Excerpts from Charleston Curiosities-Stories of the Tragic, Heroic and Bizarre
Excerpt from Chapter 2
The Stono Rebellion, 1739
To escape death the slaves hid.
Moments earlier they had been secure; nearly one hundred of the newly liberated had gathered in this cleared field by the water to sing, dance, sound the drums and drink. Stretching almost twenty miles behind them was the wake of their violent rebellion; a bleak collection of charred and smoking houses, their trampled grounds littered with castoff spoils. The bodies of the former inhabitants lay alongside this domestic debris: men, women and children, all murdered.
Just the day before they had been nothing but chattel; lifelong possessions to be worked, sold or bred like any other animal. Today they had cast that role aside. Their captors and their families, along with anyone in their path, had been killed, their property plundered or destroyed. But unless they left this country they would sooner or later be executed or returned into bondage. Today was the beginning of their march out of the lands of the English and into the lines at ST Augustine where the Spanish empire waited to crown their efforts with freedom.
It had seemed possible. They had been under arms and on the move since before sunrise and now as the afternoon faded they still remained unopposed. The original band of twenty had swollen to nearly five times its’ number, and more were likely to arrive, attracted by the din of the camp.
Then out of the woods the white soldiers came upon them, firing thunderous volleys. They fought back but too many of them, those forced unwillingly from their masters fields and homes, or those who were simply afraid, fled when it began. Those who stood their ground were targeted and killed.
Sensing the end of the insurrection, a handful chose to hide where they were. Their place of refuge was nearly in the center of this newly christened battlefield: a stout oak tree, its trunk split far enough apart to create a hole. In the confusion, while the others continued their intense struggle, and screened by a haze of thick gun smoke, the group slipped through this opening unnoticed. Inside this hollow wooden refuge, hearts pounding, they were assailed by the noise outside. Dozens of different voices rose on top of each other some screamed in English, some in tongues from another continent; guns belched lead shot that struck earth, wood or flesh….
Excerpt from Chapter 9
Osceola- Seminole Warrior, Casualty of War
Frederick Weedon sighed. The boys were misbehaving again, refusing to settle down for the evening. He went into the study, fetched the jar over his desk then stomped down the hall. Stepping into the noisy bedroom he held the jar up for his sons to see. They immediately quieted. This was an old routine, they knew unless they behaved the awful thing would be put on the bedstead to keep them company all night.
Weedon tucked the jar back under his arm, went back into his study and returned it to its’ shelf. He took a good long look at it. As a Doctor and scholar of anatomy, the sight hardly had the same impact. Floating inside the, jar cocooned with murky preservative fluid, was a human head. Skin still hung on the skull, giving a picture of the man’s appearance when he had been alive. Weedon was still proud of the embalming job he had done all those years ago when he had applied his own unique twist on the undertaker’s art to this specimen. Specimen wasn’t really the right word for it. He had known this man well, had cut the head away from the cooling corpse with his own two hands; this was Osceola, the Seminole Warrior...
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Images used in banner (right to left) Patriot Warrior, 1776, Junius Booth (Library of Congress), Charleston, mid-18th century (Library of Congress), William Deas (Courtesy Everret Presson), Battle of Secessionville (Archive.org), Osceola (Library of Congress).
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