Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Slaves who resorted to militant resistance in North America initially sought to win little more than their freedom. In the wake of the American and French Revolutions , however, an increasing number of slave rebels became determined not only to liberate themselves but to overthrow the institution of slavery itself. Compared with slave revolts in Brazil and the Caribbean, slave revolts in the United States were relatively rare, small, and generally unsuccessful. Yet militant slave resistance was of significant symbolic value, fueling the abolitionist movement that contributed to the end of slavery in 1865. Slave resistance began as early as the first African men, women, and children were forced onto slave ships bound for North America. On several occasions, Africans unsuccessfully attempted to overpower the white ship crews that sought to sell them into slavery in the New World. Others refused to eat or drowned themselves during the Middle Passage across the Atlantic to escape bondage. Once in the British colonies, many enslaved men and women showed their opposition through subtle forms of subversion, such as breaking tools or feigning illness. But the most common form of resistance was running away. Until the late eighteenth century, Africans in North America frequently made collective efforts to escape. Some of them formed so-called maroon communities – maroon deriving from ... log in or subscribe to read full text