Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

2 results

  • 4 - The Legal Implications of Slave Resistance

  • Jeff Strickland, Montclair State University, New Jersey
  • Book:
    All for Liberty
    Published online:
    09 December 2021
    Print publication:
    16 December 2021, pp 94-115

  • Summary

    When William attempted to hire Nicholas out, he turned to Gadsden to broker the transaction. Not long after, Nicholas refused to hand over his pay to Gadsden’s clerk, and the man called for the city guard to take Nicholas to the workhouse. Nicholas resisted the officers sent to arrest him, expressing the sentiment that he was not afraid to die and eventually striking both men over the head with a spade. A Court of Magistrates and Freeholders tried Nicholas for grievously wounding a white man, a capital offense. Not surprisingly the court found him guilty and sentenced him to hang. However, Nicholas’s attorneys successfully appealed the case and were granted a new trial. In that proceeding, Nicholas was found guilty of a lesser offense and sentenced to a three year term in the workhouse which consisted of routine whippings and solitary confinement – not to mention witnessing the daily degradations at the house of punishment.

All for Liberty
  • The Charleston Workhouse Slave Rebellion of 1849
  • Jeff Strickland
  • Published online:
    09 December 2021
    Print publication:
    16 December 2021
  • Jeff Strickland tells the powerful story of Nicholas Kelly, the enslaved craftsman who led the Charleston Workhouse Slave Rebellion, the largest slave revolt in the history of the antebellum American South. With two accomplices, some sledgehammers, and pickaxes, Nicholas risked his life and helped thirty-six fellow enslaved people escape the workhouse where they had been sent by their enslavers to be tortured. While Nat Turner, Gabriel Prosser, and Denmark Vesey remain the most recognizable rebels, the pivotal role of Nicholas Kelly is often forgotten. All for Liberty centers his rebellion as a decisive moment leading up to the secession of South Carolina from the United States in 1861. This compelling micro-history navigates between Nicholas's story and the Age of Atlantic Revolutions, while also considering the parallels between race and incarceration in the nineteenth century and in modern America. Never before has the story of Nicholas Kelly been so eloquently told.