A New Orleans Slave Rebellion [Some Sunday Context]
This Day (An America 250 History Show)
Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia
4.5 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 25 January 2026
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For our "Sunday Context" series, we build on this past week's coversation about the Battle of New Orleans with a look at the largest slave rebellion in US history, led by Charles Deslondes, which took place just outside of New Orleans in 1811. Like the story of the War of 1812, this involved the mix of ethnic, political, and cultural forces that only New Orleans has -- and highlights the way in which the future of slavery would become the defining issue of the era.
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| 0:00.0 | Hey everyone, welcome to this day. Jody Avergan here. |
| 0:06.4 | And this is some Sunday context, where we bring you new conversations and favorites from the archives to add a little extra context to what we've been covering. |
| 0:15.6 | We just wrapped up our two-part series on the Battle of New Orleans, the War of 1812, the U.S. versus the British, round two, |
| 0:22.6 | and the rise of Andrew Jackson. One of my favorite parts of that story is just the glimpse of |
| 0:27.8 | New Orleans itself, the cultural, political, ethnic mix that it was then, and it continues to be today. |
| 0:33.8 | We mentioned how many languages you could hear in the city in the early 1800s, and then how Andrew Jackson tried to rein in what he saw as the chaos by imposing martial law, both before the Battle of New Orleans and for a long time afterwards. |
| 0:47.1 | Well, today we are bringing you a story from just a few years earlier about another army marching, but with a very different idea of freedom. This is the |
| 0:55.6 | story of the 1811 rebellion of enslaved men led by Charles De Lawn. It has a lot of the same |
| 1:02.0 | ingredients as the story we just told this week, the shockwaves of the independence fight in Haiti, |
| 1:06.9 | French-influenced ideas of liberty, New Orleans as the ultimate crossroads. |
| 1:11.7 | But this all plays out on a sugar plantation just outside of the city, not on a battlefield. |
| 1:17.1 | So a really fascinating story and some Sunday context. |
| 1:20.4 | Now, a quick reminder, if you are a paying subscriber to our newsletter, you get early access |
| 1:24.8 | to the whole America 250 series, video ad free. We send it to |
| 1:29.1 | your inbox on Sunday afternoons, plus lots of other extras that help support this show. |
| 1:34.6 | And next up in our series is a look at George W. Bush, the response to 9-11 and the so-called |
| 1:39.6 | axis of evil. So if you want early access to that, you can sign up at thisdaypod.com. Once again, |
| 1:47.2 | that's thisdaypod.com to support the show. Either way, for all of us coming up after the break, |
| 1:52.6 | Charles Deland, a rebellion, and what it reveals about the story of New Orleans and slavery in America. |
| 1:58.2 | We'll be right back. |
| 2:02.3 | Hello and welcome to This Day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia. My name is Jody |
| 2:07.5 | Avergan. This day, January 1811, it is the immediate aftermath of what came to be known as the |
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