Charles Deslondes

Charles Deslondes was one of the slave leaders of the 1811 German Coast Uprising, a slave revolt that began on January 8, 1811, in the Territory of Orleans. He led more than 200 rebels against the plantations along the Mississippi River toward New Orleans. White planters formed militias and ended up hunting down the rebels. The slave insurgents killed two white men, and the militias and executions killed 95 slaves.

Early life

Born into slavery in Saint-Domingue (now, Haiti), Deslondes was described in some accounts as mulatto or mixed race. He was brought to the Louisiana Territory by his master after the Haitian Revolution, when thousands of French Creoles brought their slaves and mixed-race refugees also left the island. Of the 9,059 immigrants in 1809, about 30 percent were white and 35.6 percent were slaves; the remainder were free people of color.

Deslondes worked as a "driver," or overseer of slaves, on the plantation of Col. Manuel Andre or Andry (this plantation was later called Woodland and no longer exists) who had a total of 86 slaves. In a letter printed in the Philadelphia Political and Commercial Advertiser on February 19 that year, Deslondes was mistakenly described as a free person of color.