Jeff Strickland tells the powerful story of Nicholas Kelly, the enslaved craftsman who led the Charleston Workhouse Slave Rebellion, the largest slave revolt in the history of the antebellum American South. With two accomplices, some sledgehammers, and pickaxes, Nicholas risked his life and helped thirty-six fellow enslaved people escape the workhouse where they had been sent by their enslavers to be tortured. While Nat Turner, Gabriel Prosser, and Denmark Vesey remain the most recognizable rebels, the pivotal role of Nicholas Kelly is often forgotten. All for Liberty centers his rebellion as a decisive moment leading up to the secession of South Carolina from the United States in 1861. This compelling micro-history navigates between Nicholas's story and the Age of Atlantic Revolutions, while also considering the parallels between race and incarceration in the nineteenth century and in modern America. Never before has the story of Nicholas Kelly been so eloquently told.

Finalist, 2022 George C. Rogers Jr. Book Award, South Carolina Historical Society

'The cruelties of the Old South’s criminal justice system are laid bare in this account of the Charleston Workhouse Rebellion of 1849. Strickland resurrects slave rebel Nicholas Kelly and embeds his remarkable yet forgotten uprising within the contexts of South Carolina’s largest urban area, the American South, and the broader Atlantic world.'

Jeff Forret - author of Williams' Gang: A Notorious Slave Trader and His Cargo of Black Convicts

'All for Liberty skilfully uncovers a forgotten slave rebellion in Charleston in the summer of 1849. Despite official attempts to downplay the uprising in the Charleston workhouse, sufficient evidence survives to prove that this event will lay to rest any idea that the enslaved were largely pacified between 1831 and 1861.'

Tim Lockley - University of Warwick

'Jeff Strickland’s prodigious research in All for Liberty locates one of the nation’s largest yet underappreciated slave insurrections, in Charleston’s infamous Work House. His careful excavation of events persuasively links the tortured lives confined there, the impact of the Atlantic Revolutions upon them and South Carolina’s response to slave agency: a drive to secession.'

Bernard E. Powers, Jr - Director of the Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston, College of Charleston

'… brings the horrors and history of the workhouse front and center.'

Harlan Greene Source: The Post and Courier

‘Strickland's accessible prose, narrative style, and comprehensive contextualization mix well with his fascinating and enlightening analyses of the workhouse and urban enslavement.’

William D. Jones Source: Journal of Southern History

‘Strickland brings much-needed attention to this forgotten moment in the history of slavery. What is most impressive is that in chronicling the Charleston workhouse rebellion, Strickland does not overstate its importance. He acknowledges that Kelly’s rebellion was opportunistic and lacked the detailed planning seen in other famous rebellions. The Charleston workhouse rebellion was not a rallying cry against slavery, but it did influence local and state politics; it is, therefore, worthy of the attention it receives in All for Liberty.’

Sarah Whitwell Source: The Journal of the Civil War Era