It is the season of Christmas, when festivities and family time take preeminence over our normal lives. As we continue to celebrate the good tidings, we also choose to remember our ancestors.
The Baptist War, also known as the Christmas Rebellion, is to date one of the most popular rebellions in the history of slavery. It was an eleven-day uprising that mobilized as many as sixty thousand of Jamaica’s three hundred thousand enslaved people in 1831–1832.
The name Christmas Rebellion emanated from the fact that the uprising began shortly after December 25. It is also called the Baptist War because many of the rebels were Baptist in faith.
Jamaica, similar to most British Caribbean colonies at the time, was overwhelmingly populated by enslaved Black people. These enslaved people, by calculation, outnumbered white people on the island. In fact, the ratio was twelve to one. The revolution in 1831 was partly influenced by a wave of economic depression that affected some impoverished whites, which made them allies of the rebels. In addition, tensions were already underway because the abolition of slavery was a public discourse in the British Parliament. On the other hand, Jamaican slave dealers attacked that progress by making inflammatory speeches opposing the idea of emancipation. These attitudes and actions contributed to the agitation and discontent of the enslaved majority.
The planning and organization of the revolt were masterminded by Samuel “Daddy” Sharpe, who had been given freedom to move around the island. Sharpe was granted this freedom to travel during traditional holidays or religious services. Skillfully, he used this opportunity to discuss and strategize for an actual revolt. At the end of a regular prayer meeting in mid-December 1831, Sharpe and a selected group of leaders stayed behind to discuss plans for the revolt. Sharpe referenced examples from the Demerara Slave Revolt of 1823 in Guyana and other rebellions on Caribbean islands to encourage his followers. He later prompted each of them to swear on the Bible and follow the plan he outlined.
On a fateful Christmas morning, the leaders of the uprising staged a protest, demanding more free time and a decent working wage. They refused to return to work until plantation owners met their demands. The strike quickly escalated into a full-scale rebellion when the owners declined. On December 27, 1831, the rebellion broke out on the Kensington Estate near Montego Bay. Vast sugarcane plantations were set ablaze, and many whites who were not already in town for Christmas fled to Montego Bay and other communities.
The Christmas Rebellion also included a rebel military group known as the Black Regiment, led by an enslaved man known as Colonel Johnson. This squad annihilated a unit of the local militia on December 28. The militia retreated to Montego Bay while the regiment invaded a number of estates, urging enslaved people to join them while burning plantation homes and cane fields along the way. Another one hundred and fifty rebels attacked a militia regiment at the far western end of the island and defeated them. About twenty-five rebels and one white militiaman died in that conflict.
The Christmas Rebellion came to an end during the first week of January 1832. Resistance continued for another two months as the rebels resorted to guerrilla tactics. At the end of the fighting, fourteen free Black people who supported the rebellion and over two hundred rebels had been killed. More than three hundred enslaved men and women were executed.
Samuel ‘Daddy’ Sharpe was hanged on May 23, 1832.
I would rather die upon yonder gallows than live in slavery
Sharpe’s last words
