Daniel Rasmussen > Quotes

“Claiborne succeeded in preventing the uprising from becoming part of the larger political discourse—and in doing so laid the groundwork for the collective amnesia about the 1811 uprising in historical and popular memory.”
― Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

“The first black regiments were raised in the fall of 1862, after the announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation. The first black regiments came from New Orleans, Missouri, Kansas, and the Sea Islands of south Georgia. Black regiments from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut emerged in 1863. In May of 1863, the War Department established the Bureau of Colored Troops, sending Northern agents to recruit freed slaves from Southern areas held by Union troops.”
― Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

“1813, a British navy flotilla composed of three frigates, three sloops, and ten other vessels made its way from Bermuda to Baltimore. There they landed a force of 2,500 British regulars who began the quick march toward Washington, D.C. The American militia, poorly armed and dramatically less experienced than the British, gathered at Bladensburg, Maryland, attempting to fend off the British army. The battle was a disaster for the Americans. Upon receiving news of the British success, President James Madison fled the capital for Virginia. The British commanders marched in triumph into Washington, D.C. Down the city’s grand avenues the troops paraded, arriving at the President’s House before nightfall. There the British commanders ate the supper that had been prepared for Madison—before burning down the mansion, the treasury, and several other public buildings. The militia of the nation’s capital had proven incompetent in the face of the British army—and America had suffered an embarrassing defeat.”
― Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

“Louisiana Gazette”
― Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

“The Destrehan mansion, which survives to this day,”
― Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

“When the British evacuated Spanish Florida after the War of 1812, they left behind a well-armed garrison of free black soldiers at a British fort at Prospect Bluff. The fort was essentially a safe haven for refugees fleeing slavery in Georgia and Louisiana, including about 300 black men, women, and children. Against the backdrop of the 1811 revolt, General Jackson saw the presence of these armed free blacks just sixty miles away from the American border as a terrible danger, even though these people had given no indication of aggressive intentions. “I have little doubt of the fact that this fort has been established by some villains for the purpose of rapine and plunder, and that it ought to be blown up, regardless of the ground”
― Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

“On April 25, the government decided to act on Claiborne’s recommendation—spending federal money to compensate planters whose slaves had died in the insurrection. They passed an “Act providing for the payment of slaves killed and executed on account of the late insurrection in this Territory.” The act provided $300 per slave killed to each planter, and it also provided one-third of the appraised value of any other property destroyed in the insurrection.”
― Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

“If heads on poles were symbols of American authority, they were also symbols of the costs of Americanization. If heads on poles were symbols of control, they were also symbols of the ritual violence that was the constant underlying element of Louisiana society. This was the world Claiborne and the planters made. This was the world they sought to integrate into America. This was New Orleans, and the German Coast, in 1811: a land of death; a land of spectacular violence; a land of sugar, slaves, and violent visions. January 29, 1811”
― Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

“In the famous Battle of New Orleans, the Americans won the only real victory of the War of 1812.”
― Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

“When the Civil War began, no branch of the U.S. government—not the legislature, not the executive, not the judicial—expressed any intention of abolishing slavery.”
― Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

“Though the 1811 uprising was the largest slave revolt in American history, the longest published scholarly account runs a mere twenty-four pages.”
― Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

“In his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln had expressed his support for a constitutional amendment to ensure that “the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the states.” He had, he declared, “no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.” The Republican Party, then in control of both houses of Congress, had taken a similar stance. “Never on earth did the Republican Party propose to abolish Slavery,” wrote Horace Greeley, a Republican spokesman. “Its object with respect to Slavery is simply, nakedly, avowedly, its restriction to the existing states.” In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in the Dred Scott case that any attempt to prohibit the spread of slavery was unconstitutional and that African Americans had no right to U.S. citizenship. Chief Justice Robert Taney wrote that blacks “were so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that [all blacks] might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery.”
― Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

“Though the world of the German Coast seems to have avoided confronting its past, one man has led a group to force New Orleans to do just that. Leon Waters, a sixty-year-old activist who has been involved with radical political causes since the Vietnam War, now provides tours of the uprising to curious student groups and tourists from out of town. “Hidden History Tours provides authentic presentations of history that are not well known,” promises Waters’s Web site. “We take you to the places, acquaint you with the people, and share their struggles that are rich and varied. These struggles have been made by Africans, African-Americans, Labor and Women. For too long their stories have been kept hush hush. But not anymore!”
― Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

“The Destrehan plantation is open now for tours—and weddings or parties, if you’re interested. A group of prominent white families converted the Destrehan plantation into a museum, seeking to preserve their heritage and remember their own past. The tour focuses on the lifestyles, family histories, and architectural accomplishments of the planter class. The tour is rich with descriptions of the planters’ meals, their parties, and their elaborate family dramas. The architecture is a special emphasis of the tour. When it comes to slavery, the tour guides describe a system of “Creole slavery” that was generous and fair to the slaves. Slavery was not as bad under the French as it became under the Americans, the tour guides suggest. “Everyone worked, from family members to slaves, because life on a plantation was not easy,” reads the plantation brochure. “It has been documented that slaves at Destrehan Plantation were treated with fairness and their health needs provided for.” But even the relatives of Jean Noël Destrehan cannot deny the events of January 1811. In a converted slave cabin not featured on the standard tour, the tour guides have constructed a museum to the 1811 uprising. With brief descriptions of the major events, the cabin features folk paintings that imagine what the event would have looked like. Just as in the history books, the story of slave politics is compartmentalized away from the central narrative of American history.”
― Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

“Louis Armstrong Airport, which sits on the site of the former Kenner and Henderson plantation.”
― Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

“Though city authorities renamed the airport after a prominent African American, Louis Armstrong, the names of the surrounding towns and streets date back much further. The old River Road sweeps past the poor, primarily black town of Destrehan, before entering the town of Kenner, where the airport is located. The River Road becomes Third Street, then Jefferson Highway, and finally South Claiborne Ave. Don’t bother looking for Charles Deslondes Boulevard or Quamana Avenue. And don’t spend much time looking for historical markers of the 1811 revolt. There’s only one, across the street from a McDonald’s in Norco, nearly forty miles outside of the city center.”
― Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

“In the wake of the revolt and even amid legislative discussions, no government official, legislator, planter, or merchant ever publicly expressed any doubts about the institution of slavery itself. Unlike Virginians after the Nat Turner uprising, the citizens of the Orleans Territory held no debates about emancipation or colonization. Slavery was simply an unquestionable fact of life, no more controversial than the use of currency. And so, as they described and reacted to the uprising, the white elite focused not on changing the base of their society—slavery—but on strengthening the mechanisms that ordered that society—martial law. And with the main military power in the area being the American government, Claiborne sought to channel a desire for improved security into calls for a more robust, and more American, state—a state secure from the Spanish and from the slaves. In the minds of Claiborne and the planters, the proper response to African American political activity was violent suppression backed by the full force of the U.S. government.”
― Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

“From 1803 to 1860, slave owners expanded their hold on the North American continent, churning through new land and bringing slaves from the older states to the newer through a vast new domestic slave trade. New Orleans, perfectly positioned as a gateway to the new Southwest, became the nation’s largest hub for slave trading—playing a pivotal role in the expansion of American slavery.”
― Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

“Because of that brutality, and because of a shared belief in the importance of a specific form of political and economic development, these government officials and slave owners sought to write this massive uprising out of the history books—to dismiss the bold actions of the slave army as irrelevant and trivial. They succeeded. And in doing so, they laid the groundwork for one of the most remarkable moments of historical amnesia in our national memory.”
― Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

“By aborting their own children, poisoning livestock, lighting fires, and escaping to the cypress swamps, the slaves struggled to dilute, deflect, and if possible demolish slaveholders’ authority. Even open revolt was not beyond question”
― Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

“In the Lower Guinea region, the Oyo empire, the kingdom of Dahomey (known for having palaces decorated with human skulls), and the smaller states of the coast fought for regional supremacy, enslaving and selling prisoners of war to European traders at coastal forts.”
― Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

“1810, slaves constituted more than 75 percent of the total population, and close to 90 percent of households owned slaves.”
― Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

“Whether they killed the insurgent slaves immediately upon encountering them, after slow torture, or following a court trial, the planters performed the same spectacular violent ritual. Obsessively, collectively, they chopped off the heads of the slave corpses and put them on display. By the end of January, around 100 dismembered bodies decorated the levee from the Place d’Armes in the center of New Orleans forty miles along the River Road into the heart of the plantation district.”
― Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

“Between 1882 and 1965, white Southerners lynched close to 4,000 African Americans—and the American government did little, if anything, to prevent this violent enforcement of Jim Crow rule.”
― Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

“They did not know it yet, but these slaves had initiated one of the most radical revolutions in the history of the Atlantic world. Over the next twelve years, these rebels fought and defeated the local white planters, the soldiers of the French empire, a Spanish invasion, and a British expedition of 60,000 men. But their greatest challenge would be the mighty armies of the French emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte.”
― Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

“To Jackson, free black people were necessarily “stolen negroes” and slavery was the only suitable place for them in America.”
― Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

“The plot was discovered, however, before it ever came to fruition. The planters hanged twenty-three slaves, decapitated them, and nailed their heads to posts. They flogged thirty-one additional slaves and sent them to hard labor at Spanish outposts in Mexico, Florida, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. By the time of the Pointe Coupée uprising, the revolutionary fervor of the age had reached the River Road, inspiring the slaves to Jacobinism”
― Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

“The plot was discovered, however, before it ever came to fruition. The planters hanged twenty-three slaves, decapitated them, and nailed their heads to posts. They flogged thirty-one additional slaves and sent them to hard labor at Spanish outposts in Mexico, Florida, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. By the time of the Pointe Coupée uprising, the revolutionary fervor of the age had reached the River Road, inspiring the slaves to Jacobinism and an assertion of their rights to freedom.”
― Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

“The local French newspaper L’Ami des Lois”
― Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

“Napoleon saw a chance to finally get rid of his troublesome American colonies and to make some money to fund his European wars at the same time. He offered to sell the United States all of Louisiana for only $15 million in cash. Without waiting for Jefferson’s approval, after just nineteen days of negotiation, Livingston accepted the offer on behalf of his nation. It was a massive purchase at a bargain price. The new territory doubled the young republic’s size. Jefferson’s $15 million bought what comprises about a quarter of the current geography of the United States”
― Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt