Antebellum South Carolina - The Vesey Plot and The Indian Removal Act

The Vesey Plot and The Indian Removal Act

Since colonial times, South Carolina had always been home to a sizable population of free blacks. Many were descended from enslaved mulattoes freed by their white fathers/owners. Others had been freed for faithful service. Some African Americans purchased their freedom with portions of earnings they were allowed to keep when being "hired out". As long as there had been free blacks, free blacks made the white population nervous.

In 1822, free black craftsman and preacher Denmark Vesey was convicted of having masterminded a plan for enslaved and free African Americans to overthrow Charlestonian whites. Afterward whites established curfews and forbade assembly of large numbers of African Americans. They prohibited educating enslaved African Americans, as they believed slaves' learning to read and write would make them unhappy and less compliant. Free African Americans posed a challenge to slavery by their very presence. South Carolina leaders prohibited slaveholders to free their slaves without a special decree from the state legislature. This was the same path that Virginia had taken when its slaveholders became uneasy about freedpeople.

Like Denmark Vesey, most of South Carolina's free blacks lived in Charleston, where there were opportunities for work and companionship. A free African-American subculture developed there. Charlestonian blacks performed more than 55 different occupations, including a variety of artisan and crafts jobs. Some African Americans, such as Sumter cotton gin-maker William Ellison, amassed great fortunes. He did so in the same fashion that most wealthy whites had - by using the labor of black slaves.

As settlers pressed against western lands controlled by Native Americans, violence repeatedly erupted between them. Andrew Jackson came to the office of President determined to pave the way for American settlers. In 1830 he signed the Indian Removal Act, by which he offered Native Americans land in unsettled areas west of the Mississippi River, in exchange for their lands in existing states. While some tribes accepted this solution, others resisted. By this time, the Cherokee Nation had been mostly pushed west and south out of South Carolina into Georgia.