Sam Sharpe and the Baptist rebellion

MEMBERS OF the Anglican, Moravian and Baptist churches were owners of enslaved Africans who were subjected to their every whim and fancy. They believed nothing was wrong with chattel slavery, and even used scriptures to support it.

Not only were they believers in the Word, but they preached and taught it to the enslaved, some of whom became lay preachers themselves. Samuel Sharpe, named after his master, was one such lay preacher who lived on Croydon Estate in St James but frequented Montego Bay. He was treated well by his owner’s family, with whom he had a good relationship.

But, unlike his owner and his family, Sharpe believed slavery was wrong. In his book, Death Struggles of Slavery, Methodist Reverend Henry Bleby wrote inter alia, “ But he (Sharpe) thought, and he learnt from the Bible, that the whites had no more right to hold the black people slaves; and, for his own part, he would rather die than live in slavery.”

Bleby describes him thus: “He is of the middle size. His fine sinewy frame was handsomely moulded and his skin as perfect a jet as can well be imagined. His forehead was high and broad, while his nose and lips exhibited the usual characteristics of the Negro race. He had teeth whose regularity and pearly whiteness a court beauty might have envied, and an eye whose was almost dazzling.”

He also admired Sharpe’s oratory skills. “ I had an opportunity of observing that he had intellectual and oratorical powers above the common order. And this was the secret of the extensive influence which he exercised. I heard him two or three times deliver a brief extemporaneous address to his fellow prisoners on religious topics, many of them being confined together in the same cell, and I was amazed at both the power and the gusto with which he spoke, and at the effect which was produced upon his audience. He appeared to have the feelings and passions of his listeners completely at his command.”

The gifted speaker was given much latitude to meet with other enslaved people, whom he taught the gospel. He was trusted by his minister, Reverend Thomas Burchell, to preach in the Baptist churches of western Jamaica. At the time of the rebellion, Burchell was away in England

After the ‘religious meetings’, Sharpe met with like-minded people, energising them against the system of oppression in which they had existed. He organised his usual prayer meetings.

In May 1831, Reverend Thomas Burchell, who had established churches all over western Jamaica, left for England to restore his health. The assumption that Burchell had gone to obtain ‘freedom papers’ was widely made, and he would have returned with them in December. Bleby writes that Sharpe made good use of the rumours that slavery had been abolished.

And, in secret, Daddy Sharpe met with many of his followers to lay down plans for a general strike after their three-day Christmas holiday was over. They would refuse to work unless they were paid, and Sharpe thought that it would have been very difficult for the masters to force everybody to work against their will. Also, Sharpe maintained that they were only to use violent means if they were forced to defend themselves.

Sharpe’s military-like plan consisted of a main army and local units. He tried to organise a mobile gang, which was to operate over a fairly large area, taking its members away from their homes. He sent a man named Gardner to lead this force into Westmoreland and Hanover. Also, on each estate or in each district where there was a cluster of smaller estates, a local unit was formed and led perhaps by one of the people that he had been able to convince at his meetings.

Their job was two-fold. They were to start with the strike and, if they did not get their freedom and payment for work done, they would start to destroy properties. Fires then would be lit to signal that the rebellion had started. They were ready to fight for what they thought was their right – freedom. But some of his followers were not in agreement.

The freedom of which Sharpe told them was a notion that they could not resist, and they were thus impatient with Sharpe’s wait-and-see approach. On December 27, the trash house at Kensington Estate in St James was lit, not by Sharpe, the conceptualiser. It signalled the start of the uprising. The flames leaped and spread to many estates all over western Jamaica, out of Sam Sharpe’s control. It was the biggest and most impactful rebellion in Jamaica.

The repercussions against the rebels were swift and brutal. Martial law was declared until February 1832. On May 23, Sam Sharpe was hanged in Montego Bay and was buried in the sands on the beach. On the morning of the execution, his owner’s family brought him a clean white shirt. His remains were later exhumed and placed in the Baptist chapel. When Bleby visited him in his cell while he waiting to be executed, Sharpe told Bleby, “I would rather die upon yonder gallows than live in slavery.”