Denmark Vesey (born Telemaque)

Update: In June 2015 Emanuel AME, the church discussed in this post, was attacked by a white supremacist who killed nine people in an act of terrorism, on the 193rd anniversary of Vesey's uprising.

This essay, written purely as an amateur hobby, has grown unexpectedly popular as an historical resource. So, I've continued to edit and add pertinent information over time for any who may find it useful. Countless real historians have written far better material than I have here; I wrote this instead as a response to the surprising lack of casual popular knowledge, especially in Charleston. Specifically, I felt important aspects of his legacy weren't often being linked or given crucial context in the blogs and newspapers that the everyday person is most likely to read. Most commonly misunderstood is this: because of the silence of 1820s press and vigorous erasure of Vesey's legacy by panicked authorities, one cannot find out much for sure about the man himself. One must shift one's thinking and approach official historic sources just as one might regard the state-run news in some totalitarian country far away-- because for many, that's just what Charleston was.

Black Charlestonian Denmark Vesey (born Telemaque) was hanged at dawn in 1822, accused of organizing and very nearly executing what would have been the largest slave revolt in US history. His story is still controversial today, and I've chosen him as my latest subject for a portrait drawing for Black History Month:

Denmark Vesey, by Ciana Pullen, 2014. Charcoal, 14 x 17." Drawn entirely from imagination. You may reproduce this image for noncommercial purposes only, and you must include easily visible accreditation (i.e. my name) and a link back to this site. [Image description follows at the end of this post.]

He was born in St. Thomas or possibly Africa in 1767 and spent his youth enslaved on the island until one day in 1781, at age 14, when he was pulled aside and marched at gunpoint with 300 other enslaved people to the slave ship of Captain Joseph Vesey.

Vesey sold Telemaque for hard labor on a sugar-cane plantation in French Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), but his purchaser forced Vesey to take the boy back when they discovered his epilleptic fits (possibly faked, as they were never known to recur). Vesey, then 34 years old, enjoyed his company, and possibly because his own parents had died when he was the boy's age, he acted as both master and guardian for Telemaque (who was appropriately named for the son of seafaring explorer Odysseus). He made Telemaque his personal assistant and interpreter for the next three years on the ship, teaching him to read and write.

Captain Vesey, who was born in Bermuda, had previously purchased land in Charleston and fought with the rebelling Carolinian Patriots in the American Revolution. Recognized as a courageous fighter whose expertise of the coastline allowed for clandestine navigation, Capt. Vesey would likely have shared these stories with Telemaque. As shocking as Telemaque's 1822 trial for insurrection would later be, one must remember that in 1781-3 he was entering an American society where just a few short years before, ordinary men, women and children had openly engaged in guerrilla warfare to overthrow their colonial overlords, in which many Black people had participated.

Captain Vesey settled in Charleston, SC, in 1783, which was then a major port for the slave trade, to become a ship chandler and slave broker. By this time Telemaque was called Denmark Vesey.

Urban slave life in Charleston was nothing like plantation life or even slavery in other Southern cities. The 1820 Census listed only 11,654 White people in the City, outnumbered by 12,652 enslaved and 1,475 free Black people, and surrounded by many tens of thousands of rural plantation slaves. A mere 8-9% of those White people controlled Charleston's wealth and political power. By Vesey's arrival a state of fear and constant subjugation of Black people had gripped the city for nearly a century. Awareness of how tenuous their control really was, only grew in light of the Haitian Revolution in 1791, which resulted from a massive successful slave revolt. The ensuing Black rule in Haiti shook the slave-owning world. 

Enslaved Black people and White people lived in close quarters, as crowded narrow plots of land contained mansions or smaller rowhouses for "the Family" of White people with slave quarters standing separately in the back. Strict codes  of behavior for "house slaves" ensured the two never intermingled, and that a free neighborhood could double as a police state for Black people.

The exterior of the Aiken-Rhett House slave quarters, built 1820. An unusually "state of the art" building for the grand house, its arrangement is nonetheless customary for tightly packed, highly regimented urban slave dwellings. Living quarters were on the second floor; kitchen and washrooms were ground floor. [Image shows a long two-story grey stucco building with forest green windows and shutters lining it like a prison]. Photo via.

The interior of the bare-bones Aiken-Rhett House slave quarters (or barracks, really). People would have been cram-packed into these rooms. Privacy was scarce. Photo via.

For instance, regulations for enslaved Black people included strict curfews and laws against walking with a cane unless infirm, wearing nice clothes in public, playing an instrument, smoking, cursing, dancing without city council or owners' approval, or making any "joyful demonstration." Slaves were often sent out to workhouses for "corrections," where people were forced to work a treadmill, placed in irons or whipped, a service for which the slave-owner paid $0.25.

A man in a historic photograph reveals the scars on his back from whipping. Photo via.

Illustration of a slave auction in Charleston (I think I recognize this street corner as a modern day bus stop). [Historic illustration shows the turmoil of a crowded auction and a Black family and White auctioneer on a platform on the sidewalk].

Some owners "hired out" their enslaved skilled workers and craftsmen, who were either rented directly from their owners by other free people and allowed, sometimes, to live independently while working these jobs, or enslaved skilled workers who essentially paid to lease their own bodies or time from their "masters" and earned their own money temporarily. The second practice, called "self-hire," was swiftly outlawed as subversive, but widely practiced anyway. So convenient did slave owners find the practice, "badge laws" were enacted to regulate it by issuing heavily taxed metal tags to self-hirers. (Today the surviving metal badges are subject to a controversial high-priced private commodities trade, as local artist Ben Sivells stopped by to inform me while I drew Vesey's portrait at the Farmer's Market.) Other enslaved people ran the affairs of a part of their "master's" property or "trust," effectively living independently, though this was also illegal. This was sometimes practiced by free Black people who were forced to hold friends or family nominally as slaves, even husbands and wives, constituting a substantial minority of the enslaved people owned by wealthy free Black people.

Joseph Vesey allowed Denmark to practice self-hire as a carpenter until November 9, 1799, when Denmark won $1500 in a street lottery and bought his freedom. I repeat, he won $1500 in a street lottery and bought his freedom.

Map of Charleston, 1849. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Vesey set up his own business as a carpenter, which would become enormously successful with a large Black clientele, and moved to an area of the Charleston Peninsula called the Neck. In those days Boundary Street (modern day Calhoun) was the official City Limits, but people had begun settling north of Boundary anyway. With official police and patrol jurisdiction north of Boundary patchy and unsure, and with abundant cheap land in the reputedly lawless new area, working class White people, free Black people and some Native American people began settling there in large numbers. White citizens soon formed their own night patrol in parts of the Neck.

The Denmark Vesey House, 56 Bull Street (near the Coming Street neighborhood of free Black residents), was identified in the 1970s and is still listed as a historic landmark. However in the 1980s archivists found it was built in the 1830s-50s and likely five houses down from his rented home, which is probably demolished. Local real estate listings still call these types of houses, often 400-800 square feet, "freedman cottages." Image via Wikipedia. [Image description: Small white house on a tiny shaded lot with black shutters and a front porch with small Greek columns. Entire building is the shape of a giant clapboard Lego.]

By the late 1700s officials had complained of urban enslaved people "going myrtle berry picking" in the Neck, or trading rum and goods with nearby rural enslaved people. Enslaved people who escaped from the City would often go there to pass themselves off as free, particularly if they were literate or skilled. Hired out and self-hired slaves were usually forced to reside independently in the City wherever they could find spare space, above garages or in unused corners of sheds. But in the Neck they could build illicit (and illegal) tenements and shacks.

Agostino Brunias, "Free Women of Color with their Children and Servants in a Landscape," c.
1764-1796. Image via Wikipedia. Though this depicts a Caribbean scene, the wealthiest class of free Charlestonians of color in Vesey's time were generally slave-holding Mulatto people like the women depicted. Like the men shown above, male slaves of prominent White families wore distinctive "liveries" or uniforms, the perceived attractiveness of which were often recalled fondly by Confederate sympathizers after the Civil War as one of many super-fun privileges of being a slave (yes, really).

Free Black and Brown (as "mulatto" or biracial people were then called) people lived in nearly segregated pockets of the Neck, some near Coming Street and others on the blocks north of Meeting & Boundary. They sought both to distance themselves socially and legally from slaves (and independent slave tenement neighborhoods). They were also kept their distance from the White working class, who simultaneously resented slaves for undercutting their employment and wages, and resented free Black people. Many White Charlestonians complained that "Negro" meant "Slave," thus "free Negroes" were an offensive oxymoron. Since most manumissions resulted from children of interracial sex and rape, three fourths of all free colored people were Brown. They comprised the great majority of comparatively well-to-do free colored property owners. The wealthiest of them were slaveholders. Exclusively Brown societies were created to provide insurance, professional services, and support for widows similar to a 20th century union. Meanwhile the excluded free Black people generally struggled to make ends meet, forming their own societies in later decades.

Nancy Weston, a mulatta Charlestonian, was photographed a few decades after Vesey's lifetime but her story is nonetheless representative of the lives of free Brown Charlestonians in Vesey's community. Photo via MulattoDiaries, where a commenter identifying as a descendent of Nancy's owners fills in the details. She was the child of a female slave and the Weston plantation owner, and had a child with the Grimke plantation owner. Grimke willed her to be enslaved in name only to his son Montague, the white half-brother to Nancy's own Brown sons. Because of complicated and often difficult manumission laws, many Black and Brown people like Nancy were held in nominal slavery by friends, family and benevolent owners. They had no legal rights and could be seized and sold elsewhere, for instance, to pay their owner's debts. She had been the mistress of a plantation, but Montague sold it and bought Nancy a house on Coming Street in Vesey's neighborhood, where she lived in poverty taking in washing. Montague then attempted to enslave Nancy's sons, who resisted and were beaten in the workhouse while Nancy, a slave, had no legal recourse. Legal claims to freedom could be disputed, with some claims (certified born to a White woman or born to two free Black people) stronger than others, creating a constant threat of instability for free Black people. At some point, for instance, Vesey had children, and though fathered by a free man with various enslaved women, they had a weak claim to freedom and remained enslaved. When Nancy's son attempted to stay at her house to recuperate from an injury and Nancy refused to send him back to work, Montague sent Nancy to a workhouse for corrections. She went on hunger strike until his friends persuaded him to have her released. Though laws of her era forbade educating nonwhite people (I'll get to that later) she taught her boys at night in secret, as did many Black and mulatto people. Nancy's granddaughter was Angelina Weld Grimke, the famous writer and abolitionist.

A "free badge," kept by free Black and Brown Charlestonians just like self-hire slave badges. Like South African Apartheid, Charleston was a "papers, please" police state for all Black people; punishments for being stopped without one's badge were severe. Photo via.

African religions were often incorporated into Christian establishments, except conjurers / physicians. They practiced in secret, particularly in the Neck and rural areas, and were widely sought after by Black Charlestonians. Vesey's acquaintance (and later co-conspirator) "Gullah Jack," was an influential conjurer born in Angola who many believed had occult powers and immunity to white men's bullets. ("But," he would later say, "I am not immune to the treachery of my own race.") Vesey himself, however, was Presbyterian as late as 1816. Most religious Black people attended large white-run churches, which emphasized the heavenly rewards of obedience to their Black congregations. But by the late 1700s Christian racial tensions were growing.

In 1787 in Philadelphia, Black members of the local Methodist church had grown so resentful of their unkind treatment and special restrictions that they left to form the first Free African Society and African Methodist Episcopal denomination. Soon after, Black members of a Charleston Methodist church chafed under White leaders who revoked their privileges to oversee their own church trials, hold their own quarterly conference, and manage their own collections. When White leaders disputed rights to the Black burial grounds and built a hearse house there, it was the last straw.

Rev. Morris Brown. [Image shows a formal drawn or engraved portrait of a formally dressed balding Black man resembling Benjamin Franklin]. Image Credit: The Library Company of Philadelphia via PBS

Rev. Morris Brown and 1400 followers, both enslaved and free, founded a new African Methodist Episcopal church in 1791 near Hampstead (near Reid and Hanover Streets in the Neck). Two other Charlestonian churches arose under the Free African Society and the three were named the "Bethel Circuit". By 1817 Vessey had become involved as one of several founders and leaders of the Hampstead AME church. In the Free African Society people had a chance to study religion as a salvation from slavery rather than a reward for it and to conduct their own affairs as an independent community.

As free Black people gained a foothold in these various areas of society, White resentment turned to panic. Though free Black people were legally "denizens," not "citizens" Charleston's free Black codes were not as strict as in other states, attracting free Black immigrants from across the South. An 1800 law required only that a slave be able to support him/herself to be eligible for freedom (though I'm unsure how this worked in practice). But in 1820 a bill was passed that prohibited manumission (freeing of slaves) except by legislative decree (i.e. owners couldn't free slaves without the assembly's approval). Out-of-state free Black people were prohibited from immigrating on punishment of enslavement, and the crossing of state lines by free Black people was curtailed.

Fearful White people found an enemy in the Bethel Circuit. A law was passed forbidding any assembly or "mental instruction" of Black people, free or enslaved, without a White person present to supervise. In 1817, 469 Black people were arrested for "disorderly conduct" in one AME church, and in 1818 140 members of Vesey's church, including Rev. Brown and other ministers, were arrested for violating the supervision law. Authorities shut down his Hampstead church again in 1820. Vesey, long struggling with White brutality toward his community, was livid.

Though details are scant, over his years in Charleston Vesey had had several children with more than one wife, all of them enslaved. According to a NY Times article he attempted to purchase his wife from her "owner" at the time he won the lottery and purchased his own freedom, but the owner refused to sell. Following the harassment of his church, witnesses later alleged, Vesey said he wanted to "see them free." They alleged that starting December 1821 Vesey began planning the largest slave uprising in US history, which would take place Bastille Day (July 14) 1822.

[You'll want to click below to keep reading....]

Though I could find neither source nor artist, according to 7165 Lounge this is a painting of the planning of the Vesey uprising. [Image shows five Black people huddled in the woods with farm equipment, one dictating to the rest.]

Between six and nine thousand Black people as well as "a large number" of White people became involved in the plot and ready to revolt, most in Charleston but some as far as Santee. Enslaved and free Black boat workers prepared to shuttle plantation workers to Charleston Harbor, while stable workers secured horses and blacksmiths forged bayonetts and weapons. Slaves from the Neck and some rural plantations planned to meet at Bulkley's Farm while another group was supposed to raid the federal arsenal on the Neck, led by co-conspirator Ned Bennett. Yet another group would gather at Bennett's Mills in Cannonsborough (near modern day Cannon & Spring Street MUSC area), led by co-conspirator Rolla Bennett. Gullah Jack would lead people to seize around 500 muskets and bayonets, then raid the arsenal for the Militia (called the Neck Rangers), which was left unguarded in a wooden building on King Street.

They were to march south through the un-patrolled Neck toward the City, opening a route toward the harbor for rural plantation slaves. Vesey allegedly planned to burn Charleston and kill the fleeing White people and any Black people who wouldn't join the revolt. They would then loot banks and stores, hijack ships in the harbor and set sail for Haiti, by then under Black rule, which had "promised to receive the rebels."

Three Black people reported the plot just days before it was to have begun. One man spied on the conspirators and informed a house servant; another free slave-holding Brown man urged this servant to inform his owner. The first two were later awarded $50 annual pensions and the informant became a landowner and slave holder; the third man was excused from paying the "capitation" tax for being a free Black person, awarded $1000 and used it to buy a family of slaves.

Mass hysteria broke out.

The trial began amidst a media blackout (which is why we don't even know what Vesey looked like today). Slaves had no habeas corpus and free Black people were not granted constitutional rights. Over 90% of incriminating testimony came from only six or fewer people while in jail, coerced and threatened, held in solitary confinement for up to several weeks, and an unknown number of them tortured. Surviving trial transcripts were edited, but they show no cross-examination of witnesses; belonging to "The African Church" was treated as evidence of involvement. Some contemporary accounts held that Denmark Vesey brilliantly cross-examined witnesses and built a solid case of innocence, but by other accounts he wasn't permitted to speak at all. None of the defendants plead guilty.

The Charleston Jail (currently the College of Building Arts) where the accused were imprisoned, held in solitary confinement and tortured. Photo via Wikipedia.

Captain Joseph Vesey testified on Denmark Vesey's behalf, as did around twenty-five other owners of the enslaved accused. Mystified and shocked, they testified to their "good characters" and behavior.

While it may seem obvious to modern readers why people would revolt against enslavement, the magistrates voiced disbelief that Vesey and his co-conspirators, all freed or skilled slaves, were dissatisfied, much less planning to revolt. According to one magistrate, the men "not only won the unlimited confidence of their owners, but they had been indulged in every comfort, and allowed every privilege compatible with their situation in the community."

According to a post on 7165 Lounge, the threat of insurrection only continued as the trial progressed. A night brigade of troops and an additional brigade for day patrolled to quell rebellion, and US troop re-enforcements arrived by August to maintain order.

In total, 313 people were arrested for allegedly conspiring to revolt, 131 accused, 67 convicted, and 35 executed, including Vesey. Four white men were tried, imprisoned and fined, three of them working class immigrants from Europe, one an American-born shopkeeper who allegedly told Vesey he "had a white face but the heart of a Negro." A large number of slaves involved were "transported," or sold out-of-state. Those executed were possibly hanged from the Ashley Avenue Oak tree, or on North Line between King and Meeting. By the second account, the platform was built so low their necks didn't break, instead they slowly strangled. Meanwhile a Guardsman shot them one by one in the head as they strangled, pausing to re-load between each person. Archivists believe none of the bodies were released to the families for proper burial and their resting place remains unknown. Owners of the executed enslaved people, though, were compensated by the state.

But in 1964, historian Richard Wade suggested a radically different version of events, wherein the conspiracy was not one of slaves but of White politicians against the free Black class. A similar theory has again been suggested recently (and famously) by Johns Hopkins professor Michael P. Johnson. Due to mounting White hysteria prior to 1822, goes the theory, over to the growing prominence of free Black people combined with the legacy of Haiti, White politicians either invented or inflated Vesey's alleged plot, possibly framing him because his influence threatened White power. Mayor James Hamilton Jr. in particular may have inflated the incident to advance his own career; indeed, he was elected to US Congress in 1822, propelled by fame from quelling an "insurrection." Hamilton's political rival, Governor Bennett (to whom the three informants first allegedly leaked the plot), though publicly condemning the uprising, likewise thought Hamilton was inflating the details. The "not guilty" pleas could mean the defendants refused to admit to a crime they did not commit, or Vesey could have been willing to withhold his confession, thereby protecting others from death. According to Wikipedia, though, "In the April 2011 issue of the William and Mary Quarterly, historian James O'Neil Spady showed that [...] the statements of some of the earliest witnesses [...] ought to be considered credible. Neither man was coerced nor imprisoned. Both volunteered their testimony, and LaRoache even risked statements that the court could have construed as self-incriminating. Spady concluded that a real, but perhaps smaller, conspiracy had been about to launch when the plans were revealed." These theories, though far from improbable on their surface, are not widely accepted among academics.

Regardless of the veracity of the allegations, they were believed to be true at the time, and the backlash was swift and very real.

Vesey's church was investigated and demolished by the City in 1822. The church was rebuilt or relocated and services continued. Rev. Morris Brown, though not found guilty, left Charleston (or was forced to flee) to eventually become the second ever Bishop of the AME denomination in Philadelphia. Vesey's last wife Susan would later move to Liberia. One of his enslaved sons, Sandy, was transported, likely to Cuba.

That year a bill was passed criminalizing any free Black person leaving South Carolina, under penalty of enslavement if they returned. Every free Black person was required to find a respectable white "guardian" to monitor and attest to their "good habits and character" and to report their guardianship with the city council. Noncompliance was punished with enslavement, and any white person reporting noncompliance was rewarded with half the proceeds from the resulting slave auction. Free and enslaved Black people were banned from saloons and public parks without a white "guardian" present, for example, and curfew was enforced; well-respected Black and Brown organizations had to adjourn their meetings to meet curfew. To help enforce the crack-down a new arsenal and guardhouse was staffed on the northern edge of modern-day Francis Marion Square on Calhoun, eventually becoming the old Citadel, a military school still in operation in a different location in Charleston.

An old photograph of the Citadel in the old Armory building. The open space is the marching ground, now Francis Marion Square Park on Calhoun (Boundary Street). The fenced-in rock is a remnant of the Old City Wall from colonial days, a material reminder of what Boundary Street represented. The "horn" rock is still standing in the park. Photo via Wikipedia.

Modern-day Francis Marion Square Park; the old Citadel, at left, is now a hotel, and someone has painted it a grotesque Band-Aid color sometime during the 20th Century. Photo via Wikipedia.

[Edited to add: In writing this I overlooked another important reactionary law passed in 1822 by the South Carolina state legislature: the Negro Seamans Act. It required any free Black person working aboard a ship which docked in the Charleston harbor to be jailed while the ship remained in port; upon departure the ship's Captain could pay a fine of $1000 per Black crew member, or allow them to be jailed for a further 2 months. The reasons given were that these free Black sailors posed a threat of slave revolt and instability. An estimated 10,000 sailors were directly affected by the Act. After a British-Jamaican sailor named Henry Elkison was imprisoned, his court case (Elkison v. Deliesseline) set an important precedent for the supremacy of congressional and international law over state law. As context, the British had complained to President John Quincy Adams prior to the case that the 1822 act was costing their merchants greatly, causing President Adams to condemn the Negro Seamans Act on these grounds. This is important because the eventual repeal of copycat Negro Seamen's laws throughout the South prior to the Civil War was due purely to economic concerns. However the US Federal government declined to enforce the ruling in Elkison's case. Given this tacit approval, South Carolina then passed an ordinance declaring Federal law "utterly null and void." Sailor and Rhode Island native Amos Daley was another sailor who was jailed, and whipped; his case, State v. Daley, is somewhat typical of how the courts interpreted the law at the time.]

[Edited to add: In his 1823 book Reflections, Occasioned by the late Disturbances in Charleston, Thomas Pinckney typefied reactionary white attitudes by opining that it was the free Black society and Black tradesmen who posed the greatest threat. More appropriate White tradesmen from Ireland or from the Northern states would be drawn to Charleston, he lamented, but for the humiliation of being considered equal with slaves and Black people who practiced trades. Of radically reducing the number of Black people, free and enslaved, in South Carolina, Pinckney wrote, "It may, also, be fairly assumed that it would, in some points of view, be beneficial to the slaves; for by annihilating all prospects of success, every temptation to revolt would be removed, and they could never be again subjected to the horrors and calamities, in which an attempt at insurrection, whether at first successful or not, must inevitably involve them." i.e. "protection" from freedom and from making money also protects from being punished by white for that success. He reveals a common Southern fear and dread posed by maintaining the dangerous institution of slavery, countered by an even greater fear of the institution dissolving. He also illuminates some of the logic behind the strategic backlash to Vesey-- which was only beginning.

Historian Michael Schoeppner outlines the origins and rising popularity of "moral contagion" and "quarantine" rhetoric in Vesey's wake. Rather than viewing slavery as the cause for slave rebellion, Southerners instead blamed outside influence (such as free Black sailors) for "infecting" the local slave population with rebellion. Popular rhetoric like Pinckney's positioned barbaric treatment of slaves as "protecting" the vulnerable slave population against outbreak. Meanwhile the drastic laws regarding free Black people that could not be constitutionally justified were interpreted as an emergency measure-- a "quarantine." The concept of free Black people contaminating slaves helps explain why the spate of Negro Seaman's Acts across the South jailed free Black ship laborers-- but exempted Black slaves working on ships. Opposition to "quarantine" laws, often from merchants advocating freer trade, was seen as an example of outside moral contagion. The Supreme Court even acknowledged "moral contagion" as a valid concern, and similar port and immigration laws were subsequently passed throughout the South. Outside contagion rhetoric would be resurrected in Charleston during the Civil Rights era.]

In 1834 an ordinance forbade the teaching of free colored (mulatto or Black) people without a white person supervising and which forbade the teaching of enslaved people to read or write. This effectively criminalized Black education and schools. Black people would continue to educate their own communities in secret, often teaching from their homes; records survive of one Native American woman who taught out of her home in the Neck. Black churches were also banned. Vesey's AME church was shuttered, but the congregation would continue to meet in secret for the next thirty years.

"An Act to Prevent the Emancipation of Slaves" in 1841 banned "trusts," and criminalized the removal of slaves from the state in order to free them. By that time, as one plantation owner's son remarked upon inheriting slaves, any slave owners who wished to free their slaves could not legally do so.

Black Civil War troops depicted in the Shaw Memorial, Boston. Photo via. [Image: photo of a close-up portion of a bronze relief sculpture showing one of several lines of of marching troops 4 men deep with guns over their shoulders.]

Vesey's legacy continued 40 years later, as Black Civil War troops called his name as they entered battle. After the War his church formally reassembled in 1865 and named themselves "Emanuel AME." Their new building, a 2-story wooden structure, was completed in 1872, designed by Vesey's son, architect Robert Vesey, and built entirely by Black craftsmen. It was heavily damaged, however, by an earthquake in 1886.

The congregation in front of the old Emanuel AME two story wooden building, built 1872 and demolished 1886 in an earthquake.

The new Gothic brick building was completed on the site of the old wooden structure in 1891 and still stands today at 110 Calhoun Street. It's the oldest AME church in the South, and houses the oldest Black congregation south of Baltimore, Maryland.

Present Emanuel AME building in 1909, via College of Charleston Library. Calhoun, now a major thoroughfare, was then paved in cobblestone.

Present-day Emanuel AME Church on Calhoun, now stuccoed and painted white in traditional Charleston style, across the street from my favorite art store, Artist & Craftsman. Photo credit not found.

Coretta Scott King at nearby Morris Brown AME after addressing a mass rally at Emanuel AME in 1969 for the rights of striking MUSC hospital workers, a major Charleston civil rights event. Photo via Lowcountry Digital Library.

In 1976 artist Dorothy B. Wright painted Vesey's portrait for display in Gaillard Auditorium. Following public criticism somebody stole the painting, and when the Mayor announced his intentions to commission a replacement, it was returned and extra security added. According to another source, it was stolen, tossed into the bushes outside the building, and was subsequently bolted down. A white Charleston News and Courier reporter wrote, "they could not have found a local black whose portrait would have been more offensive to many white people." Wright herself expressed surprise at the painting's controversial reception. I don't yet know if the painting will be displayed in the new Gaillard Auditorium currently under construction.

Denmark Vesey, as imagined by Dorothy B. Wright and hanging in the Gaillard Auditorium. I think those are reflections in the glass frame over Vesey's figure. Photo via. [Image description: Realistic but folksy style painted scene of a grey-haired Vesey, viewed from behind and to one side, addressing the vividly dressed congregation from his rough-hewn pulpit. His face is not visible.]

Most recently in 1996 a group of local advocates proposed a monument to Vesey, Gullah Jack and Peter Poyas (an alleged co-conspirator) but it was still considered controversial. Plans were held up until proponents agreed to relocate it away from the posh tourist-heavy Historic District, to Hampton Park. Funds, continuously a problem for the monument, are still being raised for its completion, though ground has been broken in 2010. According to the 7165 Lounge blog, when the monument was first proposed local commentators and letters to the editor were aghast at erecting a monument to "an advocate of ethnic cleansing," "a mass murderer," "a terrorist," "the guy who wanted to kill all the white people." A Citadel history professor objected to the "obsession with race" which he believed drove people to memorialize Vesey, pointing out to reporters that some free Black people owned slaves too, saying “I’m not a fan of applying our values of today to the past; this is cherry-picking history.” Personally, I find these slavery-ignoring "race war" arguments absurd, especially considering our city's numerous statues and sites commemorating leaders who were notoriously brutal slave owners, Revolutionary War guerrilla fighters (technically terrorists), confederate leaders (technically traitorous) and even local pirates, not to mention the confederate flag which still flies conspicuously from our State Capitol building in Columbia [edited to add: not anymore!!!] or even our nation's many monuments to Andrew Jackson, who actually was a perpetrator of ethnic cleansing (of Native Americans). 

Prototype for the Denmark Vesey Memorial by sculptor Ed Dwight. Photo via bernews.com [Image shows a miniature of three staid bronze statues of the men facing outward from three sides of a tall stone pedestal].

[Edited to add: on February 15, 2014, a group of activists unveiled the new statue in Hampton Park in Charleston. The event is pictured above. It was sculpted by Ed Dwight (pictured standing center). The monument committee was formed in 1996 by Charleston County councilman Henry Darby and the Avery Research Center's Curtis Franks. The Avery Research Center is an important African American historic institute in Charleston. Image via The Post & Courier. ]

As I mentioned above, because of the secrecy of the trial we have no surviving descriptions or images of Vesey's appearance. We know Captian Vesey remarked on Denmark's physical beauty as a young man and that Denmark Vesey was charismatic; we know he was only 55 when hanged. So all artists' depictions are simply imagining what he would have looked like. Still, he has been portrayed by many over the centuries.

The most commonly cited, almost standard, portrait of Vesey is actually of a young Frederick Douglass. It matches later photographs of Douglass. [edited to correct my original assertion that this was Vesey, after commenter CricketandJen alerted me.]

Denmark Vesey, as imagined by printmaker Charles White, in a style that reminds me of this post I wrote last year. Gibbes collection, via. [Image: Black and white folk-modern or Harlem Renaissance style lithograph of a man's head as he peers back over his shoulder at the viewer. His face looks weary and serious, his hair cropped short and his features shaded in high contrast to emphasize their etched, geometrically sculptural forms. His head leans back as it twists, with the center line of his face forming a diagonal from bottom left to top right.]

Susan Harbage Page and Juan Logan created a portrait of Vesey for the "Prop Masters" exhibit at the Gibbes, available for viewing here (scroll halfway down the page, it's on the right). [Image: a painted collage reduces his head and shoulders to anonymous brown blobs; he appears to wear a draped headscarf. The close-cropped oval frame is made of carved thorny vines like Christ's traditional crown of thorns.]

Michael Perelman created this illustration, which I absolutely love, for the book jacket of David Robertson's Denmark Vesey: The Buried History of America's Largest Slave Rebellion and the Man Who Led It. Photo via Amazon. [Image description: a vertically aligned book cover with a loosely painted bust portrait in the top third, the jagged painted edge giving way to bare cream-yellow colored canvas or background filling the bottom two thirds. Title and author text are superimposed over the bottom half in a mix of black fonts that vaguely recalls old Western "Wanted" posters. The painting looks like the hastily blocked out underpainting for a classical Academic portrait of a youngish attractive Black man in formal white 1820s shirt and black suit jacket. Only three shades of brown block out the shadows of his face with no eye or nostril detail but remaining structurally realistic. The background, before giving way to bare canvas, appears to be a very sketchy pale blue sky with classically heroic clouds. It feels like a mysterious unauthorized glimpse at a formal academic portrait.]

So, given Vesey's back story, here once more is my imagined portrait, with an explanation of the content:

Though a pillar of the community, I depicted him alone both to recognize his hard-won independence and privacy, but also the loneliness of a sailor whose companions were his enslavers, of an intellectual barred from scholarly pursuits, an immigrant in a new land, and a husband and father whose family were enslaved. Described by contemporaries as charismatic, physically beautiful and smart, I used his pose to portray his intellectual nature while using his weighty figure to hint at a life of physical toil while keeping the pose easy and elegant to hint at his persuasive public persona. However I also wanted the pose to be somewhat ambiguous, uneasy, and difficult to know. His hair, though less flamboyant, is modelled after that of his near-contemporary Frederick Douglass, because an artist should always take the opportunity to recreate Douglass's hair wherever possible; also it leant itself to neat lighting effects. I'm not sure what a free Black tradesman / illicit Reverend would have worn in his everyday life but these clothes are fairly accurate to the time, at least.

The map of Charleston on his desk refers both to the plot and to his navigational skills as ship assistant, as well as his literacy and scholarly disposition. The lamp represents the usual light-y symbols: God and Church, intellect, hope, and his own position as a beacon and guide for the Black communities of Charleston. Meanwhile the surrounding darkness elicits the covert nature of his plans, but also the forced secretiveness and protective privacy of the life of a Black person of the era, either free or enslaved.

Denmark Vesey, by Ciana Pullen, 2014. Charcoal, 14 x 17." Drawn entirely from imagination. You may reproduce this image for noncommercial purposes only, and you must include easily visible accreditation (i.e. my name, Ciana Pullen) and a link back to this site ( http://cianapullen.blogspot.de/2014/02/denmark-vesey-born-telemaque.html ).

Detail showing the map, flipped around so you can read it.

Resources I used:

"Between the Tracks," published by Charleston Museum and Avery Research Center, written by Dale Rosengarten, Martha Zierden, Kimberly Grimes, Ziyadah Owusu, Elizabeth Alston, and Will Williams III, 1987, via Lowcountry Digital Library. [It takes a while to load and looks quite dry, but is an absolutely fascinating detailed history of the Neck, or neighborhoods north of Calhoun. I leaned heavily on this resource]

Bernews (i.e. a news site in Bermuda), "The Dual Legacies of Denmark Vesey," 2011, author not named.

Wikipedia

The National Parks Service, US Dept. of the Interior website's page about Emanuel AME Church

The website for Emanuel AME Church

Avery Institute (a part of College of Charleston) website

College of Charleston Library website.

"Denmark Vesey," by The Incompetent Gardner, who quotes Denmark Vesey: The Buried History of America's Largest Slave Rebellion and the Man Who Led it by David Robertson

SouthernSpaces, "Prop Master at Charleston's Gibbes Museum of Art," an exhibit by Susan Harbage Page and Juan Logan.

Egerton, Douglas R., He Shall Go Out Free: The Lives of Denmark Vesey. Madison House, 1999; the 2004 edition published by Rowman & Littlefield is available for preview and purchase here.

Egerton, Douglas R., "Abolitionist or Terrorist?" The New York Times, Feb. 25, 2014.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/26/opinion/abolitionist-or-terrorist.html 

Susan Harbage Page and Juan Logan

Susan Harbage Page and Juan Logan

7165 Lounge, blog post about Denmark Vesey.

Mulatto Diaries, post on Nancy Weston by Tiffany Jones and comment by user "Bill Drayton."

Schoeppner, Michael, Peculiar Quarantines: The Seamen Acts and Regulatory Authority in the Antebellum South.  Published in The Law and History Review, August 2013, vol. 31 #3. Also available online as a free .pdf here: http://authors.library.caltech.edu/44194/1/Schoeppner_2013p559.pdf It is a very enjoyable and thoughtful read! Schoeppner, in turn, cites several original sources for the information which I quoted here in regard to the Negro Seaman's Act and "moral contagion" rhetoric:
- The reporting of State v. Daley in the Charleston Mercury, June 23, 1824.
-Bolster, W. Jeffrey, Black Jacks: African American Sailors in the Age of Sail. Cambridge, MA, 1997, p. 206. Specifically sourced for the contested number '10,000 sailors were directly affected by the Negro Seamans Act.'

Pinckney, Thomas, Reflections, Occasioned by the late Disturbances in Charleston. 1822. As quoted here on Robert Matthew Goldstien's blog: https://robertmgoldstein.com/2015/06/19/reflections-caused-by-the-late-disturbances-in-charleston/