Fall of the Creole
The Fall of the Creole was a political conflict between Britain and the United States in the aftermath of a slave rebellion in 1841 aboard the Creole , a ship used for the US offshore slave trade.
For more than half a century, the slave trade within the United States was at sea along the east coast. In 1841 a brig called Creole with 135 slaves was en route from Hampton Roads, Virginia to New Orleans . Nineteen slaves under their leader Madison Washington rebelled and forced the crew to call at the port of Nassau in the Bahamas, then a British colony . John Hewell, a white slave trader, was killed in the riot; a badly wounded insurgent slave later died. According to international law , this slave rebellion on board a ship was not considered an act of piracy , but rather a mutiny , but this was subject to the jurisdiction of the area in which the act was committed.
The fall of the Creole led to tension in the relationship between Great Britain and the United States, as well as heated internal political disputes within the United States. The Creole rebellion sparked a campaign by northern abolitionists against slavery. In an article in a New York Evangelist newspaper titled The Heroes Mutineers , Madison Washington was referred to as a "romantic hero" for showing compassion for the white crew and preventing his comrades among the slaves from killing them. He even bandaged her wounds after the fight.
The US Secretary of State, Daniel Webster , asked Great Britain to return the slaves to their rightful owners. At that time, however, Great Britain had already abolished slavery in the motherland and in the colonies, which is why the British ignored the US extradition request. Ohio State Representative Joshua Reed Giddings tabled a total of nine House Resolutions that took the position that Virginia law should not apply to slaves outside of Virginia's territorial waters and that the US government should not give in to stand up for the rights of slave owners in this dispute. These resolutions sparked violent reactions. The House of Representatives issued a reprimand to Giddings, who then resigned from his seat. Shortly thereafter, he was re-elected to the House of Representatives by the Ohio electorate.
Although the case should have been discussed in the negotiations between the United States and Great Britain for the conclusion of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, it did not. Among other provisions, the Webster-Ashburton-Ashburton Treaty provided for the termination of the overseas slave trade, with both signatory states undertaking to enforce compliance with the ban.
The British arrested the 19 insurgent slaves and detained them in Nassau, accused of mutiny. These arrests appear to have placated the American public and the US government sufficiently that the extradition request was dropped. The British sympathized with the insurgents and released them after several weeks in prison.
The slave rebellion on board the Amistad in 1839 can be compared to the events surrounding the Creole .
Individual evidence
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- Walter Johnson: White lies: Human property and domestic slavery aboard the slave ship Creole . Atlantic Studies. ISSN 1478-8810 . Vol. 5, No. 2 (Aug. 2008), pp. 237-263.
- Schoenherr: The Creole Slave Ship Revolt . February 9, 2000. San Diego State University, accessed April 8, 2010
- Howard Jones: The Peculiar Institution and National Honor: The Case of the Creole Slave Revolt . Civil War History, 1975, pp. 28-50.