Denmark Vesey
carpenter named Nat Turner. Turner was captured and put on trial for leading the insurrection.
He was executed on November 11, 1831.
It wasn’ t just on American soil that a slave upraising was feared. In 1823, as the first 50 years of the United States neared an end, President James
Monroe, the former Virginia governor, issued a warning against the involvement of European nations in the affairs of countries in the American hemisphere. In essence, this“ Monroe Doctrine” declared that the“ American continents … henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.” And European intervention in the Americas, Monroe said, was a threat to this nation’ s“ peace and safety.”
The Americas, and the broader Western Hemisphere, represented a distinct“ New World” that must remain free from the political and imperial influence of the“ Old World,” Monroe said in his annual message to Congress on December 2, 1823. But nothing in Monroe’ s warning against European involvement in the affairs of nations in the American hemisphere would stop the United States from doing just that.
In March of 1825, a U. S. military force landed in Sagua La Grande, a coastal town in Cuba in pursuit of pirates. That same year Henry Clay – who was then Secretary of State – made it clear the United States opposed efforts by Mexico and Venezuela to help Cubans wrest control of their island nation from Spanish colonial rule. He worried that such an intervention might result in the freeing of more than 200,000 Black slaves less than 100 miles from America’ s shores.
As time would tell, Henry Clay’ s fear about where a rebellion in the American hemisphere might result in a nation ending slavery was misplaced. ■
Dr. Aisha Powell is a Fulbright Scholar and an assistant professor in Morgan State University’ s Department of Strategic Communication. Her upcoming manuscript will focus on women from the Harlem Renaissance who traveled to Russia in 1932 and their experiences.
HathiTrust Digital Library
Nat Turner, the leader of a 1831 revolt of enslaved people, makes plans with his co-conspirators in a swampy hideaway
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