his memory alive so wanted to give them a round of applause and thank them for their hard work. [applause] today, january 8 represents the 200th anniversary of the largest slave revolt in american history. if you read the textbooks, whether it is louisiana history or american history, you won't find his revolt mentioned. in fact, a vast collective popular amnesia about the 1811 revolt that persist to this day. so i'm very excited to be here on january 8, which is the 200th anniversary of when the heroic launch their revolution tried to conquer new orleans. you might be wondering why the slaves pics january 8, 1811 which is today, or 200 years ago today and there were three reasons the slaves chose january 8, 1811. let me describe to you a scene.

1811, the planters gathered. they cut open a king cake. was january 6, 12 night or epiphany. after cutting open the king cake, the slave serve coffee and the dancing began. the guests did dances, french dances. elegantly young men smoke an smoking gamble that table spread on the outside of iran. you never saw anything more brilliant wrote a french colonial official fresh from paris. at 3:00 in the morning slaves of bringing gumbo and turtle served on huge tables of 70 people each. after the initial parties, many of the planters would go on to mick strays and other such celebrations. when william claiborne the american governor took over control of the city in 1804, the french planters informed him that the only way they could win their loyalty was to hold a party. i want to read you a description

of what they served at that party. 196 bottles of madeira, 144 bottles of champagne, 100 bottles of hermitage wine, 67 bottles of randy, 81 bottles of porter, 258 bottles of ale and 11,360 spanish cigars. the morning after that party, it seemed like a pretty good time to revolt. [laughter] the next reason the slaves chose january of 1811 is because in december and in the fall of 1810, william claiborne the governor was raising a proxy war with spain over west florida. they had just conquered west florida through legal or -- legal military festival and there was rumors the spanish would send a counterattack from cuba to retake baton rouge. in december william claiborne

ordered the defense who were the most skilled and trained an effective military force the americans had here in new orleans out of the city and up to baton rouge to protect it from the spanish. the planters were drinking and celebrating carnival as we still celebrate carnival here today. the american military was distracted fighting the spanish and went to florida. to top it all off, on january 4 a rainstorm blew in. by january 6, correspondents reported that the roads were a half leg deep in mud. why was this rainstorm significant? for two reasons. the first is that rain meant that the slaves could not work. there was nothing to do on the plantations in the middle of the pouring rain and the second was that it was impossible to move artillery, heavy artillery and the roads were covered in mud. so the slave army armed with cutlasses, cane knives axes and muskets would be facing in a

military whose strongest fighting force or for hundreds of miles away. and who could not bring out their best weaponry from the city. it was the perfect time. i want to tell you a little bit about the leaders of the revolt. there were 11 separate leaders and i'm going to talk about for them. the first is a man named charles deslondes, whose name i hope will be in every history textbook in the country in the next few months or years. charles deslondes was an interesting man to say the least. he was the son of a white planter and he served as a driver on his plantation. slave drivers were at the top of the hierarchy. beneath a master was the overseer and beneath the overseer was the driver and beneath the driver were the slaves. charles salon they administer the punishment for the other slaves. he held the keys to all of the doors on the plantation. when slaves escape he would help chase them down.

drivers like charles were often regarded as betrayers of their race and by the white planters they were regarded as close accomplices, as trusted advisers. charles would convene with his master every morning to discuss when the sugar would be planted and how the work was going. but charles was doing something else with the liberties granted to him as a driver. on the weekends he would visit his wife a few plantations down and as he traveled he would meet up with two men, kook and quamana. quaku was over 6 feet tall which a time when the average height was 5 feet 4 inches was a looming figure. hugh was recently brought from africa in 1806. the ashanti kingdom was a warlike and powerful empire and spread over much of the coast of africa. quaku and quamana would meet with charles and they would discuss plans for what would become the largest revolt in

american history. charles deslondes you see was the ultimate sleeper cell, using his privileged position not to aid the planters but to subvert them. on january 6, the 12 night was the final meeting between the men, charles deslondes, harry kenner who also is the son of a white planter and was born in virginia, and then kook and quamana and they met together on january 6. what did the slaves discuss? what were their motives? how did they organize? did their questions -- these are questions which no historian can answer definitively. the slaves did not write anything down and they kept their actions completely secret from the planters. but let me tell you what the slaves would have known. what they would have been familiar with. i am not sure how many of you know about the revolution that occurred in haiti from 1791 to

1803. today i think when we think of haiti we think of those devastating scenes that we see on television. in 1811, haiti was a beacon of hope to all slaves across the american atlantic because haiti was the site of the first successful slave revolt in the history of the new world. not only was it a slave revolt, this was a political revolution. black haitians declared racism illegal, abolish slavery and band banned the french, who settled haiti or santo domingo, just like they settled here in new orleans. i want to read to you from the haitian declaration of independence which i think and give you some sense of their political ideology that was flowing through the slave quarters. let us imitate those people who come extending their concerns are the future and dreading to leave an example of cowardice

for posterity preferred to be exterminated rather than lose their place as one of the world's free people. they went on, may the french tremble when they approach our coats. is not the memory of the cruelty they have inflicted, at least by the terrible resolution that we are about to devote to death anyone born french who at 30 with his sacrilegious book delivered a. those are amazing words. how did the slaves here in louisiana know about haiti? an and island 200 miles away? let me tell you a little bit more about it. the people that transported the sugar from one place to another, the sailors, many of them were black. many of them were slaves. the people that serves to sell the sugar in the marketplace were also slaves. messengers, carriage drivers, tradesmen, all these people were black and many of them were slaves. as they traveled around, as they

traveled, these black sailors around the atlantic, the carriage drivers and messengers from plantation to plantation they were not just carrying their masters words, they were carrying their own political ideology, their own ideas about just how this world have developed and just what it was going to become. and so what the planters knew, the slaves new, because with the planters discussed in their fancy dinners at their lavish, who attended those who brought them their food who has sat as they aid and listen to the conversation. slaves permeated every part of the society and the slaves here in louisiana coast were very aware of local development, very aware of republican ideology. copies of the french documents from the french revolution were found in the slave quarters in the 1800's. in fact, a few years before the 1811 revolt, the white colonial officials had expelled a french

diplomat for spreading the word of the revolution in france. the slaves involved in planting -- planning a revolt had a political ideology. but i want to go back into what happened today, 200 years ago. i have talked about the rain. it was pouring rain still in the morning of january 8 when charles deslondes gathered a group of 25 lakh slaves on the plantation of the present-day woodlawn plantation. every man assembled knew that his participation in the revolt would mean a certain death sentence, near certain death sentence. no slave revolt in louisiana had ever been successful in the punishment for armed insurrection was clear, death and one's head on a pike. the planters distracted by battered -- mardi gras the iraqi military distracted by fighting a proxy war against the spanish, the rain preventing heavy artillery from being moved out into the german coast, the slaves believe they just might

have a chance. no record survives to tell us what charles said as encouragement in those final hours before they launch the revolt, but i want to read you a passage from another revolt that happened only a year later of what that leader said to his men in the final moments because i think it gives us at least an idea of what might have been said. this leader took a planting and a sharpened machete, stab the planting with a machete and said this is how we will drive it through the stomachs of the whites. in the wake of the uprising planters only osman slave why he decided to revolt. and he said, i wanted to go to the city and kill all the whites. and certainly, that violence and that death was a precondition to black freedom. there was no way to secure their independence or their emancipation without complete military control. otherwise, the white military forces the american planter militias would execute the

slaves. this was the system of slavery at its utmost basic level, a the system of violence, either kill or be killed. as the slaves made their final preparations manuel and gilbert andrzej lee asleep in their beds and corridors decorated with family portraits and furniture imported from france. even the darkness and well andre's cast a formidable shadow. the high roof soared into the sky shielding api for. i don't know how many of you have traveled to the plantations along the river road but they are beautiful. manuel was known even today is famous throughout the rest of the country. the french planters in new orleans were famous as the wealthiest and richest planters and all of north america. john destrehan and's is plantations and today said without chattel slavery cultivation must cease the improvements of the century be destroyed and the great river resume its empire over rent fields and demolished

habitation. slaves built the plantations on the german coast. slaves made the wealth that made new orleans the famous city. the city would not have survived survived -- they built the levees that prevented the river from taking over new orleans. john newell destrehan said that in 1806 and its truth remains resonant today. manuel andre woke with the fright this morning 200 years ago. charles deslondes, his trusted adviseradviser, his right-hand man, standing in his room with an ax, a plantation tool transmitted into an icon of violence insurrection. manuel andre knew what to do. he ran. as he ran, the slave rebels cuts three long slices into his body leaving scars that he would bear for the rest of his life and as he turned around he saw the planters driving their exes into the body of his son, gilbert andre.

manuel andre escaped from the slave rebels. i don't know how. and letting him go was the slave rebels first mistake. he did something very interesting after killing gilbert andre. they went to the militia depot on the andre plantation and they take out the militia uniforms and they put them on. these were slaves, donning the garb of a military. they work described as beared apple lets. this is a political, politically motivated crippled and when they put on those uniforms they are making a statement, we are not slaves. we are freeman and we will fight to the death for our freedom. it is said according to oral folklore here in the german coast that the slaves shouted as they proceeded. one was on tune new orleans and the other was freedom or death.

the slaves began to march towards new orleans. as i mentioned they were wearing military uniforms. they were flying flags and beating drums and marching in formation. these men were organized and sophisticated and they knew what they were doing. now, almost as soon as the revolt began, but trails also started because the surest way to freedom in a slave society was not to participate in a revolt that the to betray one. francois trepanier awoke with a fright on the morning just a few hours after manuel andre had been attacked. a slave named dominique told him that there was a large number of rebel slaves moving down the river pillaging the farms and killing whites. trepanier ordered dominique to travel to the other plantations to one the other planters from there to new orleans to flee for their lives. he then ordered his wife and

children to head to the swamps to hide in the swamps, which had been the refuge for many escaped slaves and maroons. francois trepanier did not leave the plantation that day. he believed that he could defeat any ragtag band of slave rebels. he thought the slave army amounted to little, a mere group of criminals are rhythms as they would be described. his arrogance and content contempt for his lives no. it was reported that he is a slave named gustav holy treated like a dog tossing him table scraps underneath a table. ransaw trepanier was quite confident that that he stood at the chance of success against the slave rebels. he did not have to wait long and what he saw must have sent a very big surprise. around the bend of of the lead became the slave army divided into companies each under a headman or officer. blackmun and the militia uniforms advance towards the plantation chanting flying flags

armed with muskets as many on horseback as on foot. the slaves quickly dispatched with francois trepanier. it is said that gustav swung one of the axis. you can see his grave out along the river road to this day. so in one example of that historical amnesia about this revolt, many history books claim that trepanier beat back be back the slave rebels, just an example of the history. now want to see him back into new orleans what was happening about this time in when the first warnings came to the western edges of the city. the scouts were the first to give in his. within hours, there was a traffic jam miles long of refugees fleeing from the german coast. the slaves that forced the complete evacuation of planters from the german coast. they were in control of about

30 miles of coast, from what is now the blocks to what is now the airport was controlled by slaves and all of the white planters were fleeing in terror. the accounts we received word various reported one correspondent. fear and panic in making their escape and it was not possible to estimate the force of the brigham's. the white residents of new orleans were terrified so they too had heard the stories of haiti. not as a beacon of liberty or is a testament to political ideals, but rather as a warning about what would happen if they lost control, because the slave rebels of haiti had defeated 80% they had killed 80% of the armies and napoleon bonaparte had sent to fight them from france to fight. just think about that one more time. the slave rebels ringing to their knees the army of one of the great generals of europe. that was what they feared. they fear that they too would be

brought to their knees and executed. now you might be wondering what chance of the slave rebels have of success? how close do they really come to conquering new orleans? i want to take you back to a primary source to give you an idea of what commodore john shaw, then the admiral and control of new orleans thought. commodore john shaw wrote that the 68 regular troops here in new orleans where "a weak detachment." he went on to say all were on alert. general confusion and dismay prevailed throughout the seed -- city. scarcely a single person possessed a musket for the protection of himself and his property. the 68 regular troops, a weak detachment, protecting a defenseless city of unarmed residents.

bat against the slave army now numbering between 20500 fighting for their freedom, marching towards the city. i don't know about you, but i think the odds at that point ron the sides of the slaves. now what happened next? the american military the 60 regular troops marched out and they knew that the survival of new orleans depended upon the defeat of the slave army. and they came upon the slaves at around 2:00 a.m. on a plantation. they could see lights and they knew the slaves were there. there was much evidence of the slaves were camped out on that plantation resting and eating. general whetham to the american general, ordered a full-scale attack after extensive preparation. they realize that the slaves are all gone. it was a trick, a classic rue. the slaves forced the military to wait for hours to attack an empty plantation. general whetham to this point

was so tired his men were exhausted and they could not receive any further. at this point was 4:00 in the morning and so they stopped to rest. not far from new orleans. the state classic west african military technique. you draw the enemy out into a territory you know better and understand anywhere down the enemy until they are destroyed. that is what the haitian military did and that is what the rebels of 1811 were intending to do. they marched up river. i mentioned earlier that the slaves admit a mistake. they let manuel andre live. manuel andrzej crossed the river somehow and when he got to the other side, he alerted the planters on that side of the river what was going on. these men gather together armed to the teeth. they crossed back over the web web -- river and they marched on the river. it was not long, sometime after sunrise on tomorrow january 9, that they encounter the slave army. they said the slaves were

traveling at forced march at very short distance numbering 200 men as many mounted as on fee. what did the slave army do next? the spanish spy in orleans road would happen next. the blacks were not intimidated by this army and formed themselves in a line. they did not blink in the face of the plantar militia. they formed themselves in the firing line. which is exactly the right thing to do for military perspective. what were the slaves thinking at this moment? again, we will never know. but i wanted to read you a quote from a slave ephod, slave from a louisiana sugar plantation of pot in the civil war for his own freedom. he said we are now fighting and ask no more glorious death and to die for freedom but for our race to go back into bondage again, to be hunted by dogs in the swamps and to be set upon the block and sold for gold and silver, no, never gladly would

die first. and so the slaves took their place in that firing line. we don't know exactly how the battle unfolded. as with many battles the battlefield was quickly engulfed with smoke and chaos. descriptions of the revolt are pure chaos. but what happened next, either the slaves ran out of ammunition or they discharge their weapons too soon and the plantar militia roque the slave line. what followed was a massacre and one of the darkest moments in american history. 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 slaves heads and they put those heads on display.

one plantar recalls the spectacle. they were -- for the sake of their heads a road which decorator levy all the way up the coast. they look like crows sitting on long poles. from the plantations to the city center planters government officials reenacted the same right of violence. rituals they understood intuitively impose coherency and through coherency control. the planters had several trials. one of the destrehan plantation and another several at the center of the city of new orleans. these trials were not meant to determine the guilt or innocence but rather to assert that the planters and the american military were in control. and that the actions they had taken were righteous and legal and that the slaves were criminals, who had violated their laws and thus deserved to die. i want to read from you the court transcripts.

such as rebellion of ours and pillaging etc. etc. etc. the planters didn't even need or feel the desire to list all of the crimes. to them it was just etc.. these were criminals. their actions were not worthy of extensive description. but beneath this façade of simplicity by a much more complex story. the slaves who testified in those courts described 11 separate leaders. these leaders came from louisiana from the congo, from virginia, from the ashanti kingdom. some are born to white fathers. their names were french german spanish west african anglo-american. the politics of the slave quarters was complex. there was no single ideology, no single leader that defined the insurgents or their agenda. rather the slaves counted in the ranks men from such revolutionary hotbeds as congo, haiti and louisiana marin colonies in the swamps.

but amidst this chaos and complexity, the planters deemed only to assign the descriptor guilty. the german coast uprising had raised serious questions and then orleans territory but the strength of american power, the extent of the spanish thread, the possibility of a haitian style revolution on american soil and that the character of america's newly acquired french citizens. the planters realized the urgency of these questions and answer them with 100 dismembered corpses and and a set of show trials intended to speak to the local slave population. in letters and newspaper accounts, william claiborne, the governor of a orleans territory in the planters sought to write the rice -- uprising. they described the slaves, and whetham since vision of the story was he who suppress the rebel army even though he had been resting in the plantation a few miles away when they slaves encountered the plantar militia.

200 years later, on the bicentennial of this revolt, we must look back on this story. for despite its absence from the textbooks, the story of the 1811 uprising is one central to the history of this country. this is not just a story about black history or louisiana history. this is a story about american history, and charles deslondes, coogan quamana deserver place in our pantheon along with better-known thinkers who we know of today. these men saw violence as a means to an end they never realized but that they did not achieve those goals does not mean that the sum total of the story was one of a horde of comes easily suppressed. rather 200 years later we must reckon with the politics of the enslaved, with the world the slaves made here in new orleans. and with the humanity, bravery and heroism of the men who

fought and died for their liberty. only through understanding their stories can become to understand the true history of the this city, of louisiana, from the south and width of the nation. thank you. [applause] i am happy to answer any questions as best i can. if you could come up to the microphone over here, it would be great. >> thank you for that excellent, excellent rendition. my name is tina edmonds. i am west african. i am nigerian. and my question is, what was it that piqued your interest in writing this book? what was your motivation and that kind of thing? >> i started out in high school

taking journalism and when i got to college i started studying american history and they came upon mention of this revolt. teasley said three things, one of heaven and new orleans, and there was nothing known about it. and as a young man and as a journalist that sort of raise my hackles and i said i want to figure out what happened. and so i started doing a little research in on the first things i read were some of the planters, my first question was to this revolt even happened? why did they -- sounds trivial but as i dug further i realize that those accounts were very biased and i wanted to write a counternarrative that would tell the truth about what had happened. as they started to dig further i realize that this was a story ultimately about the heroism of them the men that resisted slavery a story of bravery, story of courage, i story of men who are willing to fight and die for certain ideals and as a 23-year-old guy that is just the sort of story that was easy to fall in love with. >> you no, but they make two

comments. the first one is, i am by afferent. i am it you do, i am by afferent and i've very much relate to some of this. being all marble or having suffered for something you think should not have happened, that you are willing to die and even a 16-year-old, i said in they buy afro--- and as you all notice about the oil in nigeria, so i can kind of -- that is a kindred spirit, that type of thing when you feel like you are so -- to say i'm willing to die for this. the awe -- other, they want to make is, one of the anthropologist knew that i was even a and she said to me, the haitians are either and she told us a fascinating story of

courage, of how people refuse to be in their foreign land and because of that she had to go back and live in haiti. and most of them, most of them are. when my husband went to haiti in 2004 on a medical mission, he is a surgeon, he saw people dressed exactly the way we dress at home he saw peoples whose names were very close to us and when the haitians listen to our music they said you know what? we can understand it, even though we can't speak the language. so i'm saying all this to say that people really are the same in some form or the other. whether it is through what they have suffered or what they are going through or what they know and a sense of kindred spirit goes beyond race and goes beyond everything, whether and in justice like art include could

luther king said. he said -- it is actually all of us that are suffering the injustice and again i want to thank you for that. >> thank you for sharing that. one of my professors at harvard said to me that you know we have are talking about my interest in slavery and he said you know, it is a question about why people writing about slate history or black people writing about the history of america. he said that is not what it is about. these are our shared stories and whether white or black is important to share the stories and come to understand them so in the story even though i am white i can think of no greater role models than charles deslondes or a a kook or sublif. these men were heroes in it was really an inspiring story want to hear. >> i'm curious about how did you you -- the free people of color, the slaves who are a lot of them got along well with the people,

the french and the spanish so what was the impact after the revolt on the people who were in the city? >> absolutely. in the city there was a free black militia which many of you might have known. after the revolt the government of new orleans operative accommodations to the free black militia for not participating in the revolt. would they have participated in the revolt had the slaves gotten closer? i don't know, but i severely doubt this free black militia would have fought on the side of the white planters. as to the impacts on the slaves, the impact in the slave quarters, i think you know that whole history, that oral history still survives today on the german coast and i met earlier today with some of the defendants of the rebel slaves who have kept the story alive for hundreds of years and if that story is a light on the german coast, how much powerful that story must have been in 1820 or 1830 or in 1860 in the slaves here in new orleans 54 and won their freedom, even

though the emancipation proclamation specifically excluded these parishes from emancipation. so i think they are story and the martyrdom of the slaves in 1811 served as an inspiration and as a powerful story that resonated throughout the slave quarters. but in its immediate aftermath those heads on pikes, those hundreds of heads on pikes pretty -- spread 40 miles served as a tremendous message. i can't imagine the fear, the feelings and emotions that must have been cited on both sides as people sit around our bristly what would happen next. >> just another point. the native guard as you know, the black and navy guard actually fought with the confederacy. it is interesting to think about what their posture might have been at that point, but i'm saying that for those blacks in the war who identified with the whites and who identified like the creoles who consider

themselves a different status, i can't envision them going along with the slaves to revolt. i am just saying --. >> i appreciate that story. it is historical contingency that we can only speculate on. >> i mr. talk yesterday at the library. you have indicated this was a story that has been pretty much buried in history so it had to have been pretty difficult for you to uncover a lot of those so what were some of the source materials you use for it and how did you come up with what you were able to find about this revolt? >> is a question about my sources and this was a lot of work. it started first with gathering together every sort of description from planters, letters, travelers accounts that described what happened in the revolt. those are sort of the first layers but really the bulk of my work was with plantar ledgers and statements of financial accounts in the court testimony.

the ledgers our list so they will say something like quaku was brought over in 1806, bought for $600 served as a field handed died in 1811. the court testimony will say something along the lines of charles announced kook as a slave fed -- baseless go on for pages and they are full of data but it is all fragmentary. is not in any narrative form so what i did was they took all those lists and put them into excel databases so you can could cross-reference each slave and what they had done and where they had come from, what works they did on the plantations. and then i took hold land maps and imap those databases onto the land maps and so is literally sitting in the library with cramps. if there were five to 10 i would cover it orange and so i feel -- filled out a spatial perspective of how it happened so once i had

all the cross-reference in the database and the land maps, then i started to piece together the temporal folks so i give from the descriptions of the planters and the military officials when certain events would happen and where, using actually google maps to figure out how long it would have taken to walk from one place another so you can back trap -- backtrack so then i turned that map to fragmentary evidence that i figured out spatially into a chronological error to. this whole process sounds simple but it took about a year. and then once i have have done that i is layered travelers accounts and secondary sources about what slave like was life or what the plantations look like or etc. etc. in order to build up a picture of how the slaves would have felt or what the plantations would have looked would have looked like and smelled like and all those worshiping so it was really piecing together a complex mosaic of fragmentary evidence into a narrative. >> thank you.

>> daniel, i'm amazed at the kind of tactical knowledge that the slave revolt had and i'm curious how do you surmise they came up with this knowledge or came up with the tactics to lead this and especially the organizational capabilities. >> the question was about the organizational ability. now charles deslondes was a slave driver. slave drivers were very aware of organizing large and complex groups of people. sugar planting is a very difficult thing to do. it requires immense technical skill and involves a lot of sophistication. the process of granular sing sugar is one of those -- available the time. a man like charles who had the sophistication to run a plantation was very good at organizing large groups of people so than the question becomes if we know these men were good leaders and could organize and execute various large-scale movements and

activities, where would they develop any sort of military perspective? how did they learn military tactics? now, there has been an excellent body of scholarship on the influence of west african military tactics on new world slaves. 70% of the slaves here in new orleans have been brought over from africa, either directly or from shipment points like jamaica or charleston and many of those have been captured in war, so they were very familiar with especially the congolese and the shaun tait traditions of warfare. those are present both in haiti and here in louisiana. and finally i think as i mentioned earlier, the slaves were everywhere, watching with the planters did and how they behaved. i find it hard to believe that they would have learned and understood from the discipline and movements of the white militia and the american military power exactly those groups fought. i spent a lot of time reading things like old u.s. infantry manuals to try to figure out how

military tactics worked at the time and what would make sense and you know how one fought a war with muskets and that. i was struck as it went to the sources, just how correct the slaves movements were. it was really fascinating to come to the realization of just how sophisticated the slaves were. yes, sir. >> would most of the plantations in this region being of french or spanish descent planters, when you compare the slave revolt here to the cultural issues with the slaves and also the plantation owners did you see a difference between this region versus the more anglo plantation owners in other parts of the country in relation to things like nat turner and some of the other rebellious? >> absolutely. the question was about regional differences. louisiana, this labor here was very different from rest of the country. in one major way that this was a sugar territory.

it was not, they were not growing cotton or tobacco. among american slaves as was known as the most brutal slaves on the american comment. the average lifespan on the sugar plantation was roughly seven years. sugar planting require 16 hour day supplanting. they asked one, how can we harbors sugar if we only work 16 hours a day? the answer he wrote is to consume men and animals and that was how the process of sugar planting went. and so just briefly to describe how they maintain order on these plantations, there were three primary modes of punishment. the first was whipping. they would plant stakes in the ground and one into one stick and one to the other in the lakes to the third. then they would be the slaves to an inch of debt. others had torture devices including -- including collars

to prevent the slaves from meeting and colors with spikes of the slaves couldn't sleep and finally they would kill or decapitate anyone they feared was involved in an surrender he activities. the slaves or whether french or american were incredibly brutal. part of that was because of the nature of sugar growing and the immense fortune to be made from sugar growing and the huge labor demands of sugar and part of that was just because of the brutality necessary to maintain the complicity of the slaves. i think it is interesting and i've been asked this question several times. i don't know if any of you were thinking it but i would like to go into some more interesting questions, which was why these planters on their slaves and the slaves were responsible for the wealth and working the plantations with a wound or kill slaves? why would they want to keep them healthy? they would want to kill them. they would want to treat them well. is a common misperception. the slaveholders in an ideal world would want to street there

plays well and keep them healthy but the slaves were not thrilled about eating slaves in the level of violence that the planters were forced to use was necessary to keep the slaves from revolting, to keep the slaves working. there was no way to keep, to treat a slave will keep them healthy and not punish anyone and have them actually work on a sugar plantation as a slave. and order to force the slave to work required tremendous violence and the essence of slavery at its most basic level is a fight to the death essentially. who will win, the planter of the slave? that is nowhere brought into -- than this revolt. does that answer the question? >> i would like to know, are you planning on writing any other books about louisiana new orleans history?

one that comes to mind that you might be interested in, there was one of the largest, in 1887, in the bush parrish a sugar strike of the workers. it is another story that does not get much play in history books, and that particular topic seems to be perfect as a second part of maybe a trilogy. about louisiana, new orleans, metro area history. >> thank you. >> are you aware? >> i'm definitely aware of that event as i've read about it and it is remarkable. i think that it and stands to testimony just as how long this racial violence persisted in this country. if you think about what happened during reconstruction in louisiana, the same violent struggles continue. one of my favorite professors, my thesis adviser, she told me

look in 1865, when the slaves emerge from slavery what did they do? they organize political organizations. they get elected to congress and run for senate. there is a mass of political organizations and she said that doesn't just emerge in 1865. organizations were predated emancipation and there was a tremendous level of political awareness, political organization within the slave quarters and that political debate you see reflected again in reconstruction. when you look at the level of violence with which sugar planters in new orleans even after the war were willing to use to continue to further their own economic goals is astonishing so thank you. >> a couple questions. u.s. particularly before about the process of research but where did you come by the electors and the primary sources? >> the letters are actually

thanks to genealogists and are available in published form and i was -- harvard is a wonderful library and those genealogical ledgers were at harvard, which was wonderful. >> the second question i had was about the writing process itself if you talk could talk a little bit about that and in terms of, since i have not yet read the book, whether this would be appropriate for a high school population? >> absolutely. my thesis which is what this book emerged from its very academic and full of theory and i like to think of that is sort of a google maps version of here is the overview what happened and where. when i wrote this book it was google street and all these analogies and the way i think about it. it is funny how much this entelechy -- technology has an impact on how i think. i try to read this book as much as possible for a popular audience. the goal of this book was not to write a dry academic track. to change the way we think about

slavery and to make sure that this revolt and specifically the leaders of this revolt are recognized in every history textbook every high school as in every elementary school class that discusses slavery. i don't see how you can talk about slavery especially slavery in louisiana without talking about the largest slave revolt in american history and the leaders of that revolt, so i hope a year from now this won't be the untold story and i hope there will be three or five or six more books about this revolt. so the book is written in narrative style which i hope will be engaging. is hard for me to just plug my book and tell you it is really row win and you will love reading it but it is a total page-turner. if you start reading it tonight you probably won't stop until the morning when you finish it. but as to whether it is appropriate for high school students, i think absolutely and i think the sooner people start to read and consider and deal with the truth of the past that

better able they will be to understand it and to make sure that we don't mistake, make the same mistakes again. and so i spoke to 8th-graders yesterday who were incredibly engaged and asked me some wonderful questions. and i don't think that the story is one that should be kept from children. in fact, i think as a young man, when i was younger i would have loved to approve the story because i think too often when we think about slavery and with slavery as taught in schools, slaves are -- we were taught to think about the slaves as victims, to think about slavery is guilty and depressing and when we look back i think we feel shame. and rightfully so but there are also moments of heroism like this 1811 revolt and i think the more we can recognize the tremendous bravery of the men that resisted slavery the more we can celebrate that passed, the more we can look upon these people as having some of the same ideals we struggle for today of freedom and liberty. the more we can see that as part

of our story and relate to that is part of our story rather than just reading a narrative of history that only talks about what happened in washington d.c., who thomas jefferson was talking with and who he was sleeping with all of that. the more we can move onto thinking about common people, people here working on slave plantations and what they contribute to the course of american history. i think the better our understanding of american history will be. yes, sir. can you come up to the microphone please? just trying to enforce the rules here. >> i actually had a couple of questions. one was, what was going on in europe because obviously there was the french revolution, liberty, equality. when with slavery abolished in france and then later in britain, and then later and south america, leaving the north

america's slaveholders? the second thing was is this interesting thing that you hinted at about eight brutalized black slave culture and coexisting with obvious view and knowledge of you know, freedmen of color who were armed and obviously identified with the white slave owners. were there examples of black moses' from the privileged classes trying to lead revolts or in franchise they are brutalized, you know, compatriots? did that happen? and it also brings to mind, did manuel ever, the survivor, ever you know sort of revealed what might have motivated his trusted

slave driver to turn against him it is an interesting speculation of probably a great novel there up what motivated him. >> to answer your first question about what was going on in europe, the haitian revolution and the ideology of the black rebels there had a tremendous impact on the french revolution. there was a group called the society of the prince of the blacks who played a major role in the revolution and they were conversant and in touch with the rebels in haiti. by about 1808 or 1810 by the time the revolution was occurring britain have become the number one anti-slavery empire in the world. they would search ships on the high seas to prevent them from slave trading because britain no longer had slave colonies. france had lost its colonies and america was not isolated because

they were huge slave plantations and slave complexes and in jamaica and brazil which totally torture was going on up here. new orleans is on the periphery of the slave atlantic. the second question was about the fascinating question of freed blacks in new orleans who occupied obviously a privileged position in society and the question of whether they would have sided with the white door with the slaves. i don't know and honestly i haven't spent enough time studying that question to give it the best possible answer. so i think i will defer to other experts on that one and the third question about man while andre, why they trusted the slaves. the reality is that the planters despite this revolt scholes introspection. unlike in nat turner's ribeau, nat turner's revolt reflects whether slavery should continue.

it wouldn't be a huge loss to the economy here. the sugar planting was the basis of society and so there is no similar soul-searching among the white population as far as i can tell. rather there is simply an effort to write this out of history, so some philosophers have speculated on this issue, a wonderful haitian philosopher, who writes any questions? could the planters conceive of what it happened? did they even understand what was going on in the slave quarters or did they really believe that these men were just crazed criminals? i think there is a possibility that they didn't understand the slaves or they could let them see it because the slave factions, the idea of politically engaged, active, heroic black men standing up for their freedom willing to fight and die for it undermines the very ideology that forms the basis for american slavers as slaves are not people, so i think they met at the planters directed try to think about the politics of the humanity of

their slaves it is just a no go topic area for them because as they start to think about that than the entire ideology which forms the basis of their livelihood falls apart. how do the planters think about slaves? slaves cost about the same as an expensive car today. the difference between however the slaves, seven or eight years for a slave from africa. the price recouped in four years you could double your money if you were a good sugar planter within eight years so it was tremendously tremendously profitable and i think it is hard in the face of all of that money and in the face of all that history, think it was very hard for these planters to realize or understand what was going on in the slave quarters or indeed do with some of the moral questions. did i answer all of your questions? is there anything else?

>> to major part of your book is about the emmy show this event and the broader issue of amnesia of history. boat is interesting to me is right after, i am a native new orleans and and after katrina the a lot of the residents of this neighborhood in this region that didn't flood, one of the first things that you heard on the media was that in contrast to what happened at the superdome, that new orleans have always gotten along well and you heard it over and over again. there was never a racial problem in new orleans. it brought to mind, the question of is it a cultural thing or in the broader context of history, have you looked at how certain events are reported and become part of the culture, the folklore even if there is an adversarial relationship versus ones where it's just pushed aside and it is simply not discuss any more? >> i talk a little bit about books in the past. it is fascinating expiration of this exact topic. i came up with the theory that

there are three ways in which they then became silent. first first is when an illiterate population does not write down what they did are wide and so because the slaves did not record their thoughts or their deeds, in some sense those thoughts will be forever lost to history unless we go through evers to reclaim her try to figure out what they were thinking or saying. the second is the processor the moment of archives, that archives are created, when someone decides these documents are worthy of protecting and keeping and saving and these documents are not. the planters have decided those diary should be kept in an archive on a plantation or put in a bank or preserved at a courthouse. probably not. the third moment of silence when we returned those archives and decide which stories we were going to write. so i think oftentimes people write stories for a very explicit political purposes and certainly for the past 200 years, the political purposes did not include examining this

revolt. i think 100 heads on pikes does not resonate with our image of what it is to be american. i think people had trouble dealing with that that or conceiving of how we could write about better why that would need an important moment in our history. so i think, or at least i hope that now my generation which grew up sort of after the civil rights movement in an age where we have a black president, they look at things differently, or at least i hope we do and sort of put -- with a fresh eye and i think that i certainly hope that there will be true and that we will start to uncover and ring up and learn about many more moments of our stories that have gone untold. >> if there are no further questions i want to thanked daniel for an fascinating and enlightening presentation. dannel, thank you very much. [applause] to find out more about daniel

rasmussen and his book, visit his web site, daniel rasmussen.net. publishers weekly has announced a nonfiction books they will be releasing the spring. here are 10 bucks in the category of history in military history in order of release date

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