So you talk about the ways that guns were used as literal currency. But guns played a really important role in some of the pivotal moments in US history, in which racial caste becomes codified because of rebellion. So tell us a little bit about how guns factored into those early uprisings, like Bacon's rebellion and Stono's Rebellion.
Throughout U.S. [and colonial] history, there are about 270 slave rebellions. And the U.S. government was particularly and acutely concerned about this, because there had been a precedent for a successful one: the Haitian rebellion, which essentially kicked out the planter class. Rebellions were something that many white Southerners, as well as the U.S. government, had used as kind of a rallying cry to ensure that the apparatus of slavery was secure.
All the way back in 1676, we had Bacon's Rebellion, which occured in Virginia. It was a particularly interesting rebellion, because it was an allyship between Black slaves and white indentured servants; essentially they took a bunch of firearms and they tore stuff up. And the government's response to that was to roll out slave laws. And part of those slave laws were meant to ensure that Black people, whether they were enslaved or free, were not able to get firearms. You see throughout time and time again throughout history. These rebellions would occur, and the government would step down hard and fast to further racially stratify the laws.
My favorite story, though, is Stono's Rebellion. It occurred in South Carolina in 1739, and it was actually a direct reaction to a gun law. The white planter class had begun to get acutely aware of the fact that Black slaves were beginning to outnumber them. So in an effort to mitigate a potential rebellion on the colony, they passed the 1739 Security Act, which would mandate that the white planter class males would carry muskets to church with them on Sunday. And the rationale behind that was that, on Sunday, slaves were given their most free time. And because of that, the white planter class believed that slaves were most likely to launch a rebellion at that time. So they passed the Security Act, and right before it was to go into effect, a bunch of slaves revolted on a Sunday, when they knew their masters were unarmed. They ran into a storehouse, killed the owner, took a bunch of guns, and started marching down the street. They killed more of the white planter class, and they kept on recruiting more slaves from plantations. Unfortunately for them, they were [eventually] caught by a posse and killed, but this sent a kind of shockwave throughout white planter class at the time, about the security threat Black slaves could pose.