Rebellious Passage The Creole Revolt and America's Coastal Slave Trade

In late October 1841, the Creole left Richmond with 137 slaves bound for New Orleans. It arrived five weeks later minus the Captain, one passenger, and most of the captives. Nineteen rebels had seized the US slave ship en route and steered it to the British Bahamas where the slaves gained their liberty. Drawing upon a sweeping array of previously unexamined state, federal, and British colonial sources, Rebellious Passage examines the neglected maritime dimensions of the extensive US slave trade and slave revolt. The focus on south-to-south self-emancipators at sea differs from the familiar narrative of south-to-north fugitive slaves over land. Moreover, a broader hemispheric framework of clashing slavery and antislavery empires replaces an emphasis on US antebellum sectional rivalry. Written with verve and commitment, Rebellious Passage chronicles the first comprehensive history of the ship revolt, its consequences, and its relevance to global modern slavery.

1. Eagle versus lion; 2. The coastal passage; 3. 'Several cases'; 4. 'Engaged in the business ever since she was constructed'; 5. 'The Negroes have risen'; 6. 'Their determination to quit the vessel'; 7. 'Old neighbors'; 8. 'A new state of things'; 9. 'Property rights' versus 'rights of man'; 10. Causa Proxima, Non Remota, Spectator; 11. 'Full and final settlement'; Epilogue.

Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie is Professor of History at Howard University, Washington DC and author of Freedpeople in the Tobacco South: Virginia, 1860–1900 (1999); Rites of August First: Emancipation Day in the Black Atlantic World (2007); and Freedom's Seekers: Essays on Comparative Emancipation (2014).