The Creole Rebellion: The Most Successful Slave Revolt in American History

The Creole Rebellion tells the suspenseful story of the bloody mutiny on board the slave ship Creole. Bound out of Richmond, Virginia, the Creole was seized in a violent takeover by its captives in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in November 1841. Sailing en route to a New Orleans slave-auction block, nineteen of the captives mutinied. Led by enslaved bondsman Madison Washington, the mutineers killed one man and injured several others. After taking control of the vessel, Washington forced the crewmen to redirect their course to Nassau in the Bahamas, then a colony of Great Britain, which had abolished slave trading eight years earlier. Despite much local hysteria upon their arrival, all of the 135 slaves aboard the ship eventually won their freedom.

The harrowing mutiny triggered a political firestorm that was unprecedented in American history. The United States and Great Britain rushed to the brink of war over the slave ship seizure, President John Tyler’s presidency was nearly ruined over it, Congressional rules were overturned by it, and numerous public figures were wrecked while others were glorified. The revolt significantly fueled and amplified the slave debate within a divided nation that was already hurtling toward a Civil War.

Part history, part adventure, and part legal drama, historian Bruce Chadwick’s The Creole Rebellion chronicles the most successful slave revolt in the pages of American history.