Haunted Plantations by Geordie Buxton

Author:Geordie Buxton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2011-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

South Carolina Lieutenant Governor William Bull built Sheldon Church on the route of his favorite hunting expeditions. Jemmy and the Stono River slaves marched through this wooded area after burning down a riverfront store in 1739.

My Lords,

Your Lordships Most Obedient

and Most humble Servant

Wm Bull

The Stono Rebellion resulted in a 10-year moratorium on slave imports through Charlestown. Harsher slave codes had already been proposed before Jemmy organized his revolt. On September 29, 1739, twenty days before the Stono rebellion, the Security Act of 1739 was set to take effect. The law was to require all white males to carry arms on Sundays to guard against slave uprisings. Jemmy was a literate slave and was aware of the Security Act. He and the other slaves may have realized that if they did not act to disrupt the slave system before the law was enforced, they may have never had another chance for freedom.

The revolt led to legal and social changes in the South Carolina slave system. The Negro Act of 1740 was passed, which reclassified slaves as “chattel.” The Negro Act made it illegal to teach slaves how to read or write.

South Carolina was a black majority at the time. The fear of further slave rebellions was so great that white freedoms were restricted as well after the Stono rebellion. Slave owners could no longer free their slaves. Taxes were raised on the purchase of slaves to discourage their import, to slow down the growth of the slave population.

William Bull remained in the area, having made the Lowcountry his home. Several years after the Stono rebellion he helped establish the Church of Prince William’s Parish near the woods of his favorite hunting expeditions. He was dead and buried beneath a slab at the church by the time the seeds of revolution—planted during his encounter with Jemmy in 1739—grew into something much larger. He likely never imagined a future in which Jemmy and his rebels’ vision of liberty might come true, but in trying to suppress his greatest fears through stricter laws he inadvertently helped to create that very future.

The British burned Bull’s church in 1780 during the Revolutionary War, but it was reconstructed and renamed Sheldon Church. In 1861, Confederate General Robert E. Lee walked through the church with his men. Four years later, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman burned the church, once again, on his fiery march through South Carolina during the Civil War. As the flames roared over Bull’s grave, perhaps there were still lingering memories of a brutal day in September 1739.

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