This month, lovers of liberty can mark Independence Day on July 4, and the Fall of the Bastille in Paris on July 14. But the Charleston Workhouse Rebellion of July 13, 1849, also merits remembering.
Nicholas Kelly, born locally circa 1822, had been jailed at the Workhouse (no longer standing) on Magazine Street for behavior his enslaver deemed unsuitable. He had worked as a plasterer, been sent to and retrieved from New Orleans, and according to some accounts, been cheated out of the money he had paid to his enslaver to gain freedom for himself and his family. Imprisoned for months, Kelly physically intervened when an incarcerated woman he knew, or was related to, was to be removed.
Nicholas Kelly and two accomplices armed with sledgehammers and pick axes led an attack on the police and their jailers at the Charleston slave workhouse. The three men helped dozens of their fellow slaves escape the workhouse and into the streets of Charleston. Nicholas’s astonishing attempt to escape was a singular event: it was the largest workhouse slave rebellion in United States history. The ramifications of the breakout were felt far and wide. Kelly’s daring bid for freedom was the most important slave rebellion to occur in South Carolina since the attempted Denmark Vesey Insurrection in 1822…