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Clairborne's History
"Claiborne wrote the first draft of the history of the uprising; historians like Phillips, Kendall, and Gayarre helped enshrine that draft as the conventional story. Like Claiborne, these men lived in a society where the rule of law and the rule of white men were synonymous. -
Clairborne and the Planter's first draft of history
"Claiborne wrote the first draft of history - and he wrote it with the goal of covering up the revolt and saving face before an anxious nation. He wrote the salve-rebels out of history, believing that all that was important was the rise of American power in the Southwest. Swallowing Clairborne's interpretation, most historians have portrayed the slave rebels not as political revolutionaries, but as common criminals." (204) -
Gayarre's Reconstruction view
The first historical account of the 1811 uprising emerged amid the political turmoil of Reconstruction, a time when newly emancipated African Americans were agitating for more rights and more control over the terms of their labor. Horrified by this turn of events, a sixty-one year old ex-Confederate named Charles Gayarre published an account of the uprising...'the misguided negroes...had been deluded into this foolish attempt at gaining a position in society...' -
The Academic View a Century later
Ulrich phillips (Yale) - "Slaves committed crimes out of backwardness and a lack of civilization, and their lawbreaking had few distinctive characteristics. Phillips saw the revolt as fundamentally apolitical, producing disquiet, but little else" -
Kendall's History of Savages
Kendall depicted the slaves as animals, using words like growling and howling to describe the savages involved with the rebellion. Like Gayarre, Kendall saw this story as a moral tableau. 'One must hold the reins tight over the blacks,' Kendall wrote." -
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The Marxist History of the Revolt - Aptheker
"Aptheker's grand [communist] political and historical agenda overshadowed the details [of the revolt] and the individuals involved. Tossed from white supreemicsts to Marxist Activists, the actual history of the 1811 uprising fell by the wayside." (209) Basically Aptheker and others understood slave revolts as the workers rising up against the owners, like Marx predicted would happen in a communist history. -
Leon Waters and Albert Thrasher - "On to New Orleans!"
"The book...devotes twenty four pages to the uprising and its suppression. In an account defined by Marxist ideology, Thrasher fit the uprising within a long contextual history of revolutionary struggle." -
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Rasmussen's New Understanding?
Read Page 210! How is this different than the two previous 'histories'?