The Heroic Slave: Frederick Douglass' Novella of the Creole Mutiny
Abolitionist author, orator and statesman Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) is well-known for his speeches, autobiography, and other works addressing the issue of slavery in the United States in the 19th century, but, in 1853, he wrote his only work of fiction – the novella The Heroic Slave – based on the Creole Mutiny/Creole Rebellion of 1841 and its leader, Madison Washington.
Douglass was approached by the British abolitionist Julia Griffiths (1811-1895), whom he had met in England, then a founder of the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society, and was asked to write a short story for an anthology she was preparing, Autographs of Freedom, which would present fictional works on the institution of slavery and, hopefully, reach a large audience in the same way that Harriet Beecher Stowe's abolitionist novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) recently had.
The Heroic Slave was published in 1853 by John P. Jewett and Company of Cleveland, Ohio, and, while it never attained the commercial or critical success of Uncle Tom's Cabin, it enjoyed respectable sales and, among the abolitionist community at least, was a bestseller.
Douglass could have chosen any event to deal with in his piece of historical fiction, but he chose the Creole Mutiny, as this event was of particular interest to him and had formed the basis of several speeches, lectures, and other works since 1841. The historical figure of Madison Washington, about whom almost nothing is known outside of the narrative of the Creole Mutiny, offered Douglass the opportunity to create a character, in the words of scholar David W. Blight, "of transformative eloquence as well as action" (250) and present the rebel slave leader to a White audience not only as a noble hero but also as a warning that there were many more "Madison Washingtons" among the slave population and, sooner or later, they would act just as he had done on board the Creole, though most likely with far more bloodshed.
The Creole Mutiny/Creole Rebellion was an insurrection led by Madison Washington on 7 November 1841 aboard the slave ship Creole, bound from Richmond, Virginia, to the slave markets of New Orleans, Louisiana. Washington had escaped slavery in Virginia in 1839 but returned in 1841 to free his wife, Susan, who was held on the same plantation he had been. Washington was recognized before he could locate Susan, re-enslaved, and sold to one Thomas McCargo of Richmond, a slave trader who was planning on selling a large number of slaves in New Orleans.
Washington was among the 135 enslaved men, women, and children aboard the Creole and, it is thought, prepared to take the ship before he ever set foot on board. He was acquainted with the story of the Amistad Seizure of 1839 in which illegally kidnapped Africans successfully took over the schooner La Amistad and eventually won their freedom as well as with the wreck of the Hermosa off the British territory of the Bahamas in 1840, which resulted in all the slaves on board freed by British authorities, as Great Britain had abolished slavery by this time.
Washington and 18 others took the Creole, resulting in the death of only one White man – the slave trader William Henry Merritt – and had the ship redirected to the port at Nassau in the Bahamas, where all the slaves were freed except the 19 who had taken part in the mutiny. These 19, including Washington, were finally also freed in April 1842. Washington and his wife, who was also aboard the Creole, then presumably began their new life as free people in the Bahamas and vanished from the historical record.
⇒ The Heroic Slave: Frederick Douglass' Novella of the Creole Mutiny
