In 1739, slaves at Stono, just outside of Charles Town, rose up against their masters in one of the largest slave rebellions ever undertaken in Country history. Fukuoka Subway Map Twenty or so Angolans, under the leadership of a black man maned Jemmy (some sources spell the name Jemy), attacked a store early on a September Sunday morning. The attackers quickly overpowered and killed the shopkeeper and began to distribute arms and powder to slaves on nearby plantations. By afternoon, between 60 and 100 slaves were on the march.
Their destination is not known, but it was probably Spanish St. Augustine, which had offered fugitive slaves refuge in the past. A hastily assembled white militia put down the rebellion, and many of the participants were executed. A new slave code enacted in 1740 assuaged some of the planters’ fears, but it was not strictly enforced. Generally speaking, planters were frightened of their slaves, so they put a system in place that would keep slaves frightened of them as well.
Though slaves would continue to resist their masters in small ways on a day-to-day basis, for the rest of the colonial period, they would not again mount so direct a challenge. For most of its history, South Carolina had developed as a British colony on its own, a beneficiary of the British policy known as benign neglect. In the middle of the eighteenth century, Great Britain took a renewed interest in the management of its empire and sought to profit from it. The French and Indian War (known in Europe as the Seven Years’ War) did not affect South Carolina as much as it did other colonies. South Carolina did, however, undertake an ill-conceived campaign against the Cherokee that accomplished little, apart from poisoning relations between the two groups for decades.
