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The Court finds Tom Guilty and sentences him to death.
Tom's trial was one of more than a hundred slaves indicted as participating in what is generally referred to as the "Denmark Vesey Conspiracy." Vesey was a free black accused of originating, organizing, and leading plans for a massive slave uprising in Charleston. Vesey was also found guilty and sentenced to hang, as were over 30 other black men. Traditionally, historians have put forward the case of Vesey and his companions, men like Tom, as an example of determination of blacks to resist oppression under slavery. However, more recently, scholars such as Michael P. Johnson and Richard C. Wade, have argued that the conspiracy never actually existed, that it was an elaborate invention of white slave holders and the court to reaffirm and strengthen their control over the slave population in response to growing anxieties among slave holders following the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Working from the original transcript, rather than the Official Court Record that historians usually rely on (and from which the above proceedings are taken), Johnson argues that many of the slaves who confessed and testified against others were not only pressured into doing so, but often contradicted their own testimony as well. For instance, just days before Tom Russell's trial, Monday Gell testified that he knew nothing about Tom making Pikes or Gullah Jack being in possession of them. The trials demonstrate the extent to which the court system could be manipulated to work on behalf of the white slave-holding population.
For more on the Denmark Vesey trials:
Egerton, Douglas R. HE SHALL GO OUT FREE: THE LIVES OF DENMARK VESEY. (Madison House, 2001)
Johnson, Michael P. "Denmark Vesey and his Co-Conspirators." The William and Mary Quarterly, v 58, no 4 (October 2001): 915-976.
AN OFFICIAL REPORT OF THE TRIALS OF SUNDRY NEGROES, CHARGED WITH AN ATTEMPT TO RAISE AN INSURRECTION IN THE STATE OF SOUTH-CAROLINA. Prepared by Lionel H. Kennedy & Thomas Parker. (Charleston : James R. Schenck, 1822.). Available on-line from the Library of Congress "Slaves and the Courts, 1740-1860" special American Memory exhibition, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/sthtml/sthome.html.
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