Murder at Montpelier: Igbo Africans in Virginia

Abstract

Enslaved Igbo and the Foundation of Afro-Virginia Slave Culture and SocietyBased largely on court and county documents as well as the recently published transatlantic slave database, Douglas Chambers uses the circumstances surrounding the 1732 death of Ambrose Madison, the paternal grandfather of President James Madison, to reconstruct the history of the Igbo slaves in Virginia.Thus, the book is primarily about the dominant role of enslaved Igbo in the formation of early Afro-Virginia slave culture and society.In the words of the author, it discusses "the process of historical creolization in eighteenth-century Virginia . . .[which] effectively mean[s] the Igboization of slave community and culture" in the region (p.18).The book breaks into two parts: part 1 consists of chapters 1-4, and part 2 consists of chapters 5-10.Three slaves, two men and a woman, were accused of causing Madison's death by poisoning.They were tried and found guilty.While one of the accused, a male slave owned by a neighboring planter, was executed for his alleged lead role, the other two, owned by Madison, were punished by whipping and returned to his estate.As a foundation for his thesis, Chambers attempts to trace the history of the enslaved Africans from their points of embarkation in the Bight of Biafra and, more specifically, Calabar to their disembarkation in Virginia.Thus, while part 1 of the study focuses on the Igbo and their culture and society during the era of the transatlantic slave trade, part 2 centers on the experiences of the enslaved in Virginia.The author argues that the

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