Eye for an Eye: The Role of Armed Resistance ... - Freedom Archives

maroons, calling themselves the "King of England's soldiers," had previously
been armed and employed by the British in the occupation of Savannah, harassed
white settlers with guerilla raids along the Savannah River in the years following
the British evacuation . In May of 1786 they were dispersed by militia forces of
Georgia and South Carolina, who burned their fortress at Bear Creek, Georgia.'9
As in the case of the Spanish at Fort Moussa and the Negro Fort, Black resistance
was aided by the training and arms of European colonizers .
Insurrections and the Black Armed Resistance Tradition
In his study of rebellions by enslaved Africans, Herbert Aptheker esti-
mated there were approximately 250 planned insurrections on North American
soil from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century. These conspiracies
constitute the forwarding of the tradition of armed Black resistance . Compared to
other enslaved African descendants in the Western Hemisphere, the enslaved
Black people of North America had a low frequency of attempted insurrections .
Conditions for Black insurrection was more advantageous in the Caribbean and
Latin America . The percentage of African in relationship to the white settler
population was higher in the Caribbean (e .g ., Saint Dominigue, Jamaica, Cuba)
and in Brazil than in the United States . On the U .S . frontier there was a larger
number of white settlers and a lower number of African maroons in comparison ;,
the U.S.A .'s neighbors to the South . This reality was particularly true after the
legal closing of the holocaust of the traffic of enslaved labor from Africa in the
nineteenth century . Smaller numbers lessened the potential success of revolt .
Given John Thornton's argument that captured Africans brought military training