The buried story of an attempted slave rebellion is unearthed in David Robertson's Denmark Vesey. The attempted insurrection was to take place on June 6, 1822 by a free black man, Denmark Vesey in Charleston, South Carolina. Vesey was a man born into slavery who later bought his freedom from his namesake owner. Vesey was a literate man who studied the bible and spoke English and French fluently. Although Vesey was no longer bound by the chains of slavery he wanted to "see what he could do for his fellow creatures." Vesey wanted, like Moses to free his people at all costs. Vesey's plan was to exterminate the white populous, burn the city to its foundation, and hijack a ship bound for West Africa or Haiti. Before the plan could be implemented Vesey was betrayed and he and his followers were jailed and eventually put to death. The primary source that Robertson uses is a transcript written by the judges at Vesey's trial. The transcript includes the evidence and the testimony given at the trial, it also included an introduction and a narrative. One of the questions that the author attempts to answer is, why is Demark Vesey's failed rebellion important to history, and what were the results of his actions.
One of the results of Vesey's rebellion was the deconstruction of the Magnolia curtain. This curtain was the ignorant fact that black people were content and happy to be a slaves and family members of the slave owners. It began with southern slave-owners who argued in public that blacks were very happy to be slaves, living and working under their masters' kindhearted supervision. Slave insurrections simply flew in the face of their argument. Moreover, the information that came out at Vesey's trial threatened the southerners' manner of existence. In the threat of a slave insurrection, they privately lived in terror. One quote that the book uses is from a white woman she states, "Oh! I shall never be able to bear the sight of a Negro again .
