1730s

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 explosion of rice cultivation in the South Carolina Lowcountry drove the largest forced African migration into any single British colony in the 18th century. In the 1720s and 1730s, tens of thousands of Africans were imported through Sullivan's Island and the port of Charleston. Approximately 200,000 Africans arrived in nearly 1,000 cargo ships between 1670 and 1808, with Sullivan's Island serving as the mandatory quarantine station. Arriving Africans — predominantly from the Rice Coast of West Africa, the Congo-Angola region, and Senegambia — were held in pest houses on Sullivan's Island for inspection before being ferried to Charleston's wharves for sale. The vast majority were sold on the spot, often within days of arrival, before they had recovered from the Middle Passage. By 1740, African-descended people constituted two-thirds of South Carolina's population, yet owned none of the land they worked and were excluded by law from virtually all civil existence.

The explosion of rice and later indigo cultivation in the South Carolina Lowcountry drove the largest forced African migration into any single British colony in the 18th century. Approximately 200,000 Africans arrived in nearly 1,000 cargo ships through Sullivan's Island between 1670 and 1808, representing 40-50 percent of all enslaved Africans brought to mainland North America. Arriving Africans — predominantly from the Rice Coast of West Africa, the Congo-Angola region, and Senegambia — were held in pest houses on Sullivan's Island for inspection before being ferried to Charleston's wharves for sale. The vast majority were sold within days of arrival, before they had recovered from the Middle Passage. By 1740, African-descended people constituted two-thirds of South Carolina's population, yet owned none of the land they worked and were excluded by law from virtually all civil existence.

Enslaved people fleeing Virginia and North Carolina plantations established persistent maroon settlements in the 2,000-square-mile Great Dismal Swamp along the Virginia–North Carolina border. Communities of self-liberated people, known as 'Outlyers,' sustained themselves for generations through hunting, gathering, and trade. Archaeological evidence confirms occupation lasting into the nineteenth century.

Enslaved people fleeing Virginia and North Carolina established persistent maroon settlements in the 2,000-square-mile Great Dismal Swamp. Communities known as 'Outlyers' sustained themselves through hunting and trade for generations. Archaeological evidence confirms occupation lasting into the nineteenth century.

Spanish Florida's Governor Montiano formally established Fort Mose, two miles north of St. Augustine, for formerly enslaved people from British colonies who had converted to Catholicism. At least 100 freedom-seekers had reached Florida by 1739, making it a concrete destination for the Stono rebels.

In 1738, Spanish Florida's Governor Montiano formally established Fort Mose, a fortified settlement two miles north of St. Augustine, for formerly enslaved people from British colonies who had converted to Catholicism. At least 100 freedom-seekers had reached Florida by 1739. Fort Mose's existence was directly known to Jemmy and other Stono rebels, making Spanish Florida a concrete destination rather than an abstract hope.

On June 6, 1730, ninety-six captive Africans aboard the British slave ship Little George, bound from the Bonnana Islands off the coast of Guinea to Rhode Island, rose up at approximately 4:00 a.m. Several captives freed themselves from iron shackles, broke through the ship's bulkhead, seized weapons, and killed three crew watchmen. They constructed an improvised explosive from gunpowder pressed into a bottle and threatened to ignite it; faced with the ship's possible destruction, the remaining crew surrendered. With no sailing or navigation training, the Africans turned the ship around and guided it back across the Atlantic, landing at the mouth of the Sierra Leone River. Both the liberated Africans and the British crew abandoned the ship. The Little George revolt stands as one of the most successful at-sea uprisings in the history of the transatlantic slave trade.

Georgia's Trustees ban slavery upon the colony's founding, citing concerns that slavery would undermine a colony designed as a refuge for England's poor and create military vulnerability (Spanish Florida harbored escaped enslaved people). Trustee James Oglethorpe was a principal architect of the ban. The prohibition lasted until 1751 when planters successfully lobbied for its repeal.

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.

In October 1736, white authorities in Antigua uncovered what they described as an island-wide slave conspiracy to massacre the colony's approximately 3,800 white inhabitants. The plot was masterminded by an enslaved Creole man named Court (also called Tackey), enslaved by Thomas Kerby, Speaker of the Assembly. His chief accomplice, Tomboy, a skilled enslaved carpenter, planned to gain access to the ballroom where the annual coronation ball for King George II would be held and plant gunpowder beneath the floor to kill the governor and colonial gentry in a single explosion. Eighty-eight enslaved people were executed, five of them broken on the wheel. Historians remain divided on whether this was a genuine large-scale conspiracy or a morally panicked exaggeration by colonial authorities. The connection to the Royall family of Massachusetts — wealthy slaveholders with Antiguan plantation roots — illustrates the Atlantic world's interconnected slave economy.

In 1730, Virginia authorities discovered a conspiracy spreading across at least four counties, in which enslaved people planned a coordinated uprising. The plot was uncovered before it could be executed. Colonial records show that the perceived ringleaders were subjected to public punishment including severe whipping and the mutilation of having their ears cropped — a common colonial punishment intended both as agony and permanent visible marking. The episode prompted the Virginia House of Burgesses to pass additional restrictions on the movement and assembly of enslaved people. It was one of several conspiracies uncovered in Virginia during the 1720s-1730s that demonstrated the persistent determination of enslaved people to resist their condition even as the legal architecture of racial slavery was tightened.

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

Spanish Florida charters Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, the first free Black settlement in what is now the U.S., for people who escaped Carolina slavery.

The new colony of Georgia prohibits slavery at its founding — a ban that lasts less than two decades.