Fear of slave rebellion drove southern suppression of antislavery speech

Evidence

More than anything else, the Haitian Revolution and the slave rebellions it inspired across the Americas made White Americans fearful of race war and, even more worrying, a potential Black victory. Southern congressmen and newspaper editors did what they could to silence dissent and stoke White fears, claiming that public discussion of slavery and the presence of free Blacks were inciting slaves to rebel. And there were more free Blacks than ever before, because of wartime runaways and the outbreak of manumissions following the Revolution. The free Black population in Virginia, for instance, leaped from 1,800 in 1782 to 12,766 in 1790 and then to 30,570 in 1810. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 347

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Fear of loyalist-slavery-invasion convergence pushed southern delegates toward independence — Edward J. Larson, Declaring Independence, 133