Gabriel Prosser
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Gabriel (1776–October 10, 1800), today commonly if incorrectly known as Gabriel Prosser, was a slave born in Henrico County, Virginia who planned a failed slave rebellion in the summer of 1800. The rebellion was suppressed and Gabriel was hanged together with other slaves.
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[edit] Life
Born on Brookfield as the slave of Thomas Prosser, Gabriel had two brothers, Solomon and Martin. Most likely, Gabriel's father was a blacksmith, the occupation chosen for Gabriel and for Solomon. By the mid-1790s, as he neared the age of twenty, he stood "six feet two or three inches high." A 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."
[edit] Gabriel's Rebellion
Gabriel had been meticulously planning the revolt since the spring. 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, and before it could be carried out two bondmen notified their master, who in turn warned Virginia Governor (from 1799 to 1802) James Monroe, who called out the state militia. Gabriel tried to escape downriver to Norfolk, but was spotted and betrayed by a fellow slave for the reward. Gabriel was returned to Richmond for questioning, but he would 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. Although the book incorporates extensive primary research from surviving contemporary documents, his conclusions remain controversial among historians of the period. Egerton observes, for example, that Gabriel was never known by the surname "Prosser," portraying that as an after-the-fact assumption from a period when slaves and ex-slaves sometimes adopted their owner's family names. According to Egerton, in 1800 white authorities referred to him as "Prosser's Gabriel," but his common-use name in the black community was simply Gabriel.
Egerton found that Gabriel was a skilled blacksmith who mostly "hired out" his time in Richmond foundries, a common practice during this period when the market for tobacco was depressed, soil depleted, and cotton not yet a major cash crop. Egerton concludes that Gabriel absorbed the viewpoint of his co-workers of European, African and mixed descent, who expected Thomas Jefferson's Republicans to liberate them from domination by the wealthy Federalist merchants of the city.
Gabriel did apparently have two white co-conspirators, at least one of whom was identified as a French national. Documentary evidence of their identity or involvement was sent straight to Governor Monroe but never seen in court. The internal dynamics of Jefferson's and Monroe's party in the 1800 elections were more complex than they appeared to both white and black artisans in Richmond. A significant part of the Republicans' base were themselves owners of large plantations. Any sign that white radicals, and particularly Frenchmen, had supported Gabriel's plan could have cost Jefferson the election.
Egerton also notes that Gabriel did not order his followers to kill all whites except Methodists, Quakers and Frenchmen; he rather instructed them to refrain from killing any of those three categories. He even planned, Egerton asserts, to take Monroe hostage, to negotiate an end to slavery and then to "drink and dine with the merchants of the city" when freedom had been agreed to.
It is notable that Gabriel initially escaped on a ship owned by a former overseer, a recently converted Methodist who repeatedly ignored information as to his passenger's identity. Gabriel was turned in by a slave "hired out" to work on the ship, who hoped to obtain a sufficient reward to purchase his own freedom. However, he was paid only $50, not the $300 he expected.
[edit] Impact
This potential slave 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. No reliable numbers exist regarding slave and free black conspirators; most likely, the number of men actively involved numbered only several hundred.
Southern slave-owners were acutely aware of the Haitian Revolution and became fearful of another slave rebellion. Gabriel had been able to plan the rebellion so well because of relatively lax rules of movement between plantations; as a result, many owners greatly restricted the slaves' rights of travel when not working. The fear of a slave revolt would persist until the abolition of slavery in the 1860s.
Prior to this rebellion, education of slaves, and training slaves in skilled trades, had not been restricted in Virginia. After the rebellion, and a second conspiracy organized in 1802 among enslaved boatmen along the Appomattox and Roanoke Rivers, slave owners in the Virginia Assembly banned the practice of hiring slaves away from their masters (1808) and required freed blacks to leave the state or face reenslavement (1806)
[edit] Sources
Egerton, Douglas R. Gabriel's Rebellion: The Virginia Slave Conspiracies of 1800 and 1802. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993).
Sidbury, James. Ploughshares into Swords: Race, Rebellion, and Identity in Gabriel's Virginia, 1730-1810. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
