carry weapons with them to Sunday church services. The period when white masters attended church had long afforded slaves an opportunity to gather unsupervised, and—as the Stono uprising broke out during a time when planters were at church—it is possible that its organizers hoped to improve their chances of success by making their attempt before the law became effective later in September. Late summer also brought a deadly outbreak of yellow fever to Charleston, and illness interfered with the city’s day-to-day business, closing schools and newspapers and even greatly delaying a meeting of the colonial legislature. Finally, news of the recent declaration of war between Britain and Spain had reached the colony the week preceding the outbreak, possibly serving as an immediate incentive to set plans for the escape attempt in motion as the rebels believed Spanish Florida would certainly welcome their group.

Bull’s account does cover the essential facts of the beginning of the rebellion, but leaves out some illuminating details found in other contemporary sources that were almost certainly known to the lieutenant governor. An account of the rebellion written by an unknown author in Georgia at about the same time offers an interesting comparison. Bull’s letter generalizes the group of rebels at the outset as “a Great Number,” while the Georgia account numbers the participants more specifically as twenty. This account also provides the name of the group’s leader, Jemmy; still other reports give it as Cato, but most historians agree that the former name is more accurate. According to the Georgia report, the twenty rebels had to overcome just two men at the weapons shop in order to collect the arms and gunpowder kept there. Bull’s letter, however, does not point out this great imbalance between black rebels and white shopkeepers; perhaps the lieutenant governor saw this detail as unimportant, or perhaps he believed leaving the specifics out allowed the reader to imagine a large and more powerful force of rebels more obviously unable to be easily put down by colonial forces.

The Georgia account also notes the rebels did not, in fact, kill every white person they encountered, in contrast to Bull’s assertion that the group killed “all they met.” Instead, the Georgia author specifically comments that the rebels bypassed the tavern belonging to a Mr. Wallace, because he treated his slaves well. This suggests that the white observers killed by the rebels were in large part the opposite, although the group murdered family members and passers-by alike. As the rebels passed from place to place, the group grew; some slaves joined willingly, but others had to be coerced so that none remained to sound the alarm. The trail of destruction traveled along the Pons Pons Road, which connected South Carolina with the rebels’ presumed destination of St. Augustine.

Bull himself enters the story at this point, coincidentally riding along the Pons Pons Road toward Charleston from Granville County, where a court session had taken place. He notes that at about eleven in the morning his group encountered the Stono rebels, whose numbers had grown to an estimated sixty participants by this time. Armed with stolen weapons, beating on drums in what historians have associated with traditional African military practices, and bearing a military-style standard, the group must certainly have been intimidating. Bull and his companions quickly grasped the significance of what they saw coming up the road toward them, and by virtue of their relative speed on horseback—in contrast to that of the slave band on foot—managed to escape unharmed.

Presumably surprised and perhaps terrified by the shouting, drumming group coming toward them—the very type of insurrection that the white South Carolinians feared—Bull and his companions, as he put it, “discerned the danger time enough to avoid it;” in other words, they fled the scene as quickly as they could. Although Bull strongly implies that he was the person who alerted the militia of the situation and directed it to the rebels, this seems unsupported by fact. Another member of Bull’s party was the one who performed this duty; Bull himself, despite his previous military experience and his duty under his colonial post as the commanding officer of the militia, does not seem to have directly engaged the rebels. The possibility of being perceived as a coward—or even worse, a man unable to meet the responsibility of his job—may have led Bull to retell the events of the afternoon, although very briefly. He may have hoped that the king would fail to notice the absence of details or even assume that his personal modesty prevented him from speaking too highly of his deeds.

Even without the leadership of their formal commanding officer, however, the militia did its job effectively. By late afternoon, the rebels had covered several miles on the Pons Pons Road and decided to stop for a rest. The group made no secret of their location, perhaps hoping to attract more slaves looking to escape to freedom and thus bolster their numbers, which by then may have approached one hundred. About five hours after Bull and his party first encountered the rebels, a colonial force estimated to be as high as one hundred strong took the relaxing escapees by surprise at their camp. Other contemporary sources assert that the slaves mounted a respectable defense, firing their arms twice but achieving little against the stronger militia. However, Bull, who does not seem to have been directly involved, is silent on this count. One solid volley from the militia decimated the rebel group, and the white colonists moved in quickly to surround and neutralize much of the remaining body. Bull notes that forty-four rebels were either killed in the fighting or executed soon afterward, acknowledging in more general terms that some of the participants in the uprising had escaped the militia.

Bull plays down these rebellious holdouts, noting simply that “some few yet remain concealed . . . and expecting the same fate seem desperate.” As might be expected from someone trying to assure his superior that he has the situation well in hand, Bull does not mention, as the Georgia account does, that as many as twenty rebels remained unaccounted for in early October. By late in the month, however, most had been found and executed. Bull also does not mention the aura of fear that must have pervaded the area around Stono. One month after Bull’s letter was written, several planters and their families living in the region packed up and moved in with friends and relatives outside of the area due to lingering fears about the possible actions of the rebels who still remained at large.

Next, Bull outlines the plan that colonial leaders decided to take to prevent further attempts at escape. Explaining that the colonial council in conference with other advisers had determined that the “most effectual means” to this end was “to encourage some Indians by a suitable reward” to find and neutralize any remaining rebels and to forestall any other slaves who might try to follow in their footsteps, Bull was echoing a policy that had already come into use in the colony. Some months earlier, South Carolina had approved substantial bounties for escaped slaves captured in neighboring Georgia, which at that time had no slave population of its own. Under this policy, adult male slaves fetched £40, adult female slaves £25, and children £10; an adult scalp containing both ears was valued at £20. Extending rewards for captured slaves was thus not an innovative practice, but a proven one.

The remainder of Bull’s letter deals with other matters of colonial concern, particularly the growing tensions between the British colonists and the French and their American Indian allies. Fifteen years later, these tensions would lead to the beginning of the French and Indian War, which allowed the British to assert their preeminence among European powers seeking to control the North American continent; the conflict also contributed greatly to the institution of several economic measures that the American colonists objected to, leading in turn to the American Revolution. Although these matters had little direct connection to the Stono Rebellion, the juxtaposition of the two topics highlights the competing pressures facing Southern colonists. On the one hand, they feared a large-scale slave rebellion from within that could destabilize their delicate political, social, and economic system. On the other hand, they lived with the very real possibility of external violence from competing European nations or from the American Indians that the English had displaced. South Carolinians who, like Bull, had lived through the Yamassee War, which rivals the better-known King Philip’s War in the North in terms of bloodshed, were likely to the be especially aware of that latter danger.

Thus it is perhaps not surprising that Bull attributed less importance to the Stono Rebellion than modern scholars, who can see its significance among the long string of conflicts over slavery, first in the colonies and then in the newly formed and expanding United States. Efforts by slaves to escape to Spanish Florida were relatively common by the time of Stono, and Bull—who had no way of knowing that the Stono Rebellion would go down in history as the largest slave insurrection on mainland North American during the colonial era—may have seen this rebellion as just another attempt in this vein. To Bull, historians have noted, the most important aspect of the uprising was not that it had happened, but that it was over. The varied demands of governing and the fact that Bull had certainly failed in his essential duty to keep order in the colony may have made the Stono Rebellion one that the lieutenant governor was happy to treat as succinctly as possible before redirecting royal attention to other ongoing matters.

Bibliography

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