1739

Near the Stono River, South Carolina, a man known as Jemmy (also called Cato), likely a literate Kongolese Catholic, led 60–100 enslaved people south toward Spanish Florida, which promised freedom to escapees. They killed approximately 20 whites, burned plantations, and marched with drums and a banner. Colonial militia killed 40–50 of the rebels. It was the largest slave revolt in colonial British North America.

The First Great Awakening, sweeping Britain and its American colonies from the 1730s into the 1740s, created profound contradictions around slavery. Evangelical theology's emphasis on direct personal experience of God's grace contained an implicit logic of spiritual equality that made some revivalists critical of slavery. George Whitefield, the era's greatest preacher, drew enslaved and free Black people to his enormous outdoor revivals — and then purchased a plantation in Georgia and owned enslaved people himself, lobbying to legalize slavery in Georgia. Jonathan Edwards, the era's leading theologian, also owned enslaved people. Many enslaved people embraced evangelical Christianity and its emotional, communal worship style — which resonated with African religious traditions — while using its language of freedom and spiritual dignity as a vocabulary of resistance. The Great Awakening seeded what would become the first major American anti-slavery movement while simultaneously providing theological cover for slavery's expansion.

The largest slave uprising in the British mainland colonies; dozens march toward Spanish Florida and freedom before being suppressed.