User:Vivaporius/Sandbox

The Ascendancy's history begins with the birth of Dominique Madora, father of the nation. He was born in 1792 in South Carolina to two freed slaves. They put him through school secretly, and upon reaching age 18, became a Baptist minister out of Charleston. He preached against slavery, defiant of the threats he faced. His fiery and passionate speeches earned him many enemies, especially within the elite slave owner families of the time. While traveling from Charleston to Columbia to continue his preaching, he was ambushed and kidnapped. He was put to work as a slave on a plantation outside of Greenville after being auctioned off in 1818. Even in slavery he continued preaching, albeit in secret.

For eleven years he was a slave, preaching the crimes of the trade and the lies and excuses told by whites to control black. Soon, word of his teachings reached another plantation when one of Dominique's parishioners was sold by the owner to a friend. He words sparked a slave revolt their, and so spread to his own, causing the 100 and so slaves to rise up against their masters. Rather than fight, Dominique told those who would listen to not join the fight, but to flee with him from the south. Of these, only 31 of the slave–6 men, 17 women, and 8 children, agreed to come with him. Traveling under the cover of darkness, the escapees fled, avoiding the fate of death that befell those who wished to fight. Knowing that laws of the time would allow slave owners to take them back if they went north, the slaves opted to go west, were American law was acknowledged at its best.