Michael Johnson began his study of Denmark Vesey when The William and Mary Quarterly asked him to review three books. As he read them he came to believe "almost all historians have failed to exercise due caution in reading the testimony of witnesses recorded by the conspiracy court" that took its evidence from "intimidated witnesses."
His concerns about the handling of information obtained by torture are contentious, not simply because of their political implications. Historians are taught to respect their sources, and not to substitute their interpretations for reality. For a scholar to claim the text cannot be trusted undermines the foundation of good craftsmanship.
Carlo Ginzburg explored the problem of identifying facts in coerced confessions when he reviewed the transcripts of interviews made by the Holy Inquisition with peasants from Friuli.between 1575 and 1644.
Ginzburg believes that in the area where "German, Italian and Slav customs met," the peasants were practicing pagan fertility rites there were beyond the experience of their interviewers. In the first interrogations, both the questions and the answers were widely variable. However, once the examiners begin to systematically ask questions that assumed they were practicing traditional witchcraft, the answers they heard eventually came to match their expectations.
More surprising, in time a new set of beliefs derived from the interrogations spread through the region. The peasants came to believe they, in fact, were witches. The Inquisition not only had heard what it expected, but had brought it into existence.
Johnson knows that many of the witnesses interviewed by the special tribunal in Charleston in 1822 were incarcerated in the workhouse where they expected to be beaten. Even so, the first slaves they interviewed seemed to be genuinely baffled by the questions. After the first men were hung on July 2, witnesses not only had reason to fear for their lives and but also had some idea, derived from rumors, what the court wanted to hear.
Johnson’s hampered from making the doing the same kind of analysis as Ginzburg, because the manuscript transcriptions of the interviews only recorded the answers, not the questions. He can only deduce what must have been asked, and suggests the five men concentrated on verifying the timing of the planned insurrection, identifying the leaders, examining the plans to use guns, and exploring their hopes to involve slaves from rural plantations.
He also found two political events concerned the judges: the Missouri compromise and events in Haiti. He noted the judges consistently confused references by slaves to discussions in the state assembly in 1821 about allowing slave owners some freedom to grant manumission with the compromise of 1820 which placed limits on slave holding in the Louisiana Territory. Wherever the manuscript recorded the word "legislature," the published report substituted "Congress."
Slaves had revolted in Saint Domingue in the 1790's and achieved some independence in 1804. The Spanish area controlled by the Dominicans rebelled in 1821, and the Haitian president, Jean-Pierre Boyer, had invaded in February of 1822. Johnson found a lengthy article on conditions on the island in the Charleston Courier from April.
He deduces from the answers the slaves gave that they were asked specific questions about any possible links between their planned insurrection and Boyer. One slave, Robert Harth, noted Peter Poyas had "some knowledge of an army from St. Domingo" and another, Monday Gell said Vesey, who was born on the island, had "brought a letter to me which was directed to President Boyer."
Johnson quotes another article by Ginzburg where he says "’texts have leaks’ that can reveal insights unintended by their creators." As Johnson makes clear, the work of the special tribunal could not establish, beyond reasonable doubt, that there were or were not slaves planning a revolt, and if those men, if they existed, were the ones it executed. It could, however, reveal a great deal about the fears that haunted slave holders in Charleston who lived among people they owned, but only partly understood.
Notes:
Ginzburg, Carlo. I Bendandatti, 1966, translated as The Night Battles by John and Anne Tedeschi, 1983.
Johnson, Michael P. "Denmark Vesey and His Co-Conspirators," The William and Mary Quarterly 58:915-976:2001.
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