Denmark Vesey: The Buried Story of America's Largest Slave Rebellion and the Man Who Led It by David Robertson

Author:David Robertson [Robertson, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780679762188
Amazon: 0679762183
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2000-08-08T04:00:00+00:00

ON THURSDAY, June 27, Vesey was brought into the small upstairs room at the Work House to hear the verdict of the court. Seated before him were the seven judges, as well as Intendant Hamilton, whom Vesey had hoped to see assassinated. Vesey now was seated, his legs manacled.

“Denmark Vesey,” the presiding justice, Lionel H. Kennedy, read, “the court on mature consideration, has pronounced you guilty” The verdict meant death.

The justice continued, probably emphasizing with his voice the words he later chose to italicize in his published text. “It is difficult to imagine what infatuation could have prompted you to attempt an enterprise so wild and visionary. You were a free man; you were comparatively wealthy; and enjoyed every comfort compatible with your situation. You had, therefore, much to risk, and little to gain. From your age and experience, you ought to have known that success was impractible.”

There was more. Now employing a classical allusion, Justice Kennedy continued: “Reared by the hand of kindness, and fostered by a master who assumed many of the duties of a parent—you have realized the fable of the Frozen Serpent, and attempted to destroy the bosom that sheltered and protected you.” The justice then recalled the biblical example of the thief repentant at Calvary. “You cannot have forgotten the history of the malefactor on the Cross, who, like yourself, was the wretched and deluded victim of offended justice. His conscience was awakened in the pangs of dissolution, and yet there is reason to believe that his spirit was received into the realms of bliss. May you imitate his example, and may your last moments prove like his!”

In order that his life and actions not be publicly commemorated, any black person, man or woman, seen wearing mourning in the streets of Charleston within a week of his execution was to be arrested and whipped.

Neither at his sentencing nor at his hanging did Denmark Vesey speak. But as he listened to these words, seated in his habitual posture with arms crossed over his chest but with his eyes fixed upon some remote spot on the courtroom floor perceivable only to him, his judges saw, or later wrote in their report that they saw, tears on Denmark Vesey’s face.

It may never have happened. The tears may have been just a sententious detail fictionally added by his judges to a publication by which they hoped to paint a moral example. Suspiciously, it is the only passage in their official account in which there is even a partial description of his face.

Or Denmark Vesey may indeed have cried—cried for private reasons of grief, fear, remorse, or outrage. The reason why he may have wept upon hearing the sentence of death in that small, heavily guarded room at Charleston will remain unknown.

But if, in fact, during the last week of his life Denmark Vesey silently wept, his tears had been a long time coming.

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