Most of the Freedom Fighters Escaped
Only 95 of the brave freedom fighters involved in the revolution were killed, out of the speculated 200 to 500 who participated. Most fled into swamps and forests to escape the militia that had come after them.
Those Caught Were Shown No Mercy
Militias on horseback hunted the enslaved with dogs. Members of U.S. military and Marines were among those hunting freedom fighters. If they were found, the militia shot them, hacked them up with axes and collected their heads as trophies. Their heads were then carried back to the Mississippi River and placed on long wooden pikes to decorate River Road north of New Orleans for 40 miles. Forty to 60 Black people were treated in this manner. In New Orleans, courts called for the public executions of 11 more participants whose bodies were then dangled from the gates of the city and exposed in central squares. Their heads were also mounted on poles.
It’s Mostly Undocumented
History professor and renowned expert on the history of slavery in America, Winthrop Jordan, recently observed the 1811 insurrection remains as “the least well documented of all the major conspiracies in the American South as a whole.”
There are no state or federal historical markers that commemorate the insurrection. There is only a brief sentence on the marker for the Woodland Plantation (formerly Andre Plantation) that states the existence of the uprising. It reads “Major 1811 slave uprising organized here.” The longest published account of the rebellion, “Rebellion on the River Road: The Ideology and Influence of Louisiana’s German Coast Slave Insurrection of 1811” by Junius Rodriguez is only 23 short pages. Since 1995, the African American History Alliance of Louisiana has held an annual commemoration at every January. Descendants of some of those involved attend each year.
