Historian Daniel Rasmussen reveals the long-forgotten history of America’s largest slave uprising: the New Orleans slave revolt of 1811.

No North American slave uprising—not Gabriel Prosser, not Denmark Vesey, not Nat Turner—has rivaled the scale of this rebellion either in terms of the number of the slaves involved or in terms of the number who were killed. Over 100 slaves were slaughtered by federal troops and French planters, who then sought to write the event out of history and prevent the spread of the slaves’ revolutionary philosophy. With the Haitian Revolution a recent memory and the War of 1812 looming on the horizon, the revolt had epic consequences for America.

In an epic, illuminating narrative, Rasmussen offers new insight into American expansionism, the path to Civil War, and the earliest grassroots push by slave revolutionaries for justice and freedom.

About the Author

Dan Rasmussen was born and raised in Washington, DC, where he attended St. Albans School. He graduated from Harvard University summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 2009, where he studied history and literature with a focus on American slavery and the 19th century American South.

He wrote his senior thesis, Violent Visions, on the 1811 German Coast Uprising – the largest slave revolt in American history. Rasmussen’s thesis won the Kathryn Ann Huggins Prize, the Perry Miller Prize and the Thomas Temple Hoopes Prize, Harvard’s top undergraduate academic honor. The thesis is the basis for this, his first book.