Denmark Vesey Purchases His Own Freedom in Charleston

Denmark Vesey, an enslaved man of likely Caribbean origin who had traveled extensively with his enslaver Captain Joseph Vesey, won $1,500 in a Charleston lottery in 1799 and used $600 to purchase his freedom in 1800. He became a skilled carpenter, earned a modest income, and became a founding member and leader of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. Over the following two decades he became radicalized by Biblical teachings on liberation and by knowledge of the Haitian Revolution. In 1822 he would organize what authorities described as the most extensive slave conspiracy in U.S. history.