Gabriel Prosser Conspiracy

Gabriel Prosser worked in secret during 1800 to recruit and organize thousands of enslaved Virginians. He sketched out an elaborate plan to overthrow the slavery regime, and it came within hours of execution. But on the chosen day—Saturday, August 30—a hurricane destroyed bridges and flooded roads. The violent downpour washed out the proposed attack on the state capitol at Richmond, allowed time for word of the plan to leak to white authorities, and foiled what could have become a brilliant move in the dangerous chess game to force an end to slavery.

Gabriel was born into bondage about 1775, around the time that white Virginians declared their political independence. The authorities who executed him said he showed "courage and intellect above his rank in life." As the property of tavern-keeper Thomas Prosser, he worked regularly as a blacksmith in the Richmond area, where, inspired by stories of the recent Haitian Revolution, he framed his desperate plan. Aided by his wife and his brothers Martin and Solomon, he worked to procure weapons and rally recruits (Martin, a preacher, found recruits at funerals and secret religious gatherings, where he employed biblical accounts of the Israelites' escape from Egypt to inspire potential conspirators). According to testimony in subsequent trials, from two to ten thousand African Americans knew of the design and looked to Gabriel as their leader to, in Solomon's words, "conquer the white people and possess ourselves of their property." The insurrectionists intended to spare Methodists, Quakers, and local Frenchmen because of their emancipationist leanings, and they expected poor whites and nearby Catawba Indians to join their cause when it gathered strength.

The plan called for several hundred participants (advised by a veteran from the successful siege at Yorktown) to gather at a spot outside Richmond. Behind a banner invoking the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions with the words Death or Liberty, they would march on the city in three contingents. One group would light fires in the dockside warehouses to divert whites from the heart of the city, while the other two groups would seize the capitol armory and take Governor James Monroe hostage. When the "white people agreed to their freedom," Gabriel "would dine and drink with the merchants of the city," and a white flag would be hoisted above the capitol, calling other blacks in the countryside to join them.

Betrayal by informers presented a huge danger, with so many persons approached about such an overwhelming plan. When torrential rains forced a last-minute postponement of the march on Richmond, several slaves had already alerted whites to the impending action, and Governor Monroe moved swiftly. The state militia arrested scores of suspects, and several dozen persons were executed. Prosser took refuge on the schooner Mary, captained by a sympathetic white Methodist. But in late September he was betrayed by two slave crewmen and captured in Norfolk. After a brief show trial in which the leader remained silent, he was hanged on October 7.

In the aftermath of the foiled insurrection, the Virginia Assembly acted to restrict the movement of all blacks—enslaved and free—and to set up a white public guard in Richmond. Such precautions proved ineffective, however. In 1802, authorities discovered further black plans to fight for freedom in Virginia and North Carolina.

In 1936 the publication of Arna Bontemps's novel Black Thunder offered an interesting literary treatment of Prosser's revolt.

See also Christiana Revolt of 1851; Haitian Revolution; Slavery

Bibliography

Egerton, D. R. "Gabriel's Conspiracy and the Election of 1800." Journal of Southern History 56 (1990): 191–214.

Egerton, Douglas R. Gabriel's Rebellion: The Virginia Slave Conspiracies of 1800 and 1802. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.

Marszalek, John F. "Battle for Freedom: Gabriel's Insurrection." Negro History Bulletin 39 (1976): 540–543.

Mullin, Gerald W. Flight and Rebellion: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth-Century Virginia. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972.

Sidbury, James. Ploughshares into Swords: Race, Rebellion, and Identity in Gabriel's Virginia, 1730–1810. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

peter h. wood (1996)
Updated bibliography