The Creole Mutiny/Creole Rebellion (1841) was an insurrection aboard the brig Creole on 7 November 1841 during which 19 enslaved men (of the 135 men, women, and children held as slaves on board), led by Madison Washington, took the ship by force. The Creole had been sailing from Virginia to the slave markets in New Orleans, but, after its seizure by Washington and his men, it was redirected to the British territory of the Bahamas, where, since Britain had by this time abolished slavery, they were set free.

The Creole Mutiny/Creole Rebellion is considered the most successful slave revolt in US history, but it has been overshadowed by the more widely known Amistad Seizure of 1839 and the famous court case that followed. The Amistad Seizure was the direct inspiration for the Creole Mutiny, as it is well-established that Madison Washington knew the details of that event and was a great admirer of the Amistad rebel leader Sengbe Pieh (better known as Joseph Cinque). Since he already had the paradigm of the Amistad Seizure in mind prior to the Creole setting sail for New Orleans, it is thought that Washington planned his insurrection while still confined in the Virginia slave pens, chose the men he knew he could trust, and, when the right moment presented itself, was prepared to strike.

Although the US government petitioned for the return of the 130 slaves (five decided to remain on board and were later sold as slaves in New Orleans), they were considered free by the British government and established themselves in the Bahamas and Jamaica.

Years later, the United Kingdom financially compensated the United States for the slaves, but this did nothing to quell the outrage of the US government and pro-slavery factions in 1841 who saw the success of the Creole Mutiny – which had depended significantly on Britain upholding their anti-slavery laws – as a direct threat to the institution of slavery in the USA. Like the Amistad Seizure and John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry (1859), the Creole Mutiny further increased tensions between the slave states and free states in the years leading up to the American Civil War.

The schooner La Amistad had been seized by Africans, led by Sengbe Pieh (Joseph Cinque), off the coast of Cuba in July 1839. The 53 Africans on board had been illegally kidnapped in West Africa, smuggled to Havana, Cuba, and were to be sold in Puerto Principe, Cuba.

After taking control of the ship, Cinque ordered the two owners, Juan Ruiz and Pedro Montes, to return them to Africa, but, secretly, the two steered the ship toward the United States, where they hoped it would be taken, they would be rescued, and their 'property' would be returned to them. The ship was, in fact, taken by US authorities off New York and towed to Connecticut but, after the intervention of the local abolitionists, it was found that the Africans were not slaves, but free people held illegally against their will, and through a series of trials, culminating in a hearing before the US Supreme Court, the Africans were freed, eventually leaving on their return to Africa in 1841.

The Hermosa was another schooner, owned by US slavers, that was transporting 38 slaves from Richmond, Virginia, to New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1840 when it was blown off course and wrecked on the rocks of the Abaco Islands in the Bahamas. The ship was salvaged and towed to Nassau, and, as the Bahamas were British territory, and the United Kingdom had abolished slavery by this time, all 38 slaves were given their freedom.

Madison Washington knew about both of these events, as noted by scholar Bruce Chadwick:

knew of the Hermosa case…and from Underground Railroad leaders, he likely heard that British ships that captured slave transports had been freeing the slaves and sending them to the Bahamas. Most of all, he learned all about the 1839 Amistad mutiny. He visited abolitionist Robert Purvis, who had just received a portrait of Cinque, the leader of the Amistad uprising. Purvis told him the story of the insurrection on the ship, the trial in American courts, and the verdict that set all the mutineers free.

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At the time Washington learned of the Amistad and Hermosa cases, he most likely never thought he would actually need the information. He had escaped slavery and fled to Canada and would have had no reason to concern himself with ship seizures or wrecks in the Bahamas, but that was before he returned to the United States to try to free his wife.

Madison Washington was born a slave in Virginia, married a woman named Susan on the same plantation, and, in 1839, with the help of the Underground Railroad, escaped. He was unable to bring his wife with him, however, and, upon finally arriving in Canada, found it difficult to enjoy his freedom knowing his wife remained enslaved. Chadwick writes:

Madison Washington had no fear of dying. He was dead already, he believed. He had escaped from his Virginia plantation a year earlier but was unable to free his wife, Susan…Washington was safe and would have stayed there, safe and free, if he had not missed his wife so desperately. He saved his money and sneaked back to Virginia to rescue his wife and bring her back to Canada with him.

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The abolitionists who had helped him during his time in Canada warned him not to return to the United States and certainly not to go back to Virginia, but he felt he had no choice. Freedom in Canada was meaningless without his wife.

He arrived back on the plantation at night during a slave gathering of cornhusking around a fire and stayed in the shadows listening. He was able to determine that his wife was still on the plantation and moved off to find her. At this point, he was recognized by an overseer, captured, and thrown into a slave pen to await sale. A few weeks later, he was sold to Mr. Thomas McCargo, a slave agent of Richmond, Virginia.

Washington was transferred to the slave pen near the docks in Richmond and, shortly afterwards, was led aboard the Creole, bound for the slave markets of New Orleans.

Washington would have met the others who would play leading roles in the Creole Mutiny – Ben Blacksmith (also known as Ben Johnstone), Elijah Morris, and Doc Ruffin – for the first time in the slave pens of Richmond and may have shared his plans with one or all three. Evidence that he was already planning to take the ship before boarding it came out later when it was found that some slaves had been able to smuggle weapons on board in the lining of their coats. The strongest evidence, however, is that he asked to be made cook for the slaves on board, which put him in a position to gather intelligence and perfect his plan. Chadwick comments:

As the cook, he struck up numerous conversations with the mates and other members of the crew, with whom he became friendly. They good-naturedly kept him apprised of where the brig was as it moved down the Florida coast…During all those hours as cook, he also learned how many crew members were on deck in each shift, where they stood, who actually sailed the ship, when their shifts began and ended, what time the captain retired, and where the few guns on the Creole were stored. He kept all this information in his head.

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The captain of the ship was Robert Ensor of Richmond, who had brought along his wife, infant daughter, and niece. The first mate was Zephaniah Gifford, and the second mate was Lucius Stevens. There were seven men on the crew, including a French helmsman (Jacques Leconte) and a Prussian cook, Jacob Leitener. Also on board were the slave traders Thomas McCargo (and his teenage nephew), John R. Hewell, and William Henry Merritt.

Although the Creole was a slave ship, outfitted with a hold large enough to house the 135 enslaved on board, little care was taken to secure them. The male and female slaves were separated in the hold only by stacks of tobacco; none were chained at night, and some were allowed to still roam the deck after dark.

The presence of passengers like Ensor's family and McCargo's nephew suggests that the 18 White people on board felt they had nothing to fear from the 135 Blacks because they had all been 'broken' and accepted their fate as enslaved people. This assumption, of course, proved to be wrong, but it was not unusual, as White slaveowners routinely managed to convince themselves that Blacks enjoyed being slaves.

Washington laid out his plan to the three others at some point before the night of 7 November, when the ship was quietly cruising off the coast of Florida. Washington sent a slave from the hold up top to find First Mate Gifford and tell him that a male slave had entered the women's section and was harassing them. Gifford and William Merritt went to investigate and found Washington in the women's section. Merritt was grabbed and subdued, and Gifford was pulled down the stairs and beaten.

Washington then signaled for Elijah Morris, Ben Blacksmith, and Doc Ruffin to attack, and they led the other conspirators (19 in all, including Washington) up from the hold to take the deck. Washington then called on all the other slaves to join the uprising, yelling, "Come up, every damned one of you. If you don't lend a hand, I will kill you all and throw you overboard" (Chadwick, 17). Many, though not all, joined the uprising, which is described by Chadwick:

There was rough hand-to-hand fighting on deck between the slaves and the crew. Both sides used whatever weapons they could find or simply grabbed clubs and hard, blunt objects. Some had knives they had stolen from the ship's kitchen. The slaves, who outnumbered the crew nineteen to six, battered most of them, shoved many down on the hardwood deck, stabbed some, and forced the rest into submission as rapidly as they could.

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The only death was the slave trader John R. Hewell, who was stabbed repeatedly, made it to McCargo's cabin, and bled out. Although there were cries among the rebels to kill all the White people on board, Washington restrained them. When the crew was all secured, Washington told Merritt to steer them toward the Bahamas. Merritt and Gifford would then take turns navigating the ship, but they were not allowed to speak to each other, and the compass was regularly checked by those among the rebels who knew how to read it, to make sure they were headed in the right direction.

Prior to the uprising, the male and female slaves had been segregated – before and after boarding – but now they mingled freely together, and, at some point, Madison Washington was quite pleasantly surprised to be reunited with his wife, Susan.

The Creole sailed into the Nassau Harbor on 9 November and was welcomed by a pilot boat. Washington had ordered all weapons dropped into the sea, and the rebels mixed with the general population aboard the ship. Captain Ensor was still recovering from his wounds, and so First Mate Gifford went on shore and informed the American Consul, Mr. Bacon, of the uprising and the death of Hewell.

The Consul alerted the Governor of the Bahamas, who sent 24 members of the Second West India Regiment to the Creole to secure it until the details of the uprising could be ascertained. According to a later report by Merritt, one of the officers of the regiment, almost all from West Africa, remarked to one of the slaves on board that they had been foolish not to have killed all the Whites and thrown the bodies overboard as they could have then run the ship around at Nassau with no questions asked.

American Consul Bacon had been in his position a year earlier when the Hermosa was towed into Nassau Harbor and the 38 slaves were freed, over his objections, by the British, and he was determined this would not happen again. Since all weapons on the Creole had been disposed of, Bacon and Gifford went into the streets of Nassau to buy more to take back the ship. News of the Creole Mutiny had spread quickly, however, and all the sympathies of the Bahamians were with the rebels; so, no one would sell them any guns.

They enlisted the aid of one Captain Woodside, commanding the nearby American ship, the Congress, found what weapons they could, and planned to retake the Creole and, with the help of the Congress, sail the ship and its 'cargo' to a port that would honor American property rights and uphold the status of those onboard as slaves.

Meanwhile, the Bahamians of Nassau launched small boats into the harbor to convey the Blacks aboard the Creole to shore. The Bahamian Young Men's Friendly League (a pro-emancipation group) obtained a writ of habeas corpus regarding the Blacks on the Creole and began bringing them ashore. When Gifford and Bacon tried to approach the ship to take it back, the Second West India Regiment aimed their muskets and told them to turn around and return to port. All the Blacks aboard the Creole were freed except the 19 who had been identified as the major players in the insurrection that had led to the death of Hewell and the assault on Captain Ensor and the other crew members.

The 19 were held in prison while their case was considered, but on 16 April 1842, they were released as it was determined that, under British maritime law, they were freemen illegally detained and transported against their will and had only exercised their natural rights in taking the ship to win their freedom.

Five Blacks remained on board the Creole, and, when it was released from Nassau Harbor, the ship resumed its course to New Orleans, where they were sold into slavery. The other 128 former slaves were granted their freedom and established themselves in the Bahamas or Jamaica. What became of Madison Washington and Susan Washington after April 1842 is unknown.

The Creole sank in a storm off Portugal less than a year later, but the ship's sinking, or the earlier decision of the Nassau court, was far from the end of the story. Tensions between the United States and the United Kingdom increased after the Creole Mutiny, as this was simply the latest event in which British authority had been exerted to free slaves claimed as property by United States merchants. Pro-slavery factions recalled the 'depredations' of the British in the years before the War of 1812 in impressing American seamen into service and argued that the freeing of slaves in British-controlled waters amounted to the same breach of international law.

The John Tyler administration demanded the return of the 128 former slaves to the United States for prosecution, but they were all free inhabitants of the Bahamas or Jamaica by that time, and the United Kingdom refused to track them down. Abolitionists seized on the mutiny, as they had with the Amistad case, to highlight the cruelty and hypocrisy of the institution of slavery. US Representative and abolitionist Joshua Reed Giddings of Ohio introduced nine resolutions arguing against the right of the United States government to act in defense of the interests of slaveholders or slave traders.

The Creole Mutiny increased tensions between the United Kingdom and the United States (even though the UK agreed to compensate the USA for 'financial losses' in 1855) as well as between free states and slave states in the USA. To pro-slavery factions, Washington was an outlaw who should have been arrested and returned to the US to face justice.

To abolitionists and many others, Madison Washington was a hero – abolitionist orator and statesman Frederick Douglass published a popular work of fiction, The Heroic Slave, in 1853 about Washington and the Creole Mutiny – and the event, and its leader, continued to be referenced by both abolitionists and pro-slavery factions up through the outbreak of the American Civil War. The event continues to be regarded as the most successful slave revolt in US history.