Invested in the Revolt

Compared to the Slave Revolt in St. John two years prior, the revolt in Antigua was a more serious matter in that a more valuable island was at stake, and the revolt involved slaves who were most comfortably off. The revolt was scheduled for October 11, the anniversary of the King's coronation; a grand ball was to have been given in honor of the occasion, and the Negroes planned to blow up the Governor's house, the explosion serving as the signal for a general massacre of the whites. The ball was deferred on account of the Governor's son, and the conspiracy was betrayed by an accomplice. The chief figures in the plot included three waiting men, thirteen carpenters, eight coopers, one coppersmith, one sugar boiler, two masons, one butcher, twenty-six drivers, three coachmen, one head field negro, one millwright, three fishermen, one wheelwright, one 'obeah man', and three fiddlers—some of the most trusted and valuable slaves. The leader, who called himself King Court, and his two generals, Tomboy and Hercules, were broken on the wheel; so were three others. Six slaves were gibbeted, seventy-seven burned alive, and thirty-six banished. A commission of inquiry stated that the admission of slaves into 'occupations truly proper only for freemen' was an underlying cause of the insurrection, and it recommended that slaves should be debarred from becoming tradesmen, overseers, drivers, distillers, shopkeepers, hawkers, peddlers, sailers, fiddlers for gain, or from keeping horses or working out for themselves. Tomboy had been a master mason who had been allowed by his master to take negro apprentices and make what profit he could out of his own and their labor. He paid his owner a fixed sum per month, and it was stated that the remainder of his earnings had been invested in the revolt.