RESEARCH General History

SLAVERY
Authors detail first fully factual account of slaves' revolt

Andrea Lynn, Humanities & Social Sciences Editor
(217) 333-2177; a-lynn@uiuc.edu

3/1/03

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The often-mythologized tale of one slave’s struggle for freedom has only now – 163 years later – been stripped of its many fictions.

In their new book, "The Creole Mutiny: A Tale of Revolt Aboard a Slave Ship," George and Willene Hendrick have written the most accurate story to date of the harrowing adventures of Madison Washington and the revolt he led.

The Hendricks pieced together disparate information from a variety of sources, including U.S. Senate documents, court testimonies and legal documents. Their book also sheds light on many dark aspects of the slaves’ odyssey in America, including the methods of slave traders and the sexual exploitation of female slaves – some mere children.

Because of its meticulous research and attention to the historical landscape, "Creole Mutiny" (published by Ivan R. Dee) becomes the first complete book on this successful slave mutiny – this despite the fact that five other writers, including Frederick Douglass (in 1853) and Lydia Maria Child (in 1865), told the story in their own ways, and for their own purposes.

Even without the myths, the true story of Washington and his revolt has all the elements of a great tale: love and death, freedom and subjugation, compassion, cruelty and courage.
The Hendricks – he is a professor emeritus of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she is an independent scholar – explain that Washington was born in Virginia, date and parentage unknown. In 1839 or 1840, he escaped to Canada and freedom, but soon realized that his liberty meant nothing if he couldn’t share it with his wife, still enslaved back home. So he turned around and "went the wrong way on the Underground Railroad," George Hendrick said.

Washington was captured en route and put on a ship, a brig called the Creole, with 134 other black men, women and children who also were to be sold at a slave market in New Orleans. Washington, by all accounts a giant of a man both physically and intellectually, refused to be subjected again to the humiliations and restrictions of slavery, and began plotting an insurrection.

On Nov. 7, 1841, he and his carefully chosen band of 18 slaves seized control of the ship; in the battle, one crewman was killed and several others, including the captain, were badly wounded. Members of the crew were coerced into sailing to the Bahamas, a British possession. Because Britain had abolished slavery, the slaves knew they would be freed once they entered Nassau’s harbor.

But it wouldn’t be that simple. A ferocious diplomatic struggle between the United States and Great Britain ensued after Britain freed the slaves who were uninvolved in the mutiny, and imprisoned only for five months those who had taken part. Some stayed in the Bahamas, while others went to Jamaica. In 1853, the Anglo-American Claims Commission awarded the United States and the slave owners $110,330 in compensation for the slaves who were freed by the British.