Customer Reviews

He Shall Go Out Free: The Lives of Denmark Vesey (American Profiles)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This was an extraordinary book. Douglas Egerton does a marvelous job of telling the different lives of Denmark Vesey. The book is extremely well researched and tells the historical truth of Vesey's life. The author does a wonderful job of finding the true story of Denmark Vesey and incorporates intriging insights into his life. This is a wonderful book that illustrates what life was like for a dynamic slave who turned free. Egerton tells Vesey's story in a fascinating way and does a great job of recapturing Vesey's life. The author tells of how Vesey was a strong-willed, highly intelligent leader who had an ingenious plot to help slaves and free blacks to truly become free. The author shows how fascinating Vesey was even though his plan failed. This is a marvelous book and I highly recomend reading it! It is an absolute joy to read!

This book is dynamic and I highly recomend reading it. It is wonderfully written with extaordinary prose. The author does a superb job of bringing the readers into the time period and a wonderful jog of telling Vesey's story. Engaging diction and syntax keep the readers alive. There is not a dull moment in this book. Every page is filled th wonderful insights surrounding the times of the book. This book is a must have for people of all interests.I highly recommend reading it and sharing it with a friend. Douglas Egerton does a fascinating job of telling the history of Vesey's life and atmosphere!

This is an excellent history of slavery in South Carolina with a focus on the unsucessful revolt led by Denmark Vesey. The strength of the book is the history of Vesey and the evolutionary process that leds him to his death.

What is most intriguing was the discussion of Vesey's rejection of the New Testement as a guide for his actions and his use of the Old Testement as a guide. The book deals well with the issue of the effect of the masters use of the Christian faith as a justification for slavery on the slaves and freemens spiritual life.

The only flaw in the book was the authors obvious admiration for Vesey. Not that such admiration is not deserved, but it tended to color some of the more difficult issues in Vesey's revolt. For instance, a major controversey has arisen concerning whether as part of the revolt the whites of Charleston were to be massacred. The author does not deal with the claim other than to dismiss is as illogical. However, this dismissal is insufficent given the hate and feellings for revenge that the slaves must have felt toward their masters.

All in all, this is a very readable history important events in American history. A good read.

This was an extraordinary book. Douglas Egerton does a marvelous job of telling the different lives of Denmark Vesey. The book is extremely well researched and tells the historical truth of Vesey's life. The author does a wonderful job of finding the true story of Denmark Vesey and incorporates intriging insights into his life. This is a wonderful book that illustrates what life was like for a dynamic slave who turned free. Egerton tells Vesey's story in a fascinating way and does a great job of recapturing Vesey's life. The author tells of how Vesey was a strong-willed, highly intelligent leader who had an ingenious plot to help slaves and free blacks to truly become free. The author shows how fascinating Vesey was even though his plan failed. This is a marvelous book and I highly recomend reading it! It is an absolute joy to read!

I enjoyed the book and would encourage my folks to read it. It is so hard to get an unbiased history of Denmark Vesey. I am looking for African descened historians to give me an accurate picture.

Considering the author isn't a black historian, he gives a pretty, fair and balanced view of Denmark. I believe the truth is a problem for many people, but I am relatively satisfied this book.

It is beyond belief that some folks would have a problem with enslaved humans rising up and slaughtering thoe with their foot on their necks. These same people don't seem to having a problem with the the whites slaughtering, maiming, and raping, terrorizing and working to death the Africans. Go figure!

I highly recommend.

The Lives of Denmark Vesey is a story of an atypical slave (Telemaque) born in the Caribbean who ends up in Charleston, South Carolina by the time he's sixteen. Vesey, having learned three languages, was extremely intelligent compared to slaves of his time and would later lead a slave revolt in Charleston.

Douglas Egerton does a great job of vividly describing Charleston and many of its inhabitants in the early 19th century. This interesting and astonishing book about a slave in the early 1800s is very accurate and truthfully coincides with many historians living in Charleston today. I recently did a report comparing Egerton's book to various sources of the known history of Charleston in the late 18th and early 19th century, and Egerton's book hits on all the main aspects of Charleston. The buzzard and manure infested streets and the large "underground" slave population that roamed the streets at night are just a few of the characteristics of Charleston Egerton accurately hits on. Props to Egerton on an interesting and accurate story about a monumental aspect of Charleston's history.

I have very mixed feelings about this book because there are parts that I enjoy and think are important, but as a whole I think that this is very dangerous not because of the content but because of how this book was written.

For anyone who wants to understand the difference between field slaves and town slaves (there are a lot) in the 1820's in the South this is a good book. Douglas Egerton follows the life of the slave Denmark Vessey as a way to "show-off" Southern society and culture at the time and discusses issues that arose for enslaved and free blacks in Charleston.

But the main part of the book is when Egerton gets to the failed insurrection by Vessey (a plan that involved killing a large portion of white Charleston and sailing on boats to Haiti). This too he describes in great detail from the planning of the revolt to how Vessey and his conspirators were tried and hanged.

Then I read "Denmark Vessey and his Co-Conspirators" by Michael Johnson which appeared in the October 2001 issue of The William and Mary Quarterly. It is necessary that you read this in conjunction with Egerton's book. Johnson attacks the very evidence used by Egerton in his book (mainly trial documents) to claim that there wasn't a revolt at all and that Vessey and many others were killed because White Charleston "thought" there was a slave insurrection. He further argues that historians like Egerton have fabricated this entire plot and rewritten history, hence "co-conspirators."

Personally, I don't agree with Johnson that there was no revolt, but he convinced me that Egerton's evidence isn't adequate to say there was. Egerton did write a response to Johnson which pushed that there was in fact a revolt but doesn't even acknowledge that a lot of his evidence is faulty.

I got the chance to meet and discuss the issue with the author and got little besides a character assassination of Johnson. I cannot deny that his lack in recognizing his mistakes and trying to correct them has made me biased and I like his book a lot less. He sees it as a finished product, I see it as a rough draft that needs to be re-researched. But I think that this is the real issue here. Historians make mistakes, but when we are too prideful our mistakes can become what many see as the truth. I'm not saying that Denmark Vessey's slave revolt never happened, I don't know, but the attitude of historians like Egerton is dangerous because it provides the right conditions for this "rewritten history" to occur.

In Egerton's defense he did make a revised addition at the urging of his publisher (not on his own accord), but the changes are menial, the biggest he said was confirming that one town slave was a mulatto and not completely black, and he wants to later include how Vessey's wife, Beck, ended up in Liberia. To me, this was no effort to revisit any of the old evidence that is inadequate, just adding more fluff.

The other issue (others have mentioned) is that the Vessey is almost deified in this book. And yes I realize that it is convenient for me, as a white person, to say that killing all of the whites in Charleston is morally bankrupt, but Egerton doesn't even try to address this issue anywhere in his book.