Stono Rebellion

The Stono Rebellion began on September 9, 1739, near the Stono River in St. Paul’s Parish, outside Charleston. Enslaved participants seized firearms and ammunition and moved south. More people joined as they traveled. Colonial accounts describe attacks on white residents and the destruction of property, but those accounts were produced within the slaveholding society the rebels sought to escape.

Their destination was Spanish-controlled Florida, where fugitives from British slavery could seek freedom under Spanish policy. St. Augustine represented a possible refuge beyond the authority of South Carolina enslavers. The South Carolina Encyclopedia identifies this pursuit of freedom as the central goal of the uprising.

Lieutenant Governor William Bull encountered the marchers and alerted local whites. Armed planters and militia confronted the rebels later that day near the Edisto River. The militia suppressed the main uprising; escaped participants were pursued afterward. Some were killed in fighting or executed. Estimates of participation and deaths vary, and colonial reports do not preserve the full perspectives of the enslaved people involved.

The rebellion contributed to tighter restrictions on enslaved and free Black people, including the 1740 Negro Act. Its history is both an account of armed resistance and a reminder of the violent system that made flight necessary. The map displayed here dates to 1773, decades after the uprising, and provides geographic context only.