(ALBUQUERQUE, NM) -- The Creole Rebellion tells the suspenseful story of a successful mutiny on board the slave ship Creole. En route for a New Orleans slave-auction block in November 1841, nineteen captives mutinied, killing one man and injuring several others. After taking control of the vessel, mutineer Madison Washington forced the crewmen to sail to the Bahamas. Despite much local hysteria upon their arrival, all of the 135 slaves aboard the ship won their freedom there.
The revolt significantly fueled and amplified the slave debate within a divided nation that was already hurtling toward a Civil War. While this is a book about the United States confronting the ugly and tumultuous issue of slavery, it is also about the 135 enslaved men and women who were unwilling to take their oppression any longer and rose up to free themselves in a bloody fight. Part history, part adventure, and part legal drama, Bruce Chadwick chronicles the most successful slave revolt in the pages of American history.
Bruce Chadwick is a history professor at New Jersey City University, a retired part-time lecturer at Rutgers University, and writes for New Jersey Stage. He is the author of thirty books, including several books on the Antebellum and Civil War periods. His most recent book is Law & Disorder: The Chaotic Birth of the NYPD.
The Creole Rebellion is available at bookstores or directly from the University of New Mexico Press c/o Longleaf Services, Inc. To order, please call 800-848-6224 or visit www.unmpress.com.
“One of the most dramatic events in the sorry history of American slavery was the 1841 successful revolt on board the slave-trading ship Creole. Overpowering the ship’s crew and sailing to the British Bahamas, over one hundred slaves found freedom. In this eminently readable and meticulously researched book, Bruce Chadwick examines the revolt as well as its political, legal, and diplomatic fallout. This will be the definitive study for years to come,” said Kerry Walters, author of American Slave Revolts and Conspiracies: A Reference Guide.
"The Creole mutiny was a blazing landmark in the torturous journey toward the abolition of slavery in the United States. This informative and well-written book provides a rendering of this turning point that must not only be read, but studied," said Gerald Horne, author of Negro Comrades of the Crown: African Americans and the British Empire Fight the U.S. Before Emancipation.
To see a list of feature articles written by Bruce Chadwick at New Jersey Stage, click here.
