Sam Sharpe did not start the fire, but …

FROM 1823 rumours were going around that the king of England had granted the enslaved their freedom. The rumours were rife in late 1831, especially since Reverend Thomas Burchell was off the island. He went away for medical reasons as the inclement weather and hard work were taking a toll on his body.

Yet, it was widely felt among the enslaved that Reverend Burchell had gone to return with their ‘freedom papers’. Even the king himself had to issue a proclamation that no such freedom was granted. That proclamation was ineffective, and sooner, rather than later, plantations all over western Jamaica were in flames.

The repercussion against the rioters was swift. Many were severely whipped and maimed. Sharpe and other protesters were hanged in Montego Bay, on May 23, 1832. However, Sharpe himself did not ignite the fires, which started on December 27, 1831, nor did he take part in the uprising that ensued all over western Jamaica.

“That very night, Tuesday, December 27, 1831, the fires began as the people laid torches to the trash houses of the sugar estates. A large number of these estates were burned to the ground, and all the factory buildings destroyed. Some were never rebuilt, and their proprietors ceased making sugar,” Lloyd A. Cooke writes in The Story of Jamaican Missions.

“The estate at Kensington was set first, followed by Palmyra. As Kensington Estate sat near the crest of a hill, it was visible for many miles around. Estates in two parishes could see the flames, and this served as a signal to them to set the trash houses on their estates afire also.

“Even where hills hid the view of the people on some estates, the glow of the many fires so lit up the night skies that none failed to see them for three parishes around. Yet, this was all a mistake. It was a premature igniting of the trash houses on the estates, possibly due to an incident, which took place on another estate [Salt Spring Estate] nearby.”

So, if Sam Sharpe did not start the fire, how did he factor in this insurrectional equation, and why was he killed?

Baptist Deacon Samuel Sharpe, who lived on Croydon Estate in St James, was a literate lay-preacher who was given much time, latitude and space by the Baptist, Reverend Thomas Burchell, to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ. The man, who was said to be of fine intellect, and possessed great oratory skills, believed slavery was wrong. He learned from the Bible that white people had no right to hold black people in servitude.

Sharpe made good use of the rumours that slavery had been abolished, as the historian, Richard Hart, lawyer, trade unionist and politician writes in a paper called, Black Jamaicans’ Struggle Against Slavery, “There is no doubt that he used this rumour as a means of encouraging the people to participate in the rebellion”.

Sharpe conceived the idea of organising a general strike against slavery in the western parishes, as far as he could reach from his base in St James. The enslaved were entitled to three holidays every year, right after Christmas, and his idea was that, after the end of those holidays they would not report to their overseers to get instructions for the following day’s work.

“Sharpe’s miliary plan envisaged a main army, and also local units. He tried to organise a mobile force, which was to operate over a fairly large area, taking its members away from their homes. He sent Gardener (one of his followers) to lead his force into Westmoreland and Hanover,” Hart writes.

“Also, on each estate or in each district where there was a cluster of smaller estates, a local unit was formed, led perhaps by one of the people that he had been able to contact at his meetings. Their job was two-fold. They were to lead the strike, and when at a later stage in the rebellion, the policy of destroying property was adopted, then they were to act as incendiaries.”

But, somebody or something pre-empted the plan. The uprising and the brutal reaction to it added more fervour to the antislavery movement in Britain. Hart writes, inter alia, “As we have seen, then, all the conspiracies and rebellions that occurred in the 19th century failed to achieve their immediate objectives. Their principal leaders and organisers all met their death.

“The abolition of slavery was effected by legislation created in Parliament in 1833, and further legislation four years later. What then was the contribution of the revolutionary slaves in Jamaica, and elsewhere in the Caribbean area, to the achievements of freedom from chattel slavery?”

He answers himself thus: “Their principal achievement was that, though they did not themselves carry out the process by which slavery was legally terminated, they altered the British government’s timetable for the abolition of slavery. They set a new time, perhaps 40 or 50 years earlier than had been intended.”

Historian, Reverend Henry Bleby agrees when he says, “The evidence taken before the Committee of the two Houses of Parliament made it manifest, that if the abolition of slavery were not speedily effected by the peaceable method of legislative enactment, the slaves would assuredly take the matter into their own hands, and bring their bondage to a violent and bloody termination.”

Slavery was abolished six years after Sharpe’s death. Speaking to Reverend Bleby while he was awaiting execution in jail in Montego, Sam Sharpe said, “I would rather die upon yonder gallows than live in slavery”. He was buried in the sands on a beach in Montego Bay, but, his remains were later exhumed and placed into the Baptist chapel.

Sam Sharpe was conferred with the title of National Hero on March 31, 1982. There is a monument mounted in his honour in Sam Sharpe Square, Montego Bay, and another in National Heroes, Heroes Circle, in Kingston.