American Uprising by Daniel Rasmussen Page A

brothel,” where every slave woman lived in fear of coerced sexual activity, and where interracial sex was an obvious, though discreetly discussed, element of the landscape. And much as Charles might want to suppress thoughts of his own mother’s violation, his paternity shaped every moment of his daily life and career on the German Coast. Charles’s light skin differentiated him from the other slaves in the eyes of the planter class and of the slaves.
    But as Charles went about his daily life and work, ringing the bells, whipping the slaves, driving ahead the machinery of the sugar factory, taking nights and weekends at the home of his mistress, he was not the contented slave he appeared.
    In fact, he was using his authority, his relative freedom, not on behalf of his master but rather to push his own agenda. Charles, who in the eyes of the planters and his fellow slaves seemed to be the most loyal and the most privileged of all slaves, was in his spare time a plotter. He was one of the key architects of an elaborate scheme to kill off the white planters, seize power for the black slaves, and win his own freedom and that of all those laboring in chains on the German Coast. He was, in modern terminology, the ultimate “sleeper cell,” imbedded intimately close to the enemy he dreamed nightly of executing. He would begin his revolution by attacking Manuel Andry.
    We will never know what motivated this fateful decision, what factors Charles weighed as he chose to give up the security and privilege of his position and independently plot the overthrow of a system from which he benefitted. Perhaps Charles’s mother whispered to him the story of her own rape, or inculcated in him a sense of rage and resentment toward the white planter class. Perhaps the sons and brothers of the Trépagnier family had Charles’s woman for sport. Perhaps Charles could no longer consent to savagely beating his fellow slaves. Perhaps he could not bear the resentment, jealousy, and bitterness of all those who labored eighteen hours a day in the field under his command and management.
    Whatever motivated him, Charles kept his rage and his plot as secret as possible. Had even the slightest hint of his plans for betrayal leaked out, Charles would have faced instant execution—such was the price of insurrection. He had to lie to both his white master and his slave subordinates on the plantation, letting both groups think that he was a contented and successful driver.
    * * *
    As the white planters celebrated Epiphany and prepared for the night’s celebrations in New Orleans, the planter James Brown took mental note of a meeting between three slaves from three of the wealthiest plantations on the German Coast. Thinking that no one had noticed their absence amid the festivals, the three men gathered on the plantation of Manuel Andry, forty-one miles northwest of New Orleans. Cramped into the small space of a dilapidated shack behind the mansion house, the three men talked in hushed voices. Charles Deslondes gazed nervously out the window. His eyes looked to the second-story piazza of the large Spanish Colonial mansion as he instinctively checked for the presence of Andry. These two coconspirators were some of the only ones he could trust to know his secret purpose.
    Now he listened intently to the African rhythms of Quamana’s speech. Quamana’s face bore the blood markings of the Akan—he was an intimidating man. Captured and brought across the Atlantic Ocean a mere five years before, he was Kook’s best friend and close associate. Sick of the brutal work of sugar planting, Quamana perhaps now talked of what one slave would later describe as the goal of the uprising: to kill all the whites. Charles had heard this talk before, having met with Kook and Quamana frequently on his trips to the Trépagnier estate.
    Twenty-six-year-old Quamana was a slave at James Brown’s plantation, located ten plantations downriver from the Andry estate. His