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Charles Deslandes
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Charles Deslondes was one of the leaders of the 1811 German Coast Uprising, a slave revolt that began on January 8, 1811 in the Territory of Orleans. Deslondes was a free person of color from Haiti who worked as a laborer on the Deslondes plantation. He started the revolt in what is now St. John the Baptist Parish; then the insurgents marched downriver into St. Charles Parish before turning back.
Deslondes led some 200 insurgents in total, although accounts vary.
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Encyclopedia
Charles Deslondes was one of the leaders of the 1811 German Coast Uprising, a slave revolt that began on January 8, 1811 in the Territory of Orleans. Deslondes was a free person of color from Haiti who worked as a laborer on the Deslondes plantation. He started the revolt in what is now St. John the Baptist Parish; then the insurgents marched downriver into St. Charles Parish before turning back.
Deslondes led some 200 insurgents in total, although accounts vary. insurgent slaves down the River Road toward New Orleans. As they traveled, the group was joined by slaves' escaping from plantations along the way and increased as they reached the more populous plantations downriver. They killed two whites near the beginning of their march, and burned down three plantation houses and some crops. They captured only limited weapons, although they had planned on more. (Some accounts claimed there were up to 500 slaves in revolt, but estimates vary.)
On January 11, a planter militia led by Col. Manuel André attacked the main body of insurgents at Destrehan Plantation west of New Orleans. The militia killed about forty slaves in their immediate confrontation. Fourteen slaves were killed in other skirmishes. Numerous slaves were captured. After interrogation, eighteen were tried and executed at the Destrehan plantation. Eleven slaves were tried and executed in New Orleans. A total of ninety-five insurgents were killed in the aftermath of rebellion.
The 1811 Louisiana slave revolt was the largest in U.S. history, but the slaves killed only two white men.
Citations
Further reading
- Dormon, James H. “The Persistent Specter: Slave Rebellion in Territorial Louisiana.” Louisiana History 28 (Fall 1977): 389-404.
- Paquette, Robert L., “Revolutionary St. Domingue in the Making of Territorial Louisiana", in A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution in the Greater Caribbean (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1997), pp. 218–20.
- Rodriguez, Junius P. “‘Always En Garde’: The Effects of Slave Insurrection upon the Louisiana Mentality.” Louisiana History 33 (Fall 1992): 399-416.
- Rodriguez, Junius P. “Rebellion on the River Road: The Ideology and Influence of Louisiana’s German Coast Slave Insurrection of 1811.” In McKivigan, John. R., and Harrold, Stanley. Antislavery Violence: Sectional, Racial, and Cultural Conflict in Antebellum America. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1999.
- Thompson, Thomas Marshall. “National Newspaper and Legislative Reactions to Louisiana’s Deslonde Slave Revolt of 1811.” Louisiana History 33 (Winter 1992): 5-29.
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