Isaac Sasportas

A Haitian-born Sephardic Jew of Portuguese descent, Isaac Sasportas made his living as a trader in textiles, operating in South Carolina and among the Caribbean islands. Infected by the revolutionary fervor so widespread in France, America, and the Caribbean in the late eighteenth century, Sasportas first became involved in a failed attempt to liberate the slaves of Curaçao. He later tried to promote a slave rebellion in Jamaica, hoping to do what Toussaint Louverture had done in Saint-Domingue (modern Haiti). But Sasportas was betrayed to British officials on the island, who sentenced him to be publicly hanged.