Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion

by Peter H. Wood

Black Majority won the Albert J. Beveridge Award of the American Historical Association.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, African American, School, American, Historical

380 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

I have always been interested in early American history and in the interactions of diverse cultures. My undergraduate honors paper at Harvard in 1964 dealt with the Puritans' relations with the Indians, and my doctoral thesis there focused on African Americans in South Carolina before 1740. Since coming to Duke in 1975, I have taught Colonial American History and Native American History, as well as a course on the History of Documentary Film. Long term interests in race relations and in American painting led me to collaborate with art historian Karen Dalton in 1988 on an exhibition and a related book concerning Winslow Homer's images of Blacks. Time spent as the department's Director of Graduate Studies (1988-95) and as one of the professors in the U.S. Survey class (History 91D) has made me increasingly interested in the ways we learn and teach American history. Perhaps for this reason, I have always been actively involved as a humanities advisor on diverse public history projects and as a board member with a variety of grassroots organizations and mainstream institutions. I am a lead author for the US survey textbook, Created Equal, which is now in its second edition.

Reviews

[Bob Newman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The skeleton in the closet

If you visit South Carolina today you can visit the stately homes of Charleston and Beaufort, see a few old plantations with their drives overhung by Spanish moss, walk around quaint gardens with turtles on logs, and eat shrimp with grits, crab cakes, fried tomatoes and all. The graceful ambience overshadows a very bleak history of slavery and oppression. Of course, the rest of America is not free from the same, but South Carolina experienced an extreme form because for over 60 years, the black slave population greatly outnumbered the white rulers or owners (if anyone can really own somebody else). Today you will see a solid African-American population, but they are only about 28% of the total. This was not the case back in the 18th century.

South Carolina in the late 17th and 18th centuries had all the diseases we now associate with foreign, tropical climes---for example, malaria and yellow fever. Smallpox occasionally carried off large numbers. In addition, South Carolina faced both Indians, who didn’t appreciate intruders, and French or Spanish raids from their colonies further south. It wasn’t a very salubrious place. However, since the early English-speaking settlers did not come straight from Britain but rather from Barbados, their experience suggested a solution; bring African slaves along with them and let them do all the work. Plus, as you will know in greater detail if you read Judith Carney’s “Black Rice”, Englishmen had not taken advantage of the famed rice paddies of Yorkshire and Oxfordshire! I mean, they didn’t know anything about growing rice. However, many West Africans did.

In the beginning labor was so scarce and dangers so abundant that slaves---both Indian and African---could work with whites and conditions allowed more leeway for independent action. The colonists depended on African knowledge of everything from herbal medicine to pounding rice husks. However, as the imported slave population increased far more quickly than the natural increase of the British colonists, by 1720 the “Black Majority” discussed in this book came into existence. Many of the slaves became expert at all manner of trades and crafts, almost every type of work in the colony was done by them. No matter how well owners may have treated slaves, slavery is awful. The colonists knew this of course, but invented all kinds of racial bullshit to convince themselves that slavery was legitimate. Their failure to convince even themselves is shown by their fear of slave uprisings and African vengeance through arson, theft, and poisoning. Slavery continued only through brute force and threat of cruel punishment. Rebellion was followed by massacre. The doctrine of inferiority grew and slaves were pressed by white fears into much limited roles as house servants or field workers. Their previous knowledge and skills were downplayed. Author Wood not only tells about where the slaves came from, but how a special English dialect arose among them, how they did resist their oppression as best they could, and the terrible price paid by so many for that resistance. Running away to the Indians was usually not an option, neither was defecting to the Spanish fort in St. Augustine, though some slaves managed to escape in these ways. The whole story dusts off the history of oppression and murder that underlies America. We should recognize that this history helped create America today as much as the glorious and oft-repeated and idealized struggles against British rule. Facing it is one way to overcome its lasting effects.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

File under: books that everyone interested in Colonial America needs to read. This is one of those rare books that actually managed to hit hard enough to break through a little into the basic story of American history that high school students are getting. One of Wood's main arguments here is that planters in South Carolina intentionally looked for and purchased slaves who already had knowledge and skills in rice cultivation from Africa, knowing that these slaves would bring that knowledge to S. Carolina's rice industry. This was a major step away from the old, racist idea that Africans were primitive people who didn't know anything before they were brought to America. Wood shows that whites who bought slaves knew full well that they were buying skilled labor, not just labor- people with not only rice growing experience but experience with other crops, with raising cattle, with all sorts of things. I know from tutoring high school history that at least on AP tests and SAT subject tests, Wood's argument about rice cultivation comes up on occasion.
Wood also gets into differences between black and white ability to fight off malaria and yellow fever, and discusses the fallout of the Stono Rebellion of 1739. He argues that blacks were making some (meager) gains in S. Carolina society, and were "pushed out of positions of tenuous equality" in the aftermath of the rebellion. Really a fascinating study- it is a little old, and probably a little out of date, but not too much. Still an important book to know.

[Ricardo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was truly the ONLY required reading I had at UCF that was worth the time. Such a great and well researched piece. For anyone looking at how prejudice, etc. toward African Americans came about in America, this book is a MUST!!!

[Dan Gorman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of the 1970s statistics-heavy social histories, this has to be one of the best written. Peter Wood explains why white planters in South Carolina sought African slave labor, how African slaves brought rice cultivation, immunity to malaria, and West African languages to America, and how increasing tensions between slaves and slave-owners culminated in the Stono Rebellion. This book's discussion of disease and sickle cell genetic resistance to malaria anticipates the environmental and biological histories of the 1980s–present.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his book, Black Majority, Peter H. Wood writes about the largest portion of colonial South Carolina’s population: black slaves. The author traces the development of slavery in South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion in 1739. Wood argues that “Negro slaves played a significant and often determinative part in the evolution of the colony.” (xvii)
The book is written thematically with its themes proceeding in rough chronological order and is divided into four main parts. The first part of the book focuses on the early years of the colony and the first colonists. The first colonists, finding their opportunities in Barbados for land declining, brought black slaves with them to South Carolina. These slaves contributed to the development of the colony through their skills in herding and, most importantly, by introducing rice cultivation, which became the staple of the colony. The slaves were well suited to life in the region due to its similarities with West Africa and their higher degree of immunity to malaria and yellow fever in comparison to their white counterparts. The second part of the book describes the way in which African slaves served to develop the economy of South Carolina and the way in which slave culture developed. Black contributions to the colony included experience with botanicals and working as guides and as fishermen. As the slave population grew, the slaves were able to maintain and develop a distinctive culture that included a unique form of speech called Gullah.
In the third part of his book, Wood describes the growing tensions between the black and white populations of South Carolina. The slaves in South Carolina were able to use their skills in the early decades of the colony to improve their personal economic well-being. This proved threatening to white landowners, and as whites found themselves out-numbered by black slaves they became more fearful that their slaves might turn to violence and sought to exercise more control over them. Slaves opposed white efforts to control them by running away. In the final part of the book, Wood discusses the efforts that were made by colonial officials to codify the regulation of slave discipline on the plantation during the early eighteenth century. The efforts of whites to exercise more control over their slaves is described in juxtaposition to efforts among the slaves to resist white dominance including independent economic activity and simply working inefficiently. These tensions reached a tipping point in 1739 with the Stono Rebellion.
The book has two main pivotal moments. The first of these is the introduction of rice by African slaves. In the early days of the colony, it was common for slave owners to expect slaves to work for their own subsistence in addition to their duties working in the forests or herding cattle. Many of these slaves began cultivating rice in the marshy waters of South Carolina and their owners took note. Rice was adopted as a staple crop and the slave population grew rapidly, even surpassing the white population. The second pivotal moment in Wood’s work is the Stono Rebellion of 1739. During this rebellion slaves escaped their plantations, captured guns and ammunition and moved south through the colony gathering recruits and terrorizing plantation owners. The rebels intended on escaping to St. Augustine in Spanish Florida but were defeated at the Edisto River. In the aftermath of this rebellion the South Carolina legislature passed the comprehensive Negro Act which promised “heavier surveillance of Negro activity and stiffer fines for masters who failed to keep their slaves in line.” (324)
Wood uses a variety of sources to write his book. These include plantation records, newspaper articles, and official acts of the colonial legislature, journals and a variety of secondary sources. Wood also utilizes concepts from the fields of linguistics and medical science. For example, Wood argues that Africans were ideal for habitation in the marshy environment of South Carolina because of immunity against malaria and yellow fever. Ironically, this quality had helped Africans to survive in Western Africa but also made them ideal for slavery in South Carolina.
Wood’s book reminds students of colonial America of the contributions that slave made to the development of colonial and American society. This is especially clear in the history of South Carolina where the staple crop that was eventually adopted was introduced by slaves.

Question: Wood argues that African slaves in South Carolina played a major role in the development of the colony’s economy. Slaves imported from the Caribbean and directly from Africa entered the region with skills which were put to use in the colony. Slaves herded cattle, fished, served as guides, transported goods and people through marshlands using skills indigenous to Western Africa, the origin of most of South Carolina’s slave population. The most important skills that African slaves brought to the colony were those related to cultivation of rice. Rice became the staple crop of the colony, and slaves were imported in increasing numbers to cultivate the crop they had introduced. The slave population increased and slaves became the majority around 1708. With so many advantages over their white counterparts – numerical superiority and productive skills – why did Africans not enjoy a greater share of the fruits of their labors?

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wood's Black Majority describes the lives of blacks in colonial South Carolina (including a chapter on language). In doing so it also opens up a description of white life, economics and farming, religion, relations with Native Americans, health, law and rebellion. It is a central book to understanding the colonial south, its conclusions have become the accepted history and the basis for further investigations. To get at the lives of slaves, who keep no written records, he has to work in from many outside angles. It leaves him with fewer long narrative stretches of individiual's lives and many short vignettes as examples. The prose is not exceptional, but is clear and the research is prodigious and vital.

[Marsha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This classic look at slavery is still relevant today. The way we view slaves changed dramatically with the research of Peter Wood, and much new scholarship is based on his original findings. A must-read for the professional historian or anyone interested in South Carolina, Colonial America, or the Atlantic World.

[Kim]

I remember reading this in undergrad. It talks about the health of the slaves, the gullah language, and the stono rebellion and the consequences.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for a history class. More accurately, glanced.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

First published in 1974 (reissued 1996) and born out of his dissertation, Peter Wood's work was cutting edge in the world of African American history and remains a foundational text today.

Wood set out to examine the advent of slavery in the American colonial south, but wished to avoid Virginia which receives the majority of attention from southern scholars. Wood gravitated toward studying South Carolina not because it hadn't received any attention, but because it had a well over a 50% majority black population by 1776. To really get at questions of the black experience in the early colonial years and to prevent reading backwards of 19th century ideas, Wood focused his work on a 50 year period and progressed chronologically. His efforts were worthwhile as he brought to light many aspects of the early colonial experience that did not exist and are surprisingly contradictory to the 19th century black experience and attitudes that tend to pervade modern thought about the condition of slaves. There are 2 major areas of focus which Wood tackles: black immunity to malaria and yellow fever, and (most importantly) the skilled contributions that slaves brought and were sought for in the founding of the South Carolina Colony.

At the time Wood was writing his dissertation, science was just emerging on the presence of Sickle cells in certain populations of blacks and its connection to malarial immunity. Wood was one of the first historians to break into the mainstream with these discoveries, and today, this is well known information and as such hardly revelatory, though still interesting to read. He also discussed Yellow Fever and the facts that black were not immune to it (which was disproven during the Yellow fever epidemic that struck Philadelphia in the 1790s), but again, this information is now quite well known and recent work has been done on this topic (See for example: Simon Finger, The Contagious City: The Politics of Public Health in Early Philadelphia ).

The part of his book that remains forgotten by many is the fact that in the early years Africans were recruited first as freeman and very soon as slaves because of the skills that they brought with them from Africa that were not mastered by whites or even unknown. Wood makes a very convincing argument that without Africans, South Carolina never would have gotten their rice industry (their most important crop) started. European settlers simply did not the experience or the knowledge (as he aptly demonstrated) to grow it with success. Not to mention that unlike their African slaves who had immunity to malaria, European colonists were extremely susceptible to the mosquito born illnesses that thrived in the same conditions needed to grow rice. But Wood in addition to agricultural skills also emphasized the variety of other skills that Africans brought with them from Africa - such as water experience - which included fishing, swimming/diving, Alligator hunting, and small boat/canoe navigation. Emphasis is added here to highlight one of the greatest myths that 19th century slave owners and slave culture perpetuated - that slaves were purchased for their docile, dimwittedness, the less they knew the better. This has led to the modern conception of unskilled Africans from an backward continent that Wood and other scholars such as John Thornton - (see Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800 have fought so hard to dispel. Wood makes it clear that without the skilled labor force from Africa and the sugar colonies, white colonization would not have succeeded. Wood also demonstrated that in the earliest years of colonization there was more of a parity in labor and social relations than after the colony became better established and social divisions hardened.

By 1708, blacks became a majority population in South Carolina, and tension in the colony began to mount - white fear became palpable. Not ironically as outnumbered whites began to assert social dominance over the majority population by putting in place increasing restrictions, they set an atmosphere ripe for rebellion. Wood spent the final chapters of the book discussing these various restrictions and methods of resistance, concluding with a review of the Stono Rebellion.

While little in this book is new knowledge to scholars, it is still an excellent resource and a good review. Newcomers to the field will find it more interesting.

[Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you have ever wondered why South Carolina is as it is, this book will settle the question for you. John C. Calhoun was expressing a very real fear that prevailed among the white ruling class. They knew that the fact that they were treating the majority of people in the state in a completely beastly manner might prompt a similarly cruel reaction. Hence the fear and the extremism.

Grant writes in his memoirs that in the north, there was widespread disappointment that Sherman's troops did not sack Charleston (it wasn't militarily important). Many northerners felt that Charleston had it coming like no other southern city.

[Sharon Bisaha · Rating 3 out of 5]

I discovered Black Majority amongst the bibliography of a Great Course on Colonial America. The book is a scholarly, well documented description of Black culture and life in South Carolina from its founding to ~1740. During this time Blacks provided both skilled and unskilled labor, significantly contributing to the colony's success. As a scholarly book it was sometimes dry but interesting, nonetheless.

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Groundbreaking scholarship essential to an understanding of the colonial Southeast. Coupled with Alan Gallay's The Indian Slave Trade, Black Majority provides a complete picture of early Carolina.

[GrinnolaAlum · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another book from Professor H's African American History class at Grinnell College that I still remember, took the time to reread, and take off the shelf when doing genealogical research. This book challenged every stereotype I learned about enslaved people prior to taking Prof. H's African-American History course. Before that class slavery meant people on a cotton plantation ripped away from all their cultures, brought to America and taught everything they knew about agriculture and farming by white slave owners. How little I knew about my ancestors. My professor called this the clean slate view of enslaved people and said that for a time this was the dominant view among Historians.

I took my first African American History course in college and my Professor Thomas R. Hietala assigned this book. He wanted to challenge our views of slavery and this was the first book we read in the course. It was hard to get through the first 50 pages but this book picked up and gave us a wealth of information about enslaved people in British Colonial America. The beginnings of South Carolina as a colony of Barbados and the initial struggle to find a cash crop that would make the Colony viable and how enslaved Africans made that possible not only because of their labor but because of their knowledge of agriculture and understanding of what crops would thrive in the swampy South Carolina marshes.

The Africans who were from the rice coast were not empty vessels who got their skills from owners and overseers, they were people who brought their love of rice and knowledge of how to plant and cultivate this crop with them from Africa to Barbados and then to South Carolina. When enslaved Africans planted rice they exposed their owners to the crop that came to define the Carolina Low country.

Black Majority tells the complex History of how the colony grew economically because of African knowledge which made it possible to make rice a cash crop, and how the legal and social system we call slavery evolved. There was a colonial conversation about slavery we find evidence of it in Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

Before 1776 enslaved people made it clear they wanted their freedom. The surviving Historical evidence shows how enslaved people planned, plotted and were willing to sacrifice their lives through violent revolts in Gloucester County, Virginia in September of 1663, the New York City Slave Rebellion of 1712, Cato’s Conspiracy aka the Stono Rebellion of 1739 and The New York Conspiracy of March 1741. All of these conspiracies and rebellions preceded Jefferson’s Declaration, one of the bloodiest and the most important in defining the system of slavery and suppression of enslaved people is The Stono Rebellion.

Wood looks at the Stono Rebellion when 80 enslaved people armed themselves and marched toward Spanish Florida to attain their freedom. This was a defining moment, an event that forever changed how enslaved people were treated, managed through laws and violently suppressed in South Carolina and slaveholding colonies and eventually states. This is a fascinating book that looks at the beginnings of South Carolina, how Africans played a pivotal role in Agriculture and establishment of the cash crop economy, how slavery as a system evolved and how enslaved people planned, sacrificed, fought and died to attain their freedom. This book also documents how close they came to success and changing our History with respect to the system of slavery.

This is a great book written by an excellent Historian who really challenged the way Historians viewed the African people who were enslaved in America. Wood wrote about the Africans who were enslaved respectfully as human beings with knowledge, culture, and the courage to plan, fight and sacrifice for their own freedom.

[Amy Ariel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although not a contemporary story, Black Majority adds significantly to current conversations about race in the States. I read this book for a course in college at Grinnell a very long time ago and what I learned from it continues to be relevant.

[Jacobo2008 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is very good to get to know the reality of black africans slaves in South Carolina.
From 167o to the Stono Rebelio in 1739.
It gives a lot of information of South Carolina that is a very cocrete an specific reality.
Different to any other State,

[AskHistorians]

Discusses the early history of African slaves in Colonial South Carolina to the plantation period.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating look at a place and time where black-white relations in America were more respectful and fluid than we're used to seeing.

[Andee Nero · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm so glad I got to reread this for exams.

[James Carroll · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a classic work in the history of slavery in North America. This was on the required reading list for my graduate program, and it remains a work I continue to refer to.

[K.J. Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned a great deal from this book. The hidden history revealed. Those who say there were no resistance to slavery, here's the book to prove them wrong.

When real history is presented, one can see the cause-and-effects. Things fit together like jigsaw puzzles and there's the "ah-ha, that's why this is like that" moments.

Why does the US media have a fixation on black Americans, specifically those of the ethnicity of African American? Sociology teaches us that the national news does some hinky things with stories about them, not usually in their favor. On the flipside, why aren't their headlines about other groups when they are facing terrible things, too? Well, it goes back all the way to the start with American press, as this book shows. A tradition of this that we need to be educated on to understand our world today.

[Jim Gulley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Around 1710, Carolina became the first American colony to have a majority population of enslaved persons of African heritage. Most of the enslaved came by forced immigration from the Caribbean region in general and Barbados in particular. The conventional historiography contends that the enslaved labor force in Carolina was unskilled and monolithically deployed in plantation agriculture. In Black Majority, Peter Wood argued that in the half-century between 1690-1740 enslaved laborers engaged in a vast array of skilled work and carried out responsibilities that were unique to the frontier culture of the era. Wood further argued that enslaved Africans transferred a great deal of skill, knowledge, biology, and customs from their homeland experiences to their new environment in Carolina.

[Parker · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my fifth or sixth reread, and I find something I overlooked each time.
Despite the dated language, it's still the best book on early slavery in South Carolina, and one that I highly recommend.

[Danny · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent examination of early South Carolina leading up the Stono Rebellion. Feels like one of those works that really lay the ground floor for future scholarship. For those interested in the history of the Colonial South, I would definitely recommend this.

[Doris Raines · Rating 5 out of 5]

THIS A EXTREMELY GOOD TITLE AND BOOK.

[Irma Suggs · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly recommend this book for anyone doing genealogy research in South Carolina. It will give you a better understanding of the history.

[Fresno Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

really interesting focused coverage on slavery in the pre-revolutionary period

[haleycityusa]

Only read Chapter 12, "The Stono Rebellion."

[Jo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did not care for the writing but found the history very interesting and unknown to me how Africans were original settlers.