There are no known authentic, contemporary images or photographs of Denmark Vesey. This statue in Hampton Park, Charleston, SC, are artistic interpretations rather than direct likenesses.
Carpenter and formerly enslaved person, Denmark Vesey, allegedly planned an enslaved insurrection to coincide with Bastille Day in Charleston, South Carolina in 1822. He planned what would have been one of the largest slave rebellions in the United States. He was born into slavery about 1767, (the month is unknown) in St. Thomas on the Virgin Islands, then a Danish colony - hence his first name. About 1781, he was bought by a Bermudian sea captain, Joseph Vesey (who is thought to have been descended from slaves himself) who gave him the name "Telemarque". At a young age, Denmark assumed the surname of his owner, who was the captain of a slave ship. Before they settled in Charleston, South Carolina in 1783, Denmark traveled along with his master on many slave-trading voyages. He became Vesey's personal assistant and his interpreter as Vesey traded slaves between Bermuda and Charleston.
Following the Revolutionary War, the captain retired from his nautical career (including slave trading). In 1696, Captain Vesey wed Mary Clodner, a wealthy "free East Indian woman", and the couple used Telemaque as a domestic at Mary's plantation. While in Charleston, Denmark managed to educate himself and even learned to read. In 1800, seventeen years after his arrival in Charleston, Denmark won $1,500.00 in a street lottery and used $600.00 of his winnings to buy his freedom. Now free, at age 32, Denmark Vesey began working as an independent carpenter and built up his own business. However, despite his best efforts, he was unable to purchase the freedom of his first wife (Beck) and their children who were the property of another slaveowner.
As a result, Vesey became determined to dismantle the system of enslavement. This meant their future children would also be born into slavery. Although a Presbyterian as late as April 1816, Vesey co-founded a branch of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1817. This had been organized in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1816 as the first independent Black denomination in the United States. Although the Reverend Morris Brown’s Sunday sermons included a creative melding of African and Christian elements, Vesey’s nightly Bible lessons turned to “the stern and Nemesis-like God of the Old Testament". Vesey preached particularly from the book of Exodus, and taught followers that they were the New Israelites, the chosen people whose enslavement God would punish with death. Denmark Vesey, Rev. Brown, and Nat Turner all used religion in planning armed slave revolts.
Embittered by the continuing bondage of Beck and his children, Vesey turned his back on the New Testament and what he regarded as its false promise of universal brotherhood. The AME Church in Charleston was supported by leading White clergy. In 1818, White authorities briefly ordered the church closed for violating slave code rules that prohibited Black congregations from holding worship services after sunset and then again in late 1820 and in January 1821. City officials always worried about slaves in groups. They warned that its classes were becoming a "school for slaves" (under the slave code, slaves were prohibited from being taught to read). The church attracted 1,848 members by 1818, making it the second-largest AME church in the nation. Vesey was reported as a leader in the congregation, drawing from the Bible to inspire hope for freedom. He formerly attended the White-led Second Presbyterian Church, where enslaved Black congregants were urged to heed St. Paul’s dictum: "Servants, obey your masters." Vesey disagreed with such sentiments.
Slaves did not endure their servitude passively. They resisted any way they could, whether it was barely noticeable insubordination, or acts of violence. For slaves, rebellion was the ultimate form of resistance and protest against slavery, although most slaves understood that an armed rebellion was paramount to suicide. Unlike the Caribbean, where massive slave revolts took place in Cuba, Jamaica and most famously Haiti, rebellion in the American South was difficult to carry out. White owners had a monopoly on fire arms and plantations were spread too far apart for the slaves to have the ability to communicate a large plan. Laws also made it difficult if not impossible for slaves to travel or congregate and bounties were offered for capturing any runaway slave.
From 1791 to 1803, led by Toussaint L'Ouverture, the Haitian Revolution of enslaved and free people of color on Saint-Domingue embroiled the French colony in violence. Black people gained independence and created the republic of Haiti in 1804. Many Whites and free people of color had fled to Charleston and other port cities as refugees during the uprisings and brought the people they enslaved with them. In the city, the new slaves were referred to as "French Negroes". Their accounts of the revolts and their success spread rapidly among enslaved Charlestonians. The state, and the city of Charleston had a majority of the population who were enslaved Africans. The free people of color occupied a place between the mass of Black people and the minority of Whites in Charleston.
Even after gaining his freedom, Vesey continued to identify and socialize with many slaves. He became increasingly set on helping his new friends break from the bonds of slavery. Vesey was inspired by the revolutionary spirit and actions of slaves during the great Haitian slave revolt of the 1790s. Dissatisfied with his second-class status as a freedman and determined to help relieve the far more oppressive conditions of bondsmen he knew, Vesey planned and organized an uprising of city and plantation Blacks. His insurrection, was to take place on Bastille Day, July 14, 1822. The plot called for his followers to execute the White enslavers, liberate the city of Charleston, and then sail to Haiti before the White power structure could assemble and retaliate.
Vesey plans to destroy Charleston was greatly bolstered by an African-born conjurer named "Gullah Jack”. Having served as a “doctor” in Charleston for 15 years, Jack’s renown as a mystic allowed him to sway enslaved Africans of all multiple ethnic backgrounds who respected him as both conjurer and General of the plot. Not only was Jack claimed to have a “charmed invulnerability” that would prevent him from being harmed at the hands of Whites, but he also produced and distributed charms to slave combatants that were said to render them invincible. For Gullah Jack’s protective charms to work, conspirators had to first fast the night before the planned revolt. Gullah Jack, was a respected member of the Black community who helped Vesey win more followers for his cause. In fact, all of the leaders involved in the plot were considered upstanding individuals, held in high esteem across racial lines, according to reports from the time.
The following morning, they were to place the charms, consisting of crab claws, in their mouths to be fully protected from harm. Vesey held numerous secret meetings and eventually gained the support of both enslaved and free Black people throughout the city and countryside who were willing to fight for their freedom. He was said to have organized thousands of slaves who pledged to participate in his planned insurrection. By using intimate family ties between those in the countryside and the city, Vesey created an extensive network of supporters. His plan was first to make a coordinated attack on the Charleston Meeting Street Arsenal. Once they secured these weapons, these Freedom Fighters planned to commandeer ships from the harbor and sail to Haiti, possibly with Haitian help. Vesey and his followers also planned to kill White slave-owners throughout the city, and liberate the slaves.
Due to the vast number of slaves who knew about the planned uprising, Vesey feared that word of the plot would get out. Vesey reportedly advanced the date of the insurrection to June 16. Two of the slaves involved leaked details of the plot before it could be implemented. On May 22 William Paul, one of Vesey’s chief recruiters, made a fatal mistake. While at the Market Wharf, he spoke of the plan to Peter, a mulatto cook, who passed the alarm to his master Colonel John C. Prioleau. At about the same time another mulatto slave, George Wilson, found out about the plot from an enslaved man named Rolla Bennett, who was brought into the discussion by Joe LaRoche. LaRoche originally planned to support the uprising, Wilson had to decide whether to join the conspiracy or tell his master that there was a plot in the making. Wilson refused to join the conspiracy and and urged both LaRoche and Bennett to end their involvement in the plans.
Wilson decided to give the information about the plan to his master, hurried with the news to Mayor James Hamilton and Governor Thomas Bennett. On receiving word of the plot, Charleston authorities mobilized and quickly put the city on alert. White militias and groups of armed men patrolled the streets daily for weeks until many suspects were arrested by the end of June, including 55-year-old Denmark Vesey. Four days after his capture, the aged carpenter was brought before two magistrates and five freeholders in the city workhouse. Vesey defended himself during the trial. The tribunal found Vesey guilty and sentenced him to hang “on Tuesday next, the 2d July, between six and eight in the morning.” Out of 131 men arrested and charged with conspiracy, 67 were convicted and 35 were hanged. Their deaths quieted some of the city residents' fears, and the tumult in Charleston about the planned revolt began to die down.
Vesey's enslaved son Sandy Vesey was arrested, judged to have been part of the conspiracy, and included among those deported from the country. Believing that "Black religion" contributed to the uprising and believing that several AME Church officials had participated in the plot, Charleston officials ordered the large congregation to be dispersed and the building razed. Vesey’s son Robert rebuilt it at the end of the Civil War. Two other sons, Randolph Vesey and Robert Vesey, both children of Beck, Denmark's first wife, survived past the end of the American Civil War and were emancipated. After the Vesey Plot, the Charleston legislature further restricted the movement of free Black people and free people of color. For example, if one left the state for any reason, that person could not return. In addition, it required each free African American to have documented White "guardians" to vouch for their character.
Rev. Morris Brown of the church was forced out of the state. In response to White panic, a municipal guard of 150 men was established in Charleston in 1822. Half the men were stationed in an arsenal called the Citadel. In 1842, the South Carolina legislature replaced the expensive guardsmen with less expensive cadets. The arsenal was turned over to the newly established South Carolina Military Academy, which later became known as The Citadel. No African-American church was founded in Charleston again until after the Civil War. The conspiracy ironically helped politicize Black communities throughout the United States particularly after anti-slavery activists began referring to Denmark Vesey as a hero. Frederick Douglass was the first, but not the last, to use Vesey’s name as a battle cry for the first all-Black infantry during the Civil War. Denmark Vesey was later held up as a hero among abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass, during the Civil War. Douglass used Vesey's name as a rallying cry in recruiting and inspiring African American troops.