Gabriel Prosser
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1712 New York Slave Revolt |
Gabriel (1776–October 10, 1800), today commonly if incorrectly known as Gabriel Prosser, was a skilled and literate enslaved blacksmith who planned and led a large a slave rebellion in the Richmond area in the summer of 1800. Governor James Monroe and the state militia suppressed the rebellion. Gabriel and 26 other enslaved people who participated were hanged. Gabriel's Rebellion was important as a sign of the desire slaves had for freedom. In reaction, the Virginia and other legislatures passed restrictions on free Africans, as well as the education, movement and hiring out of the enslaved. In 2002 the City of Richmond passed a resolution in honor of Gabriel on the 202nd anniversary of the rebellion. In 2007 Governor Tim Kaine gave Gabriel and his followers an informal pardon, in recognition that history "favorably regarded" their willingness to fight for freedom and the equality of men.
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[edit] Life and background
Born into slavery in Henrico County, Virginia as the child of an enslaved African-American mother, Gabriel had two brothers, Solomon and Martin. They all lived on the tobacco plantation, called Brookfield, of Thomas Prosser. It was likely that Gabriel's father was a blacksmith, as that was the trade Gabriel and Solomon were trained in. He was also taught to read and write. By the mid-1790s, as Gabriel neared the age of twenty, he stood "six feet two or three inches high". His long and "bony face, well made", was marred by the loss of his two front teeth and "two or three scars on his head". Whites as well as blacks regarded the literate young man as "a fellow of great courage and intellect above his rank in life."[citation needed]
From 1780 to 1810, the number of slaves freed in the Upper South grew markedly, as men were inspired by the American Revolution and its ideals. Methodists and Quakers especially worked to convince slaveholders to free their slaves. The percentage of free blacks rose from 1 percent to more than 10 percent by 1810, with Virginia nearly doubling its percentage, from 4.2 to 7.2.[1] By 1810 nearly three-quarters of Delaware's blacks were free.[2] Major slaveholders watched these activities nervously, made uneasy as well by the violent aftermath of the French Revolution and the uprising of slaves in Saint Domingue in the Caribbean in the 1790s. In 1790 France granted social equality to free people of color, and in 1794 the commissioner of Saint-Domingue granted freedom to all the slaves.
[edit] Gabriel's Rebellion
Gabriel planned the revolt during the spring and summer of 1800. On August 30, 1800, Gabriel hoped to lead the slaves into Richmond, but torrential rains postponed the rebellion. The slaves' masters had suspicion of the uprising. Before it could be carried out, two slaves told their master Mosby Sheppard about the plans. He in turn warned Virginia's Governor James Monroe, who called out the state militia. Gabriel escaped downriver to Norfolk, but there was spotted and betrayed by another slave for the reward. That slave did not receive the full reward.
Gabriel was returned to Richmond for questioning, but he did not submit. Gabriel, his two brothers, and 24 of their followers were hanged.
[edit] Historiography
Historian Douglas Egerton offered a new perspective on Gabriel in his book Gabriel's Rebellion: The Virginia Slave Conspiracies of 1800-1802. The book incorporated extensive primary research from surviving contemporary documents. Among his findings, Egerton observed that Gabriel was never known by the surname "Prosser". He noted that was an after-the-fact assumption from a period when slaves and ex-slaves sometimes adopted their owner's family names, or whites assumed they would do so. According to Egerton, in 1800 white authorities referred to Gabriel as "Prosser's Gabriel", but his common-use name was simply Gabriel.
Egerton found that Gabriel was a skilled blacksmith who mostly "hired out" his time in Richmond foundries, an increasingly common practice as the market for tobacco was depressed and soil depleted. Slaveholders leased skilled slaves for jobs available in Virginia industries. Egerton concluded that Gabriel would have been stimulated and challenged by interacting with co-workers of European, African and mixed descent. They hoped Thomas Jefferson's Republicans would liberate them from domination by the wealthy Federalist merchants of the city. Gabriel also would have learned about the uprising and struggles of slaves in Saint Domingue.
Egerton believed that Gabriel had two white co-conspirators, at least one of whom was identified as a French national. Documentary evidence of their identity or involvement was sent to Governor Monroe but never produced in court. The internal dynamics of Jefferson's and Monroe's party in the 1800 elections were more complex than they appeared to either white or black partisans in Richmond. A significant part of the Republicans' base were owners of large plantations. Any sign that white radicals, and particularly Frenchmen, had supported Gabriel's plan could have cost Jefferson the election. Slaveholders had been made fearful by the violent excesses unleashed by the French Revolution and the rebellion of slaves in Saint-Domingue. Egerton believed that Gabriel planned to take Governor Monroe hostage to negotiate an end to slavery. Then he planned to "drink and dine with the merchants of the city".
Egerton noted that Gabriel did not order his followers to kill all whites except Methodists, Quakers and Frenchmen; rather, he instructed them to refrain from killing any people in those three categories. Methodists and Quakers were active missionaries for manumission, and the French ended slavery in 1794.
Gabriel initially escaped on a ship owned by a former overseer, a recently converted Methodist who repeatedly overlooked information as to his passenger's identity. Hoping to obtain a sufficient reward to purchase his own freedom, a slave "hired out" to work on the ship turned in Gabriel. He was paid only $50 as a reward, not the $300 expected.
[edit] Impact
Gabriel's uprising was notable not because of its actual impact — the rebellion was quelled before it could begin — but because of the potential for mass chaos and widespread violence. In Virginia, 39.2 percent of the population was enslaved in 1800, with a concentration of slaves on plantations in the Tidewater area and west of Richmond.[3] No reliable numbers exist regarding slave and free black conspirators; most likely, the number of men actively involved numbered only several hundred.[citation needed]
Southern slaveholders were well aware of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) and feared a slave rebellion in Virginia and other states. Gabriel had been able to plan the rebellion so well because of relatively lax rules of movement between plantations and the city. After the rebellion, many slaveholders greatly restricted the slaves' rights of travel when not working. Fears of a slave revolt regularly swept major slaveholding communities.
Prior to this rebellion, Virginia law had allowed education of slaves, and training slaves in skilled trades. After the rebellion, and after a second conspiracy was organized in 1802 among enslaved boatmen along the Appomattox and Roanoke Rivers, the Virginia Assembly banned hiring out of slaves (1808) and required freed blacks to leave the state or face reenslavement (1806). Free blacks had to petition the legislature to stay in the state, and were often aided in that goal by white friends or allies. In addition to the catalyst of Gabriel's Rebellion, the law against residency was prompted by the increase in population of free people of color. Numerous slaveholders in the first years after the Revolution freed their slaves by will or deed. The very existence of free blacks challenged the conditions of slave states.
[edit] Legacy and honors
Gabriel's rebellion served as an important example of slaves' taking action to seek freedom.
- In 2002 the City of Richmond adopted a resolution to commemorate the 202nd anniversary "of the execution of the patriot and freedom fighter, Gabriel, whose death stands as a symbol for the determination and struggle of slaves to obtain freedom, justice and equality as promised by the fundamental principles of democratic governments of the Commonwealth of Virginia and the United States of America."[4]
- In the fall of 2006 the Virginia State Conference of the NAACP requested Gov. Tim Kaine to pardon Gabriel in recognition of his contributions to the civil rights struggle of African Americans and all peoples.[5]
- On August 30, 2007, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine informally pardoned Gabriel and his co-conspirators. Kaine said that Gabriel's motivation had been "his devotion to the ideals of the American revolution — it was worth risking death to secure liberty." Kaine noted that "Gabriel's cause — the end of slavery and the furtherance of equality of all people — has prevailed in the light of history", and added that "it is important to acknowledge that history favorably regards Gabriel's cause while consigning legions who sought to keep him and others in chains to be forgotten."[6] The pardon was informal because it was posthumous.
[edit] Novel
- Arna Bontemps, Black Thunder. New York: Macmillan, 1936, a historical novel based on Gabriel's Rebellion
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ Peter Kolchin, American Slavery: 1619-1877, New York: Hill and Wang, 1994, p. 81
- ^ Peter Kolchin, American Slavery: 1619-1877, New York: Hill and Wang, 1994, p. 78
- ^ "Historical Census Browser", University of Virginia Library, accessed 21 Mar 2008
- ^ C. Ruth Ebrahim, "Virginia State NAACP Conference requests pardon of Gabriel", The Caroline Register, Oct 2006, accessed 23 Jul 2008
- ^ C. Ruth Ebrahim, "Virginia State NAACP Conference requests pardon of Gabriel", The Caroline Register, Oct 2006, accessed 23 Jul 2008
- ^ Associated Press, "Gov. 'Pardons' Gabriel's Rebellion Slave", The Washington Post, August 31, 2007.
[edit] Sources
- Aptheker, Herbert. American Negro Slave Revolts. New York: International Publishers, 1983 (1943).
- Egerton, Douglas R. Gabriel's Rebellion: The Virginia Slave Conspiracies of 1800 and 1802. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.
- Rodriguez, Junius P., ed. Encyclopedia of Slave Resistance and Rebellion. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2006.
- Sidbury, James. Ploughshares into Swords: Race, Rebellion, and Identity in Gabriel's Virginia, 1730-1810. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
[edit] External links
- "Gabriel", African American World, from Encyclopedia Britannica, 2002, PBS.org
