Tally of plantation slaves in the Black Seminole slave rebellion, with sources

Florida slave uprising: 1835-38

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Tally of plantation slaves in the Black Seminole slave rebellion, with sources

Note: This version of the table is out-of-date. The current, revised version is here.

How to read this table: Estimates of slaves in rebellion are listed plantation by plantation, with numbers from various sources listed together to afford a comparative view. Sources are listed completely in the end notes.
Low numbers represent the most conservative figures reported. High numbers represent the highest numbers reported. In one instance ("Dupont & other unspecified plantations"), the numbers are estimates. Aside from this, only reported numbers are included.
Subtotal estimates are conservative, based on the credibility of the combined sources. Further research into correspondence and newspaper reports will likely raise both the low and high estimates. The list of "Miscellaneous other estimates" at the end shows three other people's attempts at the total number of plantation rebels. My final estimate (385-465) is at the bottom of the table.

Dates: Unless noted, all reported plantation rebels defected between Christmas day 1835 and mid-January 1836. There are no reports of mass defections after 1836. Plantation rebels remained with the Seminole allies through 1838.

Master(s) and/or plantations	Low #	High #	Source & notes
Col. Rees, Spring Garden area	160		Cohen. Cohen's 1836 report cited “about 160” slaves carried off. [1]
	160		St. Augustine Herald. “At Spring Garden, we learn from Forrester … the negroes, amounting to one hundred and sixty … taken off.” [3]
	160		Boyd. Cites Cohen number and patrol reporting “complete destruction” of sugar plantations in this area. [2]
Subtotal estimate	160
Cruger and Depeyster, New Smyrna area	70	80	Niles' Weekly Register. Anonymous letter from St. Augustine, dated January 6, 1836, states, "Depeyster has 70 or 80 negroes taken away—Heriott as many." [4]
	60		Boyd. "They secured 60 of the Depeyster negroes," concluded Boyd. [5]
	45		Cohen. [6]
	No #'s given		St. Augustine Herald. Captain John S. Williams reported from region of St. Johns County plantations that Depeyster’s “negroes, with all but one or two exceptions, [were] captured and taken off.” [7]
Subtotal estimate	60
Heriot, New Smyrna area	75		Boyd. Boyd concluded that " ... on Major Heriot’s place all, including the sugarhouse, was fired and 75 negroes were carried away." [8]
	70	80	Niles' Weekly Register and Cohen. Anonymous letter from St. Augustine dated January 6, 1836, appearing in Niles' Weekly Register, stated, "Depeyster has 70 or 80 negroes taken away—Heriott as many." [9]
	80	80	Cohen reported slaves "about 80 in number" captured from Heriot. [9]
	No # given	No # given	St. Augustine Herald. Captain John S. Williams reported, “All the negroes captured and taken off.” [10]
	75		St. Augustine Herald. Editors reported Indians carried off all Heriot’s “negroes, about seventy-five in number.” [11]
Subtotal estimate	75
Woodruff, Forrester, Joseph Woodruff	20		Cohen. See entry on Colonel Rees. Deduced by subtraction since Cohen mentions 180 negroes taken from Rees and Woodruff estate combined while listing negroes taken specifically from Rees as “about” 160. [12]
Subtotal estimate	20
Stamp and Hunter	3	3	Boyd and Porter. Both cited three slaves as exceptions to “most” of the slaves of Stamp and Hunter whom overseers succeeded in restraining. [13]
	4	5	St. Augustine Herald. Captain John S. Williams reported, “Hunter’s cotton house burnt, and four or five negroes taken.” [14]
Subtotal estimate	4
Hernandez
	12		U.S. Congress House 25.2 Report 1043. “… [T]he Indians captured about a dozen of the negroes as he [Hernandez] was in the act of taking them away.” [15]
Subtotal estimate	12
Dupont (Buen Retiro plantation) & other unspecified plantations	20	100	Cohen. Sometime after February 24, 1836, when Cohen stopped keeping his wartime journal, “The Indians had … carried off the negroes, and destroyed his [Dupont's] buildings. So in like manner, of other places subsequently to the time at which I journalized.” [16]
Subtotal estimate	20
Humphreys	34		Littlefield. Humphreys reported that during the summer of 1836 Indians “captured” 34 of his negroes, and he reported an additional number had joined the Seminole allies in the year before the war. [17]
	34	59	U.S. Congress House 25.3 Ex. Doc. 225. Writing government officials in 1838 advancing a claim for Black Seminoles and slaves lost: “My heaviest loss consisted in negroes; a valuable gang of thirty-four of whom were captured by the enemy in the summer of 1836; some twenty-five others absconded before the war commenced, and took refuge in the Indian country.” [18]
Subtotal estimate	34
Miscellaneous other estimates
Sprague	100	150	Sprague. In the first months of the war, from December 1835 through the spring of 1836, Sprague reported the devastation of 16 plantations on which were employed between 100 and 150 slaves. This number is 5 short of the accepted total of 21 destroyed plantations. [19]
Anonymous	400		Niles' Weekly Register. From letter to the Charleston Courier with a dateline of “St. Augustine, Jan. 14”: “There are now about 400 negroes, perhaps more, in the hands of the Indians. The whole of East Florida is very much at the mercy of the enemy....” [20]
Rivers	750	1,000	Rivers. Historian Larry Rivers estimated that as many as 750 to 1,000 or more slaves may have sided with the Black Seminoles. [21]
	Low #	High #	Source & notes
Rebellion's estimated total	385	465	"Rebellion" at www.johnhorse.com. High estimate assumes about 100 (not 20) escaped from other plantations after Feb. 24, 1836. [22]

Endnotes

See complete list of works cited for more information on individual sources.

[1] Cohen, Myer M. Notices of Florida and the Campaigns. 1836. Intro. O.Z. Tyler, Jr. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1964: 81, 88. Return to text.

[2] Boyd, Mark Frederick. “The Seminole War: Its Background and Onset.” Florida Historical Quarterly 30.1 (July 1951): 63. Return to text.

[3] United States Congress. American State Papers: Military Affairs. 7 vols. Washington: Gales and Seaton, 1832-1860. 6: 21-22, citing Saint Augustine Herald, January 13, 1836. Return to text.

[4] Niles' Weekly Register 49.22 (January 30, 1836): 368. Return to text.

[5] Boyd "Seminole" 63 and Kenneth Wiggins Porter, The Negro on the American Frontier. New York: Arno Press, 1971: 342. Boyd's Seminole War essay is available online from the Florida Heritage Collection. See section entitled "A Sugar Empire Dissolves," the definitive account to date of the destruction of the St. Johns River plantations in 1835-1836. Return to text.

[6] Cohen 88. Return to text.

[7] American State Papers: Military Affairs 6: 21-22, citing St. Augustine Herald, January 13, 1836. Return to text.

[8] Boyd "Seminole" 63. For earlier sources, see next three endnotes and Francis B. Heitman, Historical register and dictionary of the United States Army, from its organization, September 29, 1789, to March 2, 1903, Volume 1, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1903: 525. See also Florida Herald, January 13, 1836, as cited in Jacob Rhett Motte, Journey into Wilderness: An Army Surgeon’s Account of Life in Camp and Field During the Creek and Seminole Wars, 1836-38. Ed. James F. Sunderman. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1953: 277-278ff. Return to text.

[9] Cohen 88 and Niles' Weekly Register 49.22 (January 30, 1836): 368. Return to text.

[10] American State Papers: Military Affairs 6: 21-22, citing St. Augustine Herald, January 13, 1836. Return to text.

[11] Ibid. This second reference to Heriot's negroes was not sourced to Captain Williams' report but to another anonymous report from the field of war. Return to text.

[12] Cohen 81, 88. The St. Augustine Herald report of January 13, 1836, also lists 160 negroes taken from Rees. Return to text.

[13] Boyd "Seminole" 63 and Porter Negro 342. Return to text.

[14] American State Papers: Military Affairs 6: 21-22, citing St. Augustine Herald, January 13, 1836. Return to text.

[15] United States Congress. House. "Joseph M. Hernandez. (To accompany Bill H.R. No. 877.) July 6, 1838." 25 Congress, 2 Session, Report 1043: 2. Return to text.

[16] Cohen 141, 141ff. Return to text.

[17] Littlefield, Daniel F. Africans and Seminoles. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977: 36-37. Return to text.

[18] United States Congress. House. 25 Congress, 3 Session, Ex. Doc. 225: 106. Return to text.

[19] Sprague, John T. The Origin, Progress, and Conclusion of the Florida War. New York: D. Appleton, 1848: 106. Return to text.

[20] Niles' Weekly Register 49.22 (January 30, 1836): 370. Return to text.

[21] Rivers, Larry Eugene. Slavery in Florida. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000: 203. Rivers based the estimate on his own research and research by Canter Brown citing Brown's “The Florida Crisis of 1826-27 and the Second Seminole War,” Florida Historical Quarterly 73 (April 1995): 440-42. Rivers 13 also cites Brown's "Race Relations in Territorial Florida, 1821-1845,” Florida Historical Quarterly 73.3 (January 1995): 289, 304 on the same topic. The primary sources of these estimates are unknown. If the estimates are correct, Rivers writes (203), "Abraham, John Caesar, Harry, Cudjoe, John Horse, and their allies had launched quite possibly the largest slave rebellion in United States history." Return to text.

[22] This estimate is original to Rebellion. Return to text.

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