Creole mutiny
Creole also carried tobacco, a crew of ten, the captain's wife, daughter and niece; four white passengers, including slave traders; and eight enslaved black servants, for a total of 160 individuals on board.
[2] The enslaved persons were kept in the forward hold, but Washington managed to gain access to the deck after one of the crew had lifted the grate.
[1] On November 7, 1841, Washington and eighteen other enslaved men rebelled; they overpowered the crew and killed John R. Hewell, one of the slave traders, with a knife.
They first demanded that the ship be taken to Liberia, which the American Colonization Society had established as a colony for freed African-Americans in West Africa.
Another leader of the revolt, Ben Blacksmith, said they should be taken to the British West Indies, as he knew the enslaved people from the Hermosa had gained their freedom there the previous year.
[3] At the consul's request, the governor of the Bahamas ordered a group of soldiers to board the Creole to prevent the escape of the men implicated in Hewell's death.
The group of American sailors approached the ship on November 12, intending to sail it away, but they were foiled by a Bahamian who shouted a warning to the officer of the soldiers aboard the Creole.
[3] The New Providence authorities arranged for a ship bound for Jamaica, also a British colony, to take the passengers to the island for free, and announced it in the local newspaper.
[4] The Admiralty Court in Nassau held a special session in April to consider a charge of piracy against the men implicated in the mutiny.
In Boston in 1842, abolitionist William E. Channing published a pamphlet, "The Duty of the Free States or Remarks Suggested by the Case of the 'Creole'", to refute claims by Southern politicians that the human property of American slave owners should be protected in foreign ports.
Southerners were outraged to have lost "property" in another instance of British authorities freeing the enslaved persons from American ships that had gone into their ports in the Caribbean.
[citation needed] The abolitionist Charles Sumner argued that enslaved people "became free men when taken, by the voluntary action of their owners, beyond the jurisdiction of the slave states."
In March 1842 US Representative Joshua Reed Giddings of Ohio introduced a series of nine resolutions on this topic, arguing against the federal government acting on behalf of the slaveholders.
The members censured Giddings by a large margin for violating an informal gag rule that had been in effect since 1836, barring discussion of slavery in the House.
'[10] Washington was said to have shown sympathy toward the white crew members on the Creole by preventing others who had been enslaved from killing all of them when they made a last effort to regain control and as such, their freedom.
[10] The case roused strong feelings on both sides of the Atlantic, as the events occurred during the negotiations related to the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842 between the two nations, primarily to settle the borders between the US and Canada, a British colony.
According to the New York Courier and Inquirer, Daniel Webster, as Secretary of State, wrote to Lord Ashburton, then in Washington, DC: The Creole case is presented in strong terms by Mr Webster in a letter (which, when published, will bring all the anti-slavery people about his ears)..." To this Lord Ashburton replied that as the case had effectively arisen after his departure from England he was 'not empowered to treat upon the subject'.
[14] When Parliament abolished slavery in its territories in 1833, Britain advised other countries that slave ships that put into its ports would forfeit the enslaved persons without compensation.
[15] In 1840, the Hermosa, a US schooner in the coastwise slave trade carrying 38 enslaved people from Richmond to New Orleans for sale, went aground on one of the Abacos islands in the Bahamas.
In 1855 the New York Times reported that an enslaved American person had been removed by Jamaicans from the brig Young America at Savanna-la-Mar and "set at large".
Although the action was taken by private individuals and not officials, the paper noted the potential for future conflict between the nations, and called for a lasting solution to be found by "the two governments interested".
[19] Leaders of the slave rebellion: Supporters:[3] Officers: Crew: Passengers: Joshua Giddings introduced these resolutions in Congress in 1842 and was censured for opening debate on slavery in defiance of a ruling against it.
