In January 1811, five hundred slaves, dressed in military uniforms and armed with guns, cane knives, and axes, rose up from the plantations around New Orleans and set out to conquer the city. The march of this ethnically diverse, politically astute, and highly organized self-made army represented the largest act of armed resistance against slavery in the history of the United States. American Uprising is the riveting and long-neglected story of this elaborate plot, the dramatic march on the city, and its violent and shocking conclusion-as well as the French planters' attempt to write the event out of history, thereby preventing the spread of the slaves' revolutionary philosophy.