Denmark Vesey's Bible
The Thwarted Revolt That Put Slavery and Scripture on Trial
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- $21.99
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
A timely and provocative account of the Bible’s role in one of the most consequential episodes in the history of slavery
On July 2, 1822, Denmark Vesey, a formerly enslaved man, was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina. He was convicted of plotting what might have been the largest insurrection against slaveholders in US history. Witnesses claimed that Vesey appealed to numerous biblical texts to promote and justify the revolt. While sentencing Vesey to death, Lionel Henry Kennedy, a magistrate at the trial, accused Vesey not only of treason but also of “attempting to pervert the sacred words of God into a sanction for crimes of the blackest hue.” Denmark Vesey’s Bible tells the story of this momentous trial, examining the role of scriptural interpretation in the deadly struggle against American white supremacy and its brutal enforcement.
Jeremy Schipper brings the trial and its aftermath vividly to life, drawing on court documents, personal letters, sermons, speeches, and editorials. He shows how Vesey compared people of African descent with enslaved Israelites in the Bible, while his accusers portrayed plantation owners as benevolent biblical patriarchs responsible for providing religious instruction to the enslaved. What emerges is an explosive portrait of an antebellum city in the grips of racial terror, violence, and contending visions of biblical truth.
Shedding light on the uses of scripture in America’s troubled racial history, Denmark Vesey’s Bible draws vital lessons from a terrible moment in the nation’s past, enabling us to confront racism and religious discord today with renewed urgency and understanding.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
University of Toronto religion professor Schipper (coauthor, Black Samson) examines in this illuminating scholarly study how the Bible was used both to condemn slavery and to justify it. He focuses on the 1822 trial of Denmark Vesey, the alleged mastermind of "what could have been the largest insurrection involving enslaved persons in United States history." Schipper delves into Vesey's purchase of his own freedom in 1799 and his involvement in Charleston's African Methodist Episcopal Church, and analyzes eyewitness testimony about his use of Exodus 21:16 to justify the revolt. Meanwhile, magistrate Lionel Henry's Kennedy's verdict against Vesey quoted the Bible "to stress the urgency of repentance" and found it "so clear as to be self-evident" that the New Testament endorsed slavery. This view was supported by Congregationalist minister Benjamin Palmer, who made "the first full-throated theological defense of slavery" after Vesey's plot came to light, and Episcopal priest Frederick Dalcho, who endorsed a censored version of the Bible for congregants of African descent. Though readers without a background in the subject may wish for broader historical context, Schipper makes a convincing case that "the enduring but contested question of what the Bible implies in the context of American white supremacy continues to be a matter of life and death in Charleston and cities across this nation."
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