Jemmy gathers twenty enslaved Africans on Sunday,…
September 1739 CE
Jemmy gathers twenty enslaved Africans on Sunday, September 9, 1739, near the Stono River, twenty miles (thirty kilometers) southwest of Charleston.
This date is important to them as the Catholic celebration of the Virgin Mary's nativity; like the religious symbols they use, taking action on this date connects their Catholic past with present purpose.
The Africans march down the roadway with a banner that reads "Liberty!", and chant the same word in unison.
They attack Hutchenson's store at the Stono River Bridge, killing two storekeepers and seizing weapons and ammunition.
Raising a flag, the slaves proceed south toward Spanish Florida, a well-known refuge for escapees.
On the way, they gather more recruits, sometimes reluctant ones, for a total of eighty.
They burn seven plantations and kill twenty to twenty-five whites along the way.
South Carolina's Lieutenant Governor William Bull and four of his friends come across the group while on horseback.
They leave to warn other slaveholders.
Rallying a militia of planters and slaveholders, the colonists travel to confront Jemmy and his followers.
The next day, the well-armed and mounted militia, numbering twenty to one hundred men, catches up with the group of eighty at the Edisto River.
In the ensuing confrontation, twenty whites and forty-four slaves are killed.
While the slaves lose, they kill proportionately more whites than will be the case in later rebellions.
The colonists mount the decapitated heads of the rebels on stakes along major roadways to serve as warning for other slaves who might consider revolt.
The lieutenant governor hires Chickasaws and Catawbas and other enslaved blacks to track down and capture those who had escaped from the battle.
A group who had escaped fights a pitched battle with a militia a week later, approximately thirty miles (fifty kilometers) from the site of the first conflict.
The colonists execute most of the rebels; they sell others to the markets of the West Indies.
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