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Fighting Back Against Slavery Madison Washington was about twenty-two years old when he led a revolt on board the Creole , a merchant ship transporting 135 slaves from Richmond, Virginia to New Orleans, Louisiana. The sugar and cotton plantations of the deep South had earned a reputation for extremely harsh treatment and hard labor, and slaves living in the upper South feared the possibility that their masters might decide to “sell them South.” The very possibility was enough to cause a slave to attempt to run away, or—as was the case of the human cargo aboard the Creole —to fight for their lives and their freedom. According to a fictionalized account written by the former- slave-turned- abolitionist William Wells Brown twenty years after the event, Madison Washington had plotted revolts from his early childhood, while he was working under three different masters. As the story goes, Washington had escaped to Canada and found a job that paid well, but he gave up this freedom to return south in the hopes of sneaking his beloved wife Susan to freedom as well. Captured at the very last moment, his former master sold him to a slaver who intended to bring Washington to the deep South. While none of the details of Washington’s early life can be verified, his actions aboard the Creole in November 1841 are certain. Washington and three other male slaves that he had just met on this journey were the ringleaders. They convinced fifteen

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