This week marks 180 years since the occurrence of one of the most important events in Guyanese history. On Monday 18th August, 1823, shortly after 5:00 pm, a major slave rebellion broke out on Plantation Success and quickly spread to other estates on the East Coast of what was then called the United Colony of Demerara-Essequibo, a British colonial possession. This article will focus on some of the significant features of that slave revolt.

The uprising was numerically by far the largest slave rebellion in the history of Guyana and one of the most massive revolts in the history of African slavery in the Americas which dated back to the 1490s and ended finally in 1888, when Brazil became the last country in the hemisphere to abolish slavery. It is estimated that 11000 to 12000 slaves from about 55 plantations between Liliendaal and Mahaica participated in the revolt. This was nearly one sixth of the entire slave population of Demerara-Essequibo which in 1823 numbered about 75,000. Where the Caribbean was concerned, only the successful rebellion in Saint Domingue from 1791 to 1804 and the abortive uprising in Jamaica in 1831 had a larger number of rebels than those involved in Demerara in August, 1823.

Massive slave rebellions, in fact, were a rarity in the history of slavery in the Americas. This was due largely to the fact that they were extremely difficult to organise without being discovered before their outbreak. Discovery usually resulted either from the observation of vigilant whites of suspicious movements among the slaves or from betrayal by a member of the slave community, who acted as an informer to secure personal benefits from the slaveholders. Early detection of plans for rebellion enabled the slaveowners to take effective preventative action, especially the arrest of leaders and the deployment of troops, to forestall the outbreak of the proposed uprising.

The largest slave uprising in the United States had just over 100 slaves, while the most sizable in Brazil, the country with the highest incidence of slave rebellions in the Americas, involved a few thousand slaves and the other main revolts there, not more than 700 slaves. The involvement of as many as 11000-12000 slaves in the 1823 East Coast Demerara uprising was therefore remarkable. It was one positive feature of the organisation of the rebellion.

This 1823 uprising would have been even more massive but for two factors. Firstly, the rebels failed in their efforts to extend the rebellion to other areas of the colony apart from the East Coast Demerara. In particular, their plans and efforts to persuade slaves in Georgetown and West Demerara to join the revolt were not successful.

Secondly, slaves on about five plantations on the East Coast of Demerara refused to join the uprising, although they were encouraged, pressed and taunted to do so. Their refusal to participate in the revolt was due to at least one of several considerations. Some of them were afraid that the uprising would fail just as the one in Barbados in 1816, seven years earlier, and that the rebels would suffer many casualties during the revolt and severe punishment after it was suppressed. Others refused to participate in the rebellion because they felt that they had considerate masters and managers and did not suffer the severity that helped to provoke others to rebel.

Some slaves also did not join the rebels because they believed that freedom should not be secured by rebellion, but rather by waiting until it was granted by the whites. Others did not share the view of many of the rebels that freedom had been granted to them by the British metropolitan government, but was being withheld by the local authorities and the slaveowners. This erroneous view was the immediate cause of the uprising.

Some slaves surprisingly did not join the revolt, although they believed that the rebels could emerge victorious. This was partly because they feared the aftermath of a successful revolt. For example, one of the slaves of plantation Nabaclis, whose slaves refused to join the uprising, explained their action to Telemachus, one of the leaders of the uprising who tried in vain to persuade them to be involved in it. He told Telemachus:

“We were very well treated by our master, and allowed to go to church, and that, if they intended to do this, we would not join them; for that, even if we gained the country, it would be of no use, as we should begin to fight among ourselves.”

This East Coast Demerara uprising, like all other slave rebellions, was evidence of the discontentment of slaves with servitude. It occurred at a time when the institution of slavery was coming under increasingly severe attack in Britain especially from Evangelical Christians, philanthropists and humanitarians, and some economists. The institution, however, was being strongly defended by apologists who were contending that the lot of slaves was tolerable and that in general slaves in the Caribbean were contented and much happier than they had been or would be in Africa. Rebellions like the 1823 uprising demonstrated that this pro-slavery argument was a lie or a myth.

The 1823 uprising was also significant because many of its leaders were Creoles, i.e. locally-born, not African-born, slaves. Most of the earlier slave rebellions in the Caribbean, especially those which occurred before 1800, had been led mainly by slaves who were born as free men in Africa. These slaves had rebelled in an effort to regain the cherished freedom which they had lost when they were purchased by Europeans and brought as slaves against their will across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. Few rebellions before 1800 had been due mainly to the initiative of Creoles who were slaves from birth and gained a reputation, especially among slaveowners, of being less hostile and more accommodating to slavery than African-born slaves.

The belief which many whites shared about the relative passivity or docility of Creole slaves was shattered by the occurrence in the early nineteenth century of three major uprisings which were led principally by Creole slaves - a revolt in Barbados in 1816, the 1823 uprising in Demerara and the rebellion in Jamaica in 1831. In the case of Barbados and Jamaica this new development was due largely to the growing number and proportion of Creoles in the slave population after Britain declared the slave trade illegal for her subjects from 1808. Many Creoles in British Caribbean territories found thereafter that it was difficult to secure one of the limited number of privileged positions on estates, such as the jobs of drivers, domestics or artisans. Instead they were assigned to the more demanding role of field slaves, much to their resentment, prompting some of them to rebel. These Creole-led uprisings reinforced the argument being made by antislavery advocates that all slaves - African-born as well as Creoles - resented slavery and longed to be free.

The 1823 East Coast Demerara slave uprising was also significant because of the very prominent role played by Christianised slaves, especially deacons, class teachers and other devoted members of Bethel Chapel. It was in fact that first major rebellion in the history of the Caribbean which was led mainly by Christianised slaves. Bethel Chapel was a church which had been established by the London Missionary Society on Plantation Le Resouvenir in 1808, when it sent its first missionary, John Wray, to Demerara to inaugurate Christian work among slaves in the colony.

Another important facet of the significance of the 1823 uprising was that it was a rare occurrence in the history of the Americas when the supreme leadership of a slave rebellion was attributed to a white man, namely, Rev John Smith, the English clergyman in charge of Bethel Chapel since 1817. Furthermore, it was a unique case of a minister of religion being considered mainly responsible for a slave rebellion. Most slaveholders on the East Coast of Demerara accused Smith of being the main instigator of the uprising and as a result he was charged with inciting the slaves to rebel.

Although some aspects of Smith’s teaching and his sympathy for the abused slaves did play a part in causing the rebellion, the slaveowners greatly exaggerated and distorted his influence and role, blaming him unduly for an uprising which was due entirely to the initiative of the slaves.

Finally, the 1823 slave rebellion was significant because eventually it played a part in making the British government and parliament decide in 1833 to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire. The arrest, trial, conviction and death in prison of John Smith helped the abolitionists to triumph. Slavery was abolished in British Guiana and elsewhere in the British Empire with effect from 1st August, 1834. The slaves, however, were required to serve what was called a period of apprenticeship and did not become free until 1st August, 1838.

This second instalment will focus on some aspects of the course of the slave rebellion which occurred 180 years ago on the East Coast of Demerara, involving about 11,000 to 12,000 slaves between Liliendaal and Mahaica. Special attention will be paid to the factors responsible for the failure of the uprising.

The rebellion broke out shortly after 5 pm on Monday, 18th August, 1823 on Plantation Success and quickly spread to other estates on the East Coast. On the first two days of the uprising, the rebels were successful in a few minor encounters with the opposing regular troops and the civilian militia. For example, on the first evening of the revolt the slaves opened fire on a small body of troops and forced them into a skirmishing retreat all the way back to Georgetown. Similarly, on the following day, 700-800 slaves drove a small garrison of 12 soldiers under the command of Lieutenant Brady from Plantation Dochfour back to Mahaica.

Eventually, however, the uprising collapsed. The turning point was on the third day, Wednesday, 20th August, when the major battle of the rebellion took place at Plantation Bachelor’s Adventure, where over 3,000 slaves confronted the main body of opposing troops under Lieutenant-Colonel Leahy. After calling on the slaves in vain to lay down their arms and to return to work, Leahy ordered his soldiers to attack the rebels. The result was a massacre.

According to one account of this encounter:
“The soldiers poured in volley after volley. The slaves
returned fire but soon began to run, leaping the
trenches into which many tumbled lifeless. Many
were shot down on the road and in the cotton fields.
By noon, the roadside was littered with dead bodies.
About two hundred slaves had been killed.”

This crushing defeat struck great terror in the minds of the slaves and broke their morale. As Leahy noted, the engagement left the slaves “dispirited and alarmed”. Some of them fled into the bush behind the plantations, while the majority abandoned the rebellion and returned to their respective estates and resumed work.

The victorious troops then began a march of massacre and round-up through the plantations. From Bachelor’s Adventure they proceeded from plantation to plantation toward Mahaica, freeing white proprietors, managers and overseers from the stocks where the slaves had placed them during the initial two days of the uprising. They had a few skirmishes with groups of slaves, several of whom then withdrew to the bushy areas at the back of the plantations.

The white colonists feared that these and other fugitives might return and instigate other slaves to rebel. They therefore decided to send “Bush expeditions”, comprising mainly white militiamen and Amerindians, into the backlands of the plantations in search of escaped rebels. These “Bush expeditions” continued for several weeks. It was during one of these expeditions that Quamina, who many whites assumed was the leader of the uprising and for whose capture an attractive reward had been offered, was killed. On 16th September an Amerindian found him in the bush behind Plantation Chateau Margot and shot him dead. By then the mopping up operations of the troops were almost complete and the uprising had collapsed.

The failure of the rebellion, although the rebels had a marked advantage in numbers over the Whites, was due to several factors. The main cause was the inferior armament of the slaves, most of whom were armed with cutlasses and pikes, while their opponents were using guns. The only firearms which the slaves possessed were a small quantity which they seized from the white plantation personnel during the first three days of the uprising.

The superior weaponry of the whites easily compensated for their numerical inferiority. This was clearly demonstrated in the decisive clash at Bachelor’s Adventure, where Lieutenant-Colonel Leahy’s 300 well-armed troops suffered only two casualties - one bugler killed and one rifleman wounded - in striking contrast to the 200 fatalities experienced there by the slaves, who had less than 100 muskets.

The slaves, in fact, had made no preparation for a war and at the outbreak of the rebellion they had no guns, gunpowder or bullets. This may have been due partly to the fact that they did not expect to have to confront the regular troops during the uprising. They wrongly believed that the British Crown and Parliament had granted them freedom and so His Majesty’s troops would not oppose them in their efforts to claim their legitimate rights, which in their opinion were being denied by their masters, acting in collusion with the local government.

The rebels’ cause also suffered from the fact that their military training and experience were inferior to that of the opposing troops. Many of them, especially the Creoles, as locally-born slaves were called, had never handled a gun or been involved in any previous military activity. The rebels were also deficient in military strategy and tactics. As a white soldier noted about the fateful engagement at Bachelor’s Adventure, “they soon fell into confusion for want of method.”

The slaves’ defeat was also a result of their lack of ruthlessness. The rebellion was characterised by a considerable degree of moderation, restraint and humaneness on the part of the rebels which has no parallel in the history of slave uprisings in the Americas.

The slaves hardly offered personal violence to any Whites, especially where they met no resistance. It was only on a few plantations where they were opposed with firearms by Whites that the rebels resorted to violence in return. These few encounters resulted in the death of two and the injury of three or four white plantation personnel. No white person, however, was deliberately murdered. During the first two days of the uprising in particular, the slaves had ample opportunity to kill most of the white personnel on all the plantations involved in the rebellion, but this was not their intention or desire.

This virtual absence of the shedding of the blood of Whites was the most remarkable feature of the uprising. It was attributed by the slaves to the religious instruction which they had received at Bethel Chapel on plantation Le Ressouvenir from John Wray, John Smith and the other English clergymen who had served there since the inauguration of the mission established by the London Missionary Society in 1808. The slave rebels explained: “We will take no life for our pastors have taught us not to take that which we cannot give.”

In marked contrast to the humaneness and restraint displayed by the slaves, their opponents were extremely ruthless. White civilian militiamen were horrified by the severe cruelty with which Lieutenant-Colonel Leahy in particular treated the rebels, as one writer remarked,

“No Mercy was shewn to the Negro. With regard to them, there was a tremendous slaughter-under the influence...of an ill-judged and unwarrantable severity, it was deemed necessary to make terrifying examples of not a few by killing them on the spot”.

This extreme ruthlessness of the Whites greatly facilitated their victory.

The defeat of the slaves was rendered more certain by their failure to extend the uprising to other areas of the colony than the East Coast of Demerara, especially to Georgetown and West Demerara. This failure ensured that the local authorities, whose duty it was to suppress the uprising, were not faced with the more formidable task of dealing simultaneously with rebellion on several fronts. This was a great relief to Governor Murray who feared such an eventuality. As Murray wrote to Lord Bathurst, the Colonial Secretary in London, on 24th August, 1823, “I hope this rebellion will soon be put down, but should it become more general, as there is a great cause to apprehend, it will not be possible for me to give protection to the country, unless the commander of the forces can spare me very strong reinforcements, for which I have applied.”

These reinforcements, in fact were not necessary. The rebellion, massive but restricted to the East Coast of Demerara, was suppressed rather quickly.