eal into the Slave Revolt of 1811, one where hundreds of slaves marched from plantation to plantation towards New Orleans with the strategic aim of capturing the city and proclaiming it the capitol of the new republic. The Slave Revolt of 1811 is significance in terms of black history, slavery, and relations between whites and blacks in the Antebellum South. So, too, however, it reveals a great deal about the structure of society at the time. In this analysis, we will examine the Slave Revolt of 1811 and, in so doing, discover how this revolt was an important catalyst that promoted the urbanization of New Orleans and forever transformed the idyllic plantation life during the Antebellum era.
Slavery in New Orleans was necessary for plantation owners to continue making enormous profits in the cotton and sugar industries. Largely an idyllic, plantation society, New Orleans represented the city where many wealthy plantation owners kept homes for the Winter cultural season. Into this idyllic realm made up of three cultures and races, came slaves who mainly came from the Senegal River Basin area of West Africa. These slaves, however, arrived in New Orleans as a collective group and often their language, community, and culture were kept intact or blended with French culture. When the United States took control of New Orleans in 1803, the French idea of equality was replaced by a much less racially inclusive mentality and ideology. Blacks reacted to this in two ways. One reaction was to try to form a power block of African Americans while another focused on promoting the leftist ideology of equality in the French tradition. Despite which position blacks maintained, slavery continued unabated with relative stability in New Orleans society “New Orleans was marked by a remarkable degree of continuity over time…greed and avarice characterized the city’s growth under the French, Spanish, and United States regimes” (Ingersoll 17)...