Slave Insurrections: Selected Documents

by Joshua Coffin

English, Latin

172 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1860

About the author

Joshua Coffin (October 12, 1792 – June 24, 1864) was a historian, an American antiquary, and an abolitionist.[1] (from wikipedia article)

Reviews

[Adam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Excellent anti-slavery essay from the 1800s. Although the history and examples are a little dry and are of little interest today, the author’s philosophy that all people are born with freedom in their hearts is excellent.

A good, easy and useful read. Although not hugely memorable it did ignite a revolutionary flame inside of me.

[Miles Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Coffin offers a defense of slavery that more closely resembles a threat than a plea to southern slaveholders ca 1860. He echoes the sentiments of the American Anti-Slavery Society, of which he was a part. Coffin's history of slave rebellions is notable for downplaying the possibilities of violence after initial emancipations. To do this he fabricates the narrative of the Haitian slave revolt, by portraying it as relatively benign. The work is essentially a catalogue of slave rebellions in the Caribbean and North America. Coffin closes with an echo to a hyper-individualistic scriptural hermeneutic: scripture, he claims, couldn't possibly tolerate chattel slavery, if it did, individuals would rightfully apostatize, because humans knew truth in their hearts, no matter the rendering of the texts.

[Negasi · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the title says, this is a collection of the history of rebellions by enslaved Africans in the West. Not fully comprehensive, but perhaps the author did not have access to information about some rebellions in the Southern Hemisphere. Anyway, the author includes first and second hand sources giving the document a feel of what it was like to know of these things in the mid 19th Century. The author wants to challenge the White Supremacist claim in his time that Africans are wild beasts prone to violence if liberated from the civilizing effects of slavery by documenting that rebellions occurred in attempts to gain freedom, and none occurred among African populations not held in bondage.