by Taylor, Alan
Magistrates feared losing control as common whites whipped and questioned terrified suspects who confessed to wider and wilder plots. The local elite worried that enraged mobs might destroy too many lives to the detriment of their masters. One magistrate complained that the alarms put “power in the hands of ignorant and arbitrary Characters.”18
During the crisis, white skeptics had to speak quietly and act discretely if they lacked high status. In 1802 near Petersburg, white men accused James Allen of harboring slave conspirators after he openly criticized the hunt for supposed rebels. The accusers grabbed Allen and whipped him to death in a failed bid to force a confession of complicity. Genteel critics avoided such overt violence, but they could be insulted and ostracized. In April 1802 flimsy evidence and an alarmed jury convicted Jeremiah Cornick, a slave, of plotting to burn Norfolk on Easter Sunday. Governor James Monroe considered pardoning Cornick until Norfolk’s mayor, John Cowper, pointedly warned that public opinion demanded an execution. After the hanging, Cowper exulted, “I have no doubt, but this example will produce the effect that is wished.”19
He sought a double effect: to intimidate slaves and calm whites. Leaders needed to restore order, so that whites and blacks could resume the work so urgently needed on farms and plantations. White men had to affirm that they could be trusted in a crisis to suppress the slaves, who once again had to lay low, speak softly, and work hard. So long as these alarms remained brief and killed few blacks and no whites, the outbursts helped to sustain the slave system by preventing larger plots from emerging. The alarms also accelerated the retreat from revolutionary principles. In 1793, a state senator and relative liberal, James Maud, rued that slave alarms promoted hostility to manumission: “The fancied negro insurrections of which so much has been said in Virginia . . . originate in the minds of the worst of men for the worst of purposes, namely that of arresting the gentle army of humanity . . . outstretched for the relief of the slaves and with a design of procuring a repeal of the laws authorizing their manumission.” In the wake of an alarm, hardliners blamed free blacks despite the scant evidence connecting any of them to the plots.20
Extraordinary Appearances in the Heavens and on Earth. In this 1797 watercolor, Benjamin Henry Latrobe presents a “most perfect and singular” rainbow seen on his approach to Richmond. In the foreground he depicted black teamsters struggling with a troublesome horse. (Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society)
Rarely can we tell how much fire lay behind the dense smoke of slave alarms. The tainted evidence cautions against the credibility of the full-blown, massive, and extensive plots to massacre whites. But it is just as hasty to regard the murky evidence as proof that slave plots were never more than repressive conspiracies by white men to maintain their control. After all, some slaves did arm themselves to assault the patrollers in Northampton County in July 1792. And eight years later a far bigger plot threatened to overturn slavery in and around Richmond, the capital of the state.21
Gabriel
A skilled blacksmith, Gabriel belonged to Thomas Henry Prosser, who lived six miles outside of Richmond. In the bustling town, Gabriel developed wide contacts with the urban artisans and country slaves who visited on Saturday nights and Sundays. In October 1799 a court ordered Gabriel to receive a whipping and a searing brand on his left hand as punishment for stealing a pig and fighting with a white man over it. Angered by the pain and humiliation, Gabriel longed for redress and freedom. Powerfully built, articulate, and charismatic, he could inspire men to take great risks. During the spring and summer of 1800, Gabriel recruited slaves for a bold plot to seize Richmond and demand their freedom. He initially attracted similar men: literate, versatile, and mobile slaves with artisanal skills. Masters naively expected little trouble from such men, assuming their loyalty in gratitude for their relative advantages. But after tasting a little freedom, the enslaved artisans longed for more, and such skilled slaves could best deploy words to persuade others to join them.22
Gabriel and his lieutenants traveled around Richmond and the surrounding countryside on Saturday nights and Sundays, when slaves enjoyed a measure of freedom. Pitching their plan at evangelical meetings, funerals, barbecues, and fish feasts, the plotters recruited primarily in Richmond and Henrico County, but they also enlisted supporters to the north and west in Caroline, Hanover, and Louisa Counties.23
Their recruiting pitch demonstrated familiarity with the republican rhetoric that got a heavy workout during the heated presidential election of 1800, when the Republican Thomas Jefferson challenged the Federalist incumbent John Adams. Deriding Adams as a pro-British monarchist, Virginia Republicans threatened secession and civil war if Jefferson lost the election. The electoral passions persuaded slaves that division among the white elite provided them with a rare opportunity to strike for their freedom. “We have as much right to fight for our liberty as any men,” declared Jack Ditcher, one of Gabriel’s lieutenants.24
Gabriel’s supporters appealed to the masculinity of black men, who seethed at slavery for frustrating their longing to protect their women and children. Gabriel’s lieutenants began by asking a potential recruit, “Are you a true man?” When the reply came, “I am a true hearted man,” the lieutenant asked, “Can you keep a proper or important secret?” Black masculinity emphasized the ability to keep secrets from masters even under the torment of flogging and other tortures. When the recruit vowed to keep a secret, the lieutenant asked if he was “willing to fight the white people for his freedom.” If “yes” followed, the recruiter concluded by asking if the recruit could kill a white man to prove that he was, indeed, “a true hearted man.” Although seeking to protect enslaved women, these men excluded them from knowledge of the plot lest they disclose the secret to a master or mistress.25
The rebels’ very American ideas of liberty and gender gave the lie to the insistence that the enslaved were an utterly alien people. Many of the rebels had familiar and complicating ties with particular white people. Gilbert explained that his “Master and Mistress should be put to death, but by the men under him (as he could not do it himself) because they raised him.” To ease the minds of potential recruits, Gabriel promised to spare the lives of those whites who had displayed empathy for slaves: Quakers, Methodists, Frenchmen, and “all poor white women who had no slaves.” Some terrible intimacies, however, produced a rage among other rebels, who longed to kill particular masters in revenge for whippings.26
The rebels planned, on Saturday night, August 30, to assemble 500 men armed with swords and pikes made from converted scythes. Once gathered on the western outskirts of Richmond, they would divide into three groups. The first and smallest group would set fire to the warehouses beside the river at the southeast end of town. They expected the alarm bell to draw to that quarter the town’s white men, desperate to save valuable property from the consuming flames. Then the larger two rebel groups would seize the state arsenal, where they could procure firearms, and the state treasury, to gain money. They would also seize Governor James Monroe at the governor’s mansion. With that hostage, guns, and money, the rebels hoped to negotiate for their emancipation. The plotters seem to have sought freedom for themselves and their families rather than for all of Virginia’s slaves.27
The complicated plan invited something to go fatally wrong. On the appointed day, a violent thunderstorm lashed Richmond with sheets of rain, washing away many of the bridges. Blocked by the swollen streams and rivers, few rebels could make it to their rendezvous point. The confusion spread alarm among those in on the secret. A few fearful slaves sought to save themselves by revealing the plot to their masters, who alerted the militia officers. Called into service, the militia patrolled the roads and arrested suspects for interrogations, which identified Gabriel and other leaders.28
The trials commenced on September 11, and executions began the next day, for the justice inflicted was summary and harsh. Gabriel initially eluded arrest, slipping away down the James River on a schooner, but on September
23 magistrates arrested him in Norfolk. Following a quick trial in Richmond, he died in front of a huge crowd on October 10, when a noose snapped his neck. By December 1, twenty-seven men paid with their lives for trying but failing at revolution. They met their deaths with a defiant resolve that alarmed a watching John Randolph: “The accused have exhibited a spirit, which, if it becomes general, must deluge the Southern country in blood. They manifested a sense of their rights, and contempt of danger, and a thirst for revenge which portend the most unhappy consequences.” An unusually sympathetic white man, John Minor, concluded, “My heart bleeds for them, and yet this degree of severity is necessary.” Only a measure of terror could maintain slavery in Virginia.29
Governor Monroe needed to execute some plotters to appease local whites and terrify the enslaved, but he also worried that overkill would play badly in the northern press. Randolph noted that the only blood shed by the rebellion was “that which streamed upon the scaffold.” Given that no whites had died, excessive hangings would make Virginians seem bloodthirsty. With the presidential election looming, Monroe’s friend Jefferson also wanted to limit the executions lest they sway some northern voters in favor of Adams. Writing to Monroe, Jefferson urged, “There is a strong sentiment that there has been hanging enough. The other states and the world at large will forever condemn us if we indulge a principle of revenge.” Monroe slowed the executions, and Jefferson won the presidency.30
In January 1801, Monroe recommended, and the state legislature approved, a new policy of selling some convicted slaves outside of the United States. Known as “transportation,” distant sale got rid of a dangerous slave and punished his family while reducing the expenses borne by the state, which had to compensate the master for the appraised value of an executed slave. The new transportation law spared eight of Gabriel’s convicted plotters from the noose. Slave traders took them far away to Louisiana, then a foreign colony.31
Chains
The crisis inspired St. George Tucker’s cousin, the young lawyer George Tucker, to publish an appeal to the state legislature. Dwelling on “the danger arising from domestic slavery,” George Tucker insisted that Gabriel “has waked those who were asleep, and wiped the film from the eyes of the blind.” At last, Tucker hoped, Virginians might make the necessary sacrifices to emancipate their slaves. He noted that the rebels had been enlightened and emboldened by overhearing the republican rhetoric of free men. Such slaves would no longer submit without trying their strength in revolt. In fleeing to Lord Dunmore during the revolution, “they sought freedom merely as a good; now they also claim it as a right.” Should the British return as enemies, they would “hold out the lure of freedom” and “have, in every negro, a decided friend.” Tucker astutely predicted that the British could “convert a willing multitude into a compact and disciplined army.” Therefore, he concluded, Virginians should begin to free their slaves or “see our folly [culminate], in one general wreck of property and life.”32
Avoiding appeals to humanity and morality, George Tucker narrowed his argument to the most urgent concern of Virginians: their safety from revolt. To appease the still greater dread of freed blacks, Tucker explicitly rejected his cousin’s alternative of freeing but retaining slaves as a lower caste, lest “a foreign enemy” exploit their discontent at inequality. His program would tax masters to raise the revenue needed to buy adolescent slaves and transport them to some distant frontier. Few Virginians, however, would accept increased taxes or the notion that white, wage laborers could replace the deported slaves. Like Jefferson, George Tucker proved insightful about the problem of slavery but proposed an absurd solution.33
Nonetheless, the governor and legislators sought to keep open their future options for emancipation by procuring a distant haven for potential freedmen. In June 1801, Governor Monroe wrote to President Jefferson to request the federal purchase of some foreign or frontier territory to serve as a Virginia colony “to which persons obnoxious to the laws or dangerous to the peace of society may be removed.” Monroe’s opaque wording perfectly expressed the confusion of the legislators, who could not agree on whom they intended to deport. At a minimum, they wanted a place to dump future slave convicts, but the legislators also hinted that Virginia might someday free some slaves if provided with a faraway place to send them.34
Monroe also had to be circumspect lest his letter become public and, so, violate the Virginian code of silence regarding emancipation and revolt. Carefully avoiding the terms slave, rebellion, and emancipation, Monroe instead referred to “a subject of great delicacy and importance,” which “involves the future peace, tranquility and happiness of the good people of this Commonwealth.” Sharing that caution, Jefferson replied with comparable circumlocutions. In a succession of cryptic and noncommittal letters stretching into early 1802, the governor and the president produced a farce, for neither could grasp precisely what the other meant to do. In the end, Jefferson ruled out a black colony on the American frontier because white settlers coveted those lands. Jefferson wanted a white man’s republic to cover the continent without “either blot or mixture on that surface.” He favored shipping blacks to Africa or the West Indies, but neither the United States nor Virginia could afford to fund an overseas colony, so nothing came of the ambiguous proposal by the legislature. Monroe revealingly told Jefferson that emancipation would have to be “without expense or inconvenience to ourselves.”35
Unable to free slaves “without expense or inconvenience,” Virginia’s legislators preferred to blame the rebellion on masters’ alleged indulgence of ungrateful slaves. Monroe expressed surprise that the slaves would rebel, “for their treatment has been more favorable since the revolution.” Rather than abolish slavery, the legislators decided that safety lay in greater repression, so they funded more arms for the militia, tightened the laws restricting slave movements, and established an armed “Public Guard” to patrol the streets of Richmond and protect the arsenal, treasury, and governor’s mansion. Any blacks caught on the Richmond streets after a 9:00 p.m. curfew could be stripped, whipped, and cast into an iron cage for the rest of the night. Likening the slaves to a dangerous beast, a Virginian concluded, “If we will keep a ferocious monster in our country, we must keep him in chains.”36
In January 1801 the legislators did buy and free two slaves. On the fateful night of August 30, 1800, Pharoah and Tom had revealed the plot and later testified against the rebels. “Sound policy dictates that rewards should be held out to those who have rendered essential service to our country,” reasoned the legislators. In the end, Gabriel’s revolt emancipated two slaves but at the cost of twenty-seven other lives.37
During the ensuing five years, the legislators continued to tighten restrictions on the enslaved. No slaves could hold worship meetings at night unless their master also attended and no Quaker presided. Seeking greater security in black ignorance, the legislators exhorted masters to prevent their slaves from learning literacy. Public pressure kept pace, ostracizing the few remaining liberals who had formed societies to support schools for blacks. Almost all of the societies had disbanded by 1805, when a former member in Alexandria declared, “We are in fact dead; and I may say, I have no hope of reanimation.”38
Most Virginians believed that blacks were more dangerous when free than when enslaved. Although few free blacks had anything to do with Gabriel’s plot, they became the usual suspects blamed by Virginians, who insisted that the freed set alluring examples of indolence that inspired slaves to seek freedom through revolt. “It is the free blacks who instill into the slaves ideas hostile to our peace,” declared the legislator Thomas B. Robertson. Banish the free blacks and the slaves would become docile and resigned to their proper fate. Robertson explained, “If the blacks see all of their color slaves, it will seem to them a disposition of Providence, and they will be content.” By blaming the freed for the revolt, Virginians could evade faulting themselves and their slave system.39
To restrict further growth in the freed popu
lation, the hardliners also pushed to ban manumissions. In response, moderates insisted that manumissions provided a safety valve that reduced the threat of slave revolt. Addressing his colleagues, John Minor warned, “What will be the situation of the blacks if you shut this only door through which they can enter the sacred ground of liberty? They will be fixed in the deepest state of damnation, despair without hope. In such a situation, they will prefer death to existence.” Dismayed by the sacrifice of revolutionary principles, Minor lamented, “In past days these walls have rung with eulogies on liberty. A comparison between those times and the present is degrading to us. We may be equal in intelligence and virtue, but not in the love of liberty.”40
In reply, the hardliners insisted that natural law principles were dangerously incompatible with a slave system that they could not safely abolish. “Tell us not of principles,” declared Robertson. “Those principles have been annihilated by the existence of slavery among us.” While regretting slavery in theory, the hardliners defended the system as a necessary practice. One legislator tellingly referred to blacks as “the melancholy race of men, whose fate we may deplore, but cannot redress.” Maintaining slavery had become the hard but immutable duty of Virginians.41
In early 1806 the legislature rebuffed a complete ban on manumission by just two votes. Then, by a 94 to 65 vote, the legislators passed a supposed compromise: masters could still manumit, but the freed had to leave the state within one year or face renewed slavery. As intended, the law had a chilling effect on manumissions. For example, in the town of Petersburg, masters freed 173 slaves between 1782 and 1806 but none during the following five years.42
