The Baptist War: A Captivating Guide to the Origins, Events, and Legacy of the Great Jamaican Slave Revolt (History of Slavery) by History Captivating

Author:History, Captivating
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-08-05T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6 – The Making of Samuel Sharpe’s Conspiracy

The most important figure in the Baptist War was Samuel Sharpe. Not a great deal is known about the man. He was born about 1801, and his parents were imported from Africa, probably from the Gold Coast, sometime between 1787 and 1801.

As we mentioned earlier, Sharpe worked in some capacity as a house slave at Cooper’s Hill, not far from Montego Bay, and seems to have been a companion to his owner’s children. At the end of his life, Sharpe said that he had never been beaten or flogged and had been very well treated (Zoellner 2020, “Island,” 26).

While we know Sharpe was literate, how he learned to read and write is not known. He was later married, and his wife lived on a different plantation, which was a common situation. They had one child, a daughter (Encyclopedia.com, “Sharpe” n.d.).

Confusingly, Samuel Sharpe’s owner was Samuel Sharpe, Jr., owner of Cooper’s Hill and a lawyer. A document from 1817 shows he then owned twelve slaves, including a 12-year-old boy called “Archer.” Another document from 1832 indicates he owned thirty-two slaves, which shows that the lawyer was achieving considerable success in Jamaican terms. The 1832 document lists Archer, alias Samuel Sharpe. The boy Archer at some point began using the name Samuel Sharpe. Perhaps the slave admired the master? (Zoellner 2020, “Island,” 26).

Sharpe was sold or rented to a Miss Williams who ran a boarding house in the town of Montego Bay. He was sent back to the plantation because he had destroyed a musical instrument in a fit of religious piety (Zoellner 2020, “Island” 26). This example of piety may be a clue to Sharpe’s religious views. Some of the nonconformist sects took a dim view of music or dancing as frivolous and immoral. This probably means he also frowned on rum and other alcoholic drinks. It is unknown whether this apparent puritanical streak was lifelong.

Sharpe was sold to the Croydon plantation. Counting the boarding house experience, he was rented or sold at least twice, which was not an uncommon experience for slaves. Why he was sold is not known. His owner might have needed cash, wanted to remove him from the plantation, or even desired to give Sharpe a better situation. These transitions did not isolate him because he maintained friendships with men named Dove and Gardiner at Cooper’s Hill, who became important leaders in the war (Scott 2022).

The Baptist Church was what gave Sharpe his beliefs. He became a deacon, a respected position with a good deal of responsibility. His personal theology seems to have been a combination of what the missionaries preached and what he read in his Bible. Sharpe also seems to have been an earnest participant in discussions of religious matters.

In 1807, a heavily censored version of the Bible was published for the use of slaves, titled Select Parts of the Holy Bible for the Use of Negro Slaves in the British Caribbean Islands. Among the parts left out was the story of the Israelites’ flight from slavery in Egypt.

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