Second Maroon War

The Maroons of Trelawny Town felt that they were being mistreated under the terms of Cudjoe's Treaty of 1739, which ended the First Maroon War. The spark of the war was when two Maroons, one named Peter Campbell, were found guilty of stealing two pigs by a court in Montego Bay. The court then ordered a black slave to flog the two Maroons, and the humiliation provoked outrage in Trelawny Town. For half a century, the Maroons had been hunting runaway slaves, and while Campbell was being whipped, other imprisoned slaves jeered them.[3][4]

When six Maroon leaders, led by Montague James and including Major Jarrett, came to the British to present their grievances, the British took them as prisoners. They were acting under orders from the new governor, Alexander Lindsay, 6th Earl of Balcarres, who wrongly believed that the French had infected the Maroons with their revolutionary spirit. Balcarres completely mishandled the dispute, which could have been resolved without conflict, but he ignored the advice of local planters, and ordered his forces to put down the Maroons of Trelawny Town. Fighting began in mid-August.[5]

"Leonard Parkinson, A Captain of the Maroons; taken from the Life" 1796 by Abraham Raimbach

The governor's combative approach led to a minor issue being blown up into a full-scale guerrilla war. On the other hand, Trelawny Town did not receive any support from the Windward Maroon towns of Moore Town, Charles Town (Jamaica) and Scott's Hall, Jamaica, while the other Leeward Maroon town of Accompong Town even took up arms on behalf of the colonial authorities against Trelawny Town.[6][7][8][9]

The war lasted for eight months and ended in a bloody stalemate. The British fielded 5,000 troops and militia, which outnumbered the Maroons ten to one, but the mountainous and forested topography of Jamaica proved ideal for guerrilla warfare. The Maroon officers who fought a guerrilla campaign against the British included Leonard Parkinson, James Palmer, Andrew Smith (Maroon), John Jarrett, and Charles Samuels (Maroon). Alexander Forbes, the white superintendent of Accompong Town, sent an Accompong Maroon officer, Captain Chambers, to Trelawny Town to persuade them to surrender, but Palmer shot Chambers and cut off his head. Colonel William Fitch mobilised his forces, which included Accompong warriors, to attack Trelawny Town. However, Fitch did not follow the advice of his Accompong trackers, and he led them into a Trelawny ambush, which resulted in 18 deaths, including those of two Accompong trackers. Fitch himself was killed in a Maroon ambush.[10]

The Maroons utilized their knowledge of the terrain to wage a guerilla war against the British colonial government

In the first two weeks of the conflict, the Maroons of Trelawny Town had killed 65 British soldiers without any Maroon death reported. Throughout the entire conflict, one general complained that the colonial forces had killed less than 32 Maroons and their allies. Recent research shows that the colonial militias were only able to kill about 21 Trelawnys. The Maroon warriors also laid waste to a number of sugar estates in western Jamaica.[11]

The casualties suffered by the colonial militias were higher than those suffered by the Maroons. There were a number of engagements between the Maroons and the British forces for the remaining months of 1795, during which the British suffered between 8-12 killed or wounded in each skirmish.[12][13] No final figure was given for the total losses for the British. However, the British casualties were believed to be in the hundreds.[14][15]

When General George Walpole employed a scorched-earth strategy against Trelawny Town, the Maroons found they had difficulty getting access to food, water, and ammunition as the dry season began at the end of the year. When Governor Balcarres imported some one hundred bloodhounds and their handlers from Cuba, Montague James and his lieutenants saw this as the last straw, and accepted Walpole's overtures for peace. The Maroons had the better of the skirmishes, so they only laid down their arms and surrendered in December 1795 on condition they would not be deported. Walpole gave the Maroons his word that they would not be transported off the island.[16][17]

Part of a series on
North American slave revolts
Attack and capture of the Crête-à-Pierrot (Combat et prise de la Crête-à-Pierrot, March 1802) in the Haitian Revolution by Auguste Raffet, engraving by Ernest Hébert
Context Atlantic slave trade Maroons Slavery among indigenous peoples Slavery in Canada Cuba Haiti Latin America Bahamas New France New Spain British and French Caribbean British Virgin Islands United States colonial US
Before 1700 1521 Santo Domingo Slave Revolt (Santo Domingo) 1526 San Miguel de Gualdape (Spanish Florida, victorious) 1548–1558, 1579–1582 Bayano Wars (Real Audiencia of Panama, New Spain, suppressed) c. 1570 Gaspar Yanga's Revolt (Veracruz, New Spain, victorious) 1601 Acaxee Rebellion (New Spain, suppressed) 1616 Tepehuán Revolt (New Spain, suppressed) 1680 Pueblo Revolt (Santa Fe de Nuevo México, New Spain, victorious)
18th century 1712 New York Slave Revolt (British Province of New York, suppressed) 1730 First Maroon War (British Jamaica, victorious) 1730 Chesapeake rebellion (British Chesapeake Colonies, suppressed) 1731 Samba rebellion (Louisiana, New France, suppressed) 1733 St. John Slave Revolt (Danish Saint John, suppressed) 1739 Stono Rebellion (British Province of South Carolina, suppressed) 1741 New York Conspiracy (British Province of New York, suppressed) 1760–61 Tacky's War (British Jamaica, suppressed) 1768 Montserrat slave rebellion (British Montserrat, suppressed) 1787 Abaco Slave Revolt (British Bahamas, suppressed) 1791 Mina Conspiracy (Louisiana, New Spain, suppressed) 1795 Pointe Coupée Conspiracy (Louisiana, New Spain, suppressed) 1795 Curaçao Slave Revolt of 1795 (Dutch Curaçao, suppressed) 1791–1804 Haitian Revolution (French Saint-Domingue, victorious)
19th century 1800 Gabriel's Rebellion (Virginia, suppressed) 1803 Igbo Landing (St. Simons Island, Georgia, victorious) 1805 Chatham Manor (Virginia, suppressed) 1811 German Coast Uprising (Territory of Orleans, suppressed) 1811 Aponte conspiracy (Spanish Cuba, suppressed) 1815 George Boxley (Virginia, suppressed) 1816 Bussa's Rebellion (British Barbados, suppressed) 1822 Vesey Plot (South Carolina, suppressed) 1825 Great African Slave Revolt (Cuba, suppressed) 1831 Nat Turner's rebellion (Virginia, suppressed) 1831–32 Baptist War (British Jamaica, suppressed) 1839 Amistad, ship rebellion (off the Cuban coast, victorious) 1841 Creole case, ship rebellion (off the Southern U.S. coast, victorious) 1842 slave revolt in the Cherokee Nation (Indian Territory, suppressed) 1843–44 Ladder Conspiracy (Spanish Cuba, suppressed) 1859 John Brown's raid (Virginia, suppressed)
Notable leaders Carolta Charles Deslondes Denmark Vesey François Mackandal Gabriel Prosser Gaspar Yanga Jean Saint Malo Jean-Jacques Dessalines John Brown Joseph Cinqué Madison Washington Marcos Xiorro Maria Nanny of the Maroons Nat Turner Toussaint Louverture Tula

The treaty signed in December between Walpole and the Maroon leaders established that the Maroons would beg on their knees for the King's forgiveness, return all runaway slaves, and be relocated elsewhere in Jamaica. The governor of Jamaica ratified the treaty, but gave the Maroons only three days to present themselves to beg forgiveness on 1 January 1796. Suspicious of British intentions, most of the Maroons did not surrender until mid-March, by which time the conflict had proved to be very costly to the island, and resulted in the ruin of many plantations and estates. Balcarres used the contrived breach of treaty as a pretext to deport most of the Trelawny Town Maroons to Nova Scotia. Walpole was disgusted with the governor's actions, pointing out that he had given the Maroons his word that they would not be transported off the island. Walpole resigned his commission, and went back to England, where he became an MP and protested in vain in the House of Commons how Balcarres had behaved in a duplicitous and dishonest way with the Maroons. However, Secretary of War Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, supported the governor's decision to deport the Maroons.[18]

In 1796, about 581 Trelawny Maroons were transported to Nova Scotia, but another 58 stayed behind in Jamaica, and either forged careers as free persons of colour, or joined Accompong Town. During the ship's voyage 17 Maroons died. During the first winter between 1796–97, which was a bitter one, another 19 Maroons died. During this winter, another five Maroons were born, and in 1797 the surgeon John Oxley counted 550 Maroons in Nova Scotia. After a few years the Maroons were upset with the poor accommodation in Canada. Led by Montague James, the Maroons asked to be transported to the new British settlement of Sierra Leone in West Africa. The British government eventually agreed, and the Maroons travelled to Freetown at the start of the nineteenth century.[19] Palmer died within a month of arriving with the Jamaican Maroons in Sierra Leone.[20]

After slavery was abolished in 1838, the Jamaican colonial authorities imported labourers from Sierra Leone, and among that number were scores of Trelawny Town Maroons. Among those who returned was Peter Campbell, whose flogging had sparked the Second Maroon War. These Returned Maroons established themselves in nearby Flagstaff, and their descendants are still there today.[21][22]

Hundreds of runaway slaves secured their freedom by escaping and fighting alongside the Maroons of Trelawny Town. The runaways fighting on the side of Trelawny Town may have outnumbered the Trelawny Maroons warriors. About half of these runaways surrendered with the Maroons, and many were executed or re-sold in slavery to Cuba.[23][24]

However, a few hundred stayed out in the forests of the Cockpit Country, and they joined other unofficial maroon communities. In 1798, a slave named Cuffee ran away from a western estate, and established a runaway community which was able to resist attempts by the colonial forces and the official Maroons remaining in Jamaica to subdue them.[25][26]

• Campbell, Mavis C. The Maroons of Jamaica, 1655–1796. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. 1990.
• Craton, Michael. Testing the Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British West Indies. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982.
• Winks, Robin. The Blacks in Canada. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press: 1971.
• Siva, Michael (2018). After the Treaties: A Social, Economic and Demographic History of Maroon Society in Jamaica, 1739–1842 (PDF) (PhD). Southampton: Southampton University.

Among the early historians to mention the Jamaican Maroons and the Second Maroon War were the following:

• Robert Charles Dallas, The History of the Maroons, From Their Origin to the Establishment of their Chief Tribe at Sierra Leone. 1803
• Bryan Edwards, History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies. 1793. (Later editions of Edwards' History, which eventually ran to several volumes, included information about the Second Maroon War.)

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