-
Views
-
Cite
Cite
Robert L. Paquette, Michael L. Nicholls. Whispers of Rebellion: Narrating Gabriel's Conspiracy., The American Historical Review, Volume 118, Issue 3, June 2013, Pages 849–850, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/118.3.849
Close - Share Icon Share
Extract
In 1801 George Tucker, a gifted young lawyer and intellectual, published a Letter to a Member of the General Assembly of Virginia on the Subject of the Late Conspiracy of the Slaves. In August of the previous year, during a pivotal presidential election, two skilled slaves named Tom and Pharaoh had journeyed to Richmond to betray to Tom's part owner the existence of a slave insurrection whose plotters intended to march on Richmond that very night. Governor James Monroe then mobilized forces during one of the worst thunderstorms in living memory. The deluge washed out a crucial bridge that connected the center of the plotting—the Brook—with the city. Investigations into the disrupted march suggested that hundreds of slaves were involved. Judicial proceedings lasted more than two months. Of the seventy-two men, mostly slaves, brought to trial, twenty-six were hanged, including the alleged prime mover, a blacksmith named Gabriel. To Tucker and other white Virginian notables during an age of revolution, Gabriel and his coadjutors had crossed a momentous divide: they were claiming that God and nature had given them freedom not merely as a good, but as a right.
