The Greenup Slave Revolt: Slavery, Environment, and Resistance in Eastern Kentucky

This presentation examines a slave revolt that took place on the banks of the Ohio River in 1829 with clear connections to the environment. The few extant sources that tell the story of this revolt make clear that the people involved wielded knowledge about the natural world—in addition to physical violence—to struggle towards freedom in a new and unfamiliar landscape.

The original reporting suggested that at least one person might have been familiar with blacksmithing tools or techniques, that some of them might have had knowledge about the natural world, since they decided to escape into the woods. The reporting made clear that at least one man had experience with horses, when he mounted a horse and chased a wounded slave trader. The people in this story might have created their own mental maps, mapping rivers, towns, or farms—places where they might be able to return for resources. This story, as much as anything else, allows us to think about how these men, women, and children, and thousands like them, moved in and through the Appalachian Mountains, how they thought about freedom, and how they tried to manifest it in hostile and unfamiliar landscapes as they traveled to the southern slave markets. This important and innovative work is rooted at the developing intersection of race and environment and deepens our understanding of slavery and the slave trade in the early United States.