By Royland Barrett,
Contributor
Sam Sharpe
AS WE reflect on the contribution of our National Heroes to nation building, we in the West cannot but recall Right Excellent Samuel Sharpe and the Rebellion of 1831.
We have greater reasons to recall him this time around, for as a nation we are faced with the danger of might in the form of crime and violence triumphing over right, law and order.
A very similar situation confronted Sharpe's followers and the Protestant Missionaries after the Rebellion. So intense was the onslaught of might that it threatened not just their joint quest for emancipation of slavery but their very existence.
Indeed, having already consumed the lives of our National Hero and hundreds of his followers it attempted to destabilise good order and created fear by killings, destruction and intimidation, just as it is doing to our society at the present time.
It all began at Christmas of 1831. The slaves were given three free days. History tells us that our National Hero organised the slaves to "sit down" after the Christmas holidays.
They planned not to return to work unless their masters agreed to pay them for their service. Sharpe claimed that he had overheard the Planters during a meeting held at his Master's Estate at Croydon, Saint James, plan to "burn the free paper" that "Missus Queen" had sent from England for them to be set free.
The timing was strategic as the sugar crop began immediately after Christmas and a "strike" at that time would bring great financial loss to the planters. The strike was planned to be a peaceful demonstration of their "rights".
And so they did, initially. The strike was most effective in the western parishes and stretched even to the parishes of Portland in the east and Saint Elizabeth in the south. But some of the slaves had other ideas. For on the 27th day of December, a fiery signal from high in the hills of Kensington Estate in Saint James which glowed in the western skies, sparked destruction.
The slaves, intolerant of the dreaded means of sugar production which festered a life of subordination and suffering, set fire to that estate and burnt it to the ground.
This burning spread to the other estates and in no time the entire western Jamaica was like a flaming inferno. The 1831 Rebellion was on in earnest. There was not much loss of lives, but great loss and damage to property were occasioned.
Sharpe was aghast by the unplanned violence and destruction. So too were the Missionaries who were ministering onto the slaves and who had even warned them against such action.
The island was in turmoil. Governor Belmore dispatched the Regiment from Port Royal to the west, under the command of Sir Willoughby Cotton. All members of the local militias were ordered to converge on Trelawny and St. James.
On the 31st, Cotton and his men arrived in Montego Bay. All slaves, involved or not, were branded as rioters. Martial Law was proclaimed. The militia, aided by the Maroons, combed the hills adjoining the affected estates.
The slaves were hunted and some shot dead on sight. Others were flushed out from the woodlands and captured. Courts martial presided over by unsympathetic magistrates, were convened all over the west. Swift, harsh and merciless sentences of death, and flogging were meted out.
There were no appeals from sentence and execution was almost immediate. Many were hung and their bodies left overnight for public viewing. Others were severely beaten some succumbing to the hundred lashes of the cat-o-nine.
Dead bodies piled up in the Montego Bay square. They were later summarily carted off for burial in mass graves. Other slaves were thrown in the jails. The rebellion came to a rapid but brutal end in a few days and "peace" was restored.
In early February, the Governor visited Montego Bay and being satisfied that the militia was once again in full command, lifted martial law on the 5th. Sharpe was hung the following day in the Square which now bears his name.
The tally
The tally of this colonial barbarism read 634 tried, 301 sentenced to death, and 285 to other punishment. The records show 201 others killed on sight. These are official conservative figures.
Most thought this was the end, but alas, there was worse to come.
The Rebellion appeared well planned and executed. The planters and the Establishment believed that the slaves did not have "the brains" to organise that well.
They concluded that the missionaries helped and so held them responsible. They decided to wreak vengeance against them and drive them out of the Island. In order to understand the significance of this decision the role of the missionaries has to be examined.
The Anglican Church is the Church of England. It was then the church of the aristocrats and consequently of the planters and slave owners. It was part of the government of the island.
The rectors, their wardens and some of the other officers were paid from the national coffers. One could only be legally baptised, married and buried by this church.
No other church had such right. Others preached by special licence. The Anglican rectors were the only legal preachers.
When George Lisle and Moses Baker, black American freed slaves, introduced Baptist witness to the island, this was the situation. Moses Baker witnessed in western Jamaica and because of his colour and his preaching, the slaves flocked to him.
Soon he was unable to cope with the numbers, and with a 1810 law which prohibited "sectarians" (non-Anglicans) from preaching without a licence. He then sought and obtained the assistance of the British Baptist Society in England. Thereafter a series of British Baptist Missionaries were sent to the island.
The first such missionary, Rev. John Rowe, was stationed at Falmouth. The Methodists were also ministering and were popular among the slaves, so too were the Moravians. The missionaries were prohibited from involving themselves in politics and could not "preach or teach" the slaves even with a licence, without the consent of the slave masters.
As the teachings helped to calm the natural aggressiveness of the slaves, some masters allowed this encounter and even granted the slaves some Sundays to attend church.
Many, in true Anancy style, rather than attending church, took their goods to the market to sell instead. All in all though, the contact with the missionaries brought hope and a greater carving for freedom. It also unearthed some very bright leaders among the slaves.
Samuel Sharpe and George Findlayson of Brown's Town are but two of them. To balance the equation there were some forceful and expressive missionaries like William Knibb, Thomas Burchell, William Whitehorne, Francis Gardner, Henry Bleby, Samuel Nichols and others who molded the slaves into a conscious body in preparation for emancipation.
In England too, the anti-slavery sentiments were growing and the Methodists were at the forefront of this battle. In fact as far back as 1823 the British Parliament submitted an Amelioration Bill, a step towards emancipation, to the Jamaican House of Assembly for approval.
It was angrily rejected. One member threw it down on the floor of the House and trampled on it in a raging frenzy.
Little wonder therefore that the planters and the Establishment believed that in the rebellion the hand was the hand of the slaves but the plan was the plan of the missionaries.
Knibb, Burchell and Gardner all Baptists missionaries were arrested after the rebellion. After much enquiry they were released, then re-arrested and finally set free. It mattered not that Burchell was off the island at the time.
Incensed by their release, the planters vowed to put an end to this threat to their livelihood through emancipation. They aimed to eradicate the sectarians, their followers and their religious pursuits once and for all, from the shores of Jamaica.
The indigenous religions targeted were the Baptists, the Methodists and the Moravians. Enter therefore the ruthless executioner, Rev. George Wilson Bridges, Rector of the Anglican Church at St. Ann's Bay (1823-1837) and his Colonial Church Union.
Might then began to inflict vengeance against Right.
In early January, Bridges had formed the CCU, probably mindful of the poor relationship between the slaves and the Anglican Church, to protect their Church buildings and those of the Church of Scotland from being burnt.
That fear never materialised. But in order to capitalise on the resentment and bitterness against missionaries and their followers he called on members of the Union to, inter alia, "expel the Sectarians... form the Island; give no employment to any of their followers; hold every man as an enemy who fosters or encourages them; ....risk your lives in expelling these enemies from the country."
They then set about this task. First stop was the new Baptist Chapel at Salter's Hill, St. James. It was pulled down to the ground and burnt. Next was Burchell's private residence in Hanover -- totally destroyed -- then the Chapel at Montego Bay and then onto Trelawny, next St. Ann, leaving behind a trail of mayhem and devastation.
Damage
They also did damage to churches and chapels in the parishes of Westmoreland, Clarendon and St. Andrew.
The missionaries had to flee for their lives. Reverend Nichols miraculously escaped death when a volley of gunfire came through a window of the manse at Brown's Town. He was later arrested then released.
Knibb gave the district of Refuge its name as he went there "to seek refuge." This was after a gang of men broke into the house he occupied in Falmouth to kill him, and was only saved by the bold intervention of his landlady.
Rev. Henry Bleby, a Methodist minister, opened his church in Falmouth, just to be invaded by a gang of white men who tarred him and was about to set him on fire when his supporters rescued him.
The missionaries were warned not to preach. They were afraid to preach. The Colonial Church Unionists paraded throughout the length and breadth of the island creating damage and destruction unabated. It was as of this onslaught against rebellion and innocent citizens and the slaves were legitimised.
Members of the militia led in some of these attacks. Not one finger was lifted against the Union and its followers. In fact the public was encouraged to "support and protect the chapel destroyers."
Many of the missionaries went into Kingston and stayed there under the protection of the freed slaves who repelled the Unionists' aggression.
The slave, now "shepherdless", had to literally take to the bushes. Any that was caught by the now marauding band of brigands supporting the Union, was shot or hung.
A shepherd in the guise of George Findlayson, an illiterate slave, came to their rescue. In St. Ann where much of the damage and loss of lives occurred, he took the small surviving "flocks" and hid them in the safety of a cave.
They never lost faith in their objective, that is to be free. He patrolled through the now perilous roads from Brown's Town to Falmouth, meeting with other slaves in hiding and assuring them that soon the terror would pass.
Miraculously he was neither captured nor killed during his journeys.
The missionaries met in Kingston and sent Knibb to England to put the case for emancipation to the English public. His first-hand description of post rebellion massacre and vandalism, infuriated the public.
It was election year and moderates were voted into Parliament. The Abolition Bill was made law in August 1833 and came into full effect on the August 1, 1838.
The Colonial Church Union widely believed to be the forerunner of the Ku Klux Klan of 1868, was eventually declared illegal by Royal Proclamation. Lord Mulgrave, now Governor, took strong action against those members who tried to keep it going.
It had perpetrated one year and eight months of violence and devastation on the peace and good order of the island with its might.
And Rev. George William Bridges? He had the grave misfortune to witness the drowning of his four daughters when the boat in which they were sailing overturned in St. Ann's Bay harbour. His wife had deserted him for England some months before.
Later it was his time to flee and this he did to the backwoods of Canada with his only surviving child, a son.
It is abundantly clear that, right did overcome might.
It behoves us always to bear this in mind as we strive to contain and triumph over crime and violence in our beloved country. If our forefathers did it, then surely, so can we.
Royland Barrett is the Custos of Trelawny and an attorney-at-law who also engages in historical research.
