But the Stono Rebellion, “the bloodiest example of slave resistance in colonial North America,” was the planters’ worst nightmare. Blacks, in a quest to break free, were willing and able to kill whites without remorse, without fear. More than sixty dead bodies proved that.42 The planters were, as a consequence, determined to make as grisly an example of the vanquished as possible. The enslaved “were tortured, shot, hanged, and gibbeted alive.” Then another fifty slaves “were taken by their Planters who Cutt off their heads and set them up at every Mile Post they came to.”
