Yale's Gilder Lehrman Center Hosts Conference on the Arming of Slaves from Antiquity to the American Civil War

The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yale will hold its Second Annual International Conference, “The Arming of Slaves from the Classical Era to the American Civil War,” on November 16-18.

Drawing scholars from across the nation and abroad, the conference will investigate how states have defended themselves by providing their slaves with weapons. This practice was often resorted to even when it challenged the ideological underpinnings of societies or contributed to the downfall of prosperous regimes. The conference will also take up historical examples of a converse phenomenon: the failure to arm slaves even at the peril of facing military defeat, such as in Revolutionary South Carolina and in the Confederate States during the Civil War.

The following are descriptions of the events scheduled for the conference, which will take place at the Omni Hotel in New Haven.

At 8:15 p.m. on Thursday, following registration and a reception, David Brion Davis, the Sterling Professor of History at Yale and director of the Gilder Lehrman Center, will deliver the keynote address.

There will be five sessions, three on Friday and two on Saturday. The first session, “The Arming of Slaves in Classical and Islamic Societies,” will feature Thomas Wiedemann, director of the International Centre for the History of Slavery, Nottingham University, who will present “The Slave As Non-Citizen: The Classical and Late Antique Worlds.” Wiedemann will be followed by Daniel Pipes, editor of the Middle East Quarterly, whose talk is entitled, “Slave Soldiers and Islam.” Donald Kagan, the Hillhouse Professor of Classics and History at Yale, will be the commentator for that session.

In Session Two, “The Arming of Slaves in the Carribean,” David Geggus, University of Florida, will present “The Arming of Slaves in the Haitian Revolution”; and Laurent Dubois, University of Michigan, “Citizen Soldiers: Emancipation and Military Service in the Revolutionary French Caribbean.” Jerome Handler, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, will be the commentator.

Jane Landers, Vanderbilt University, will be the commentator for Session Three, “Slavery and Defense in Colonial Borderlands.” Jennifer Baszile of Yale will present “Armed Slaves and Colonial Crisis: Indian Wars in Colonial Southeastern North America,” and Peter Voelz, Eastern Illinois University, will speak on “Armed Slaves Below the Border.”

The first session on Saturday, “Military Uses of Slaves in New World Revolutions,” will open with Robert Olwell, University of Texas, presenting “Portrait of the Slave Master as Revolutionary: White Liberty, Black Slavery and Military Service in South Carolina, 1775-1783.” Philip Morgan, College of William and Mary and co-winner of the 1999 Frederick Douglass Book Prize, will talk on the arming of slaves in the American Revolution. The commentator for Session Four is Andrew O’Shaughnessy, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh.

In the final session, “The American Civil War,” Leslie Rowland, director of the Freedmen and Southern Society Project, University of Maryland, will present his paper, “The Recruitment and Service of Slaves in the Union Army,” followed by Frank Deserino, University of London, whose topic is “The Notion of Black Loyalty Under Fire: An Analysis of Black Confederate Pensions.” Catherine Clinton, Baruch College, will be the commentator for session five.

David Brion Davis will provide the summation at the close of the conference.

Pre-registration and payment are required. For more information or to register, visit www.yale.edu/glc/events/arming.