LITMIR.BIZ

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and to procure themselves their liberty; the inhabitants have been alarmed and keep a strict watch to prevent their procuring arms.42

      The conspiratorial wave seemed to have a rippling effect: several months later, a group of armed maroons murdered an overseer on a plantation in Charles City County, also bordering the swamp.

      Gabriel’s Uprising: 1800–1801

The second major insurrectionary attempt of this period was Gabriel’s Uprising. One of the most famous slave rebellions in North American history, the uprising involved an attempted attack on Richmond in 1800, and was coordinated over a huge territory. The conspiracy was led by siblings Gabriel, Nanny, Solomon, and Martin Prosser, among others, and participants were recruited from all over Virginia, including Gloucester, Cumberland, Henrico, Luisa, Chesterfield, Hanover, and Caroline counties. Martin Prosser was the rebellion’s sword maker, and bitterly opposed any delay of the rebellion; according to a fellow conspirator, “before he would any longer bear what he had borne, he would turn out and fight with his stick.” The intention was to march on Richmond, and as one group set fire to the warehouse district as diversion, others would capture arms, the capitol building, and the governor. Frenchmen, Methodists, Quakers, and other whites sympathetic to the cause were to be spared.43

      The insurrection involved thousands. Secrecy was maintained for a time, but due to planning delays, word of it eventually reached Virginia’s Governor Monroe, who, on April 22, wrote to Thomas Jefferson of the threat.

No immediate action was taken by the government, however, and the slaves continued to produce bayonets, swords, and ammunition through the spring and summer. Secrecy was mostly kept, though by August 9 word of a planned revolt appears in a letter between two whites of Petersburg and Richmond. The letter was intercepted and passed on, and military authorities were informed. Further word of the rebellion was provided to the governor by a slave-owner named Moseby Shepard, who “had just received advice from two slaves that the negroes in the neighborhood of Thomas H. Prosser intended to rise that night, kill their masters, and proceed to Richmond where they would be joined by the negroes of the city.”44 Monroe finally acted, posting cannons outside of Richmond, informing militia commanders around Virginia, and calling into service 650 local soldiers.

      At this exact moment, on the evening of August 30 an enormous rain began to fall, referred to later by whites as a “providential” downpour. The territory between the conspirators’ rendezvous point and Richmond was separated by a torn bridge, and the flash flooding made crossing the waterway impossible. Despite the rain, one thousand slaves met at the agreed location, six miles outside the city, armed with hundreds of homemade weapons. Unfortunately, the attack was made impossible, and they were forced to disband. The following day the entire military apparatus of Virginia was aroused, and scores of conspirators and insurrectionaries across the State were arrested. Gabriel Prosser managed to escape on a ship in Norfolk at the swamp’s border, but was recognized and betrayed by two slaves on board. He was taken to Richmond, and after refusing to give any significant information about the conspiracy, hanged on October 7.

At least thirty-four other conspirators were hanged as well, while one committed suicide and four managed to escape from jail and were never recaptured. Two of these escapes were the result of a mob action by Black maroons besieging the Hanover County courthouse, wherein they released the prisoners, charged the guard, “knocked him down” and “stamped on him,” and ran away. According to one slave-owner, the break was planned throughout the previous week when slaves visited the prisoners, “under the pretence of a preaching.”45 A wave of repression and white paranoia erupted after Gabriel’s Uprising, especially in Virginia but extending well beyond its borders. Arrests and hangings continued throughout the winter of 1800–1801.

      Insurrections of 1800–1810

Almost as soon as Gabriel Prosser’s body was in the ground, a third wave of conspiracy and insurrection occurred. Beginning in late 1800 in Petersburg, Virginia, by December unrest had spread to Norfolk on the northeastern border of the Great Dismal. The goal was again a coordinated attack on Norfolk, and word spread from the coast to the interior of the region. Plans were shared throughout the following year, as is demonstrated by a letter dated January 1802, which was intercepted on its way to Powhatan. It stated, “Our friend has got ten thousand in readiness to the night.” Small attacks and gatherings increased; on April 3, “four unknown men made an attack with bricks upon the sentinel at the Capitol, and were fired upon.” Repression spread as well. Hangings and arrests occurred in Halifax, Hanover, and Princess Anne counties as well as in Norfolk. A letter from Richmond mentions that, “convicted slaves confined in the Penitentiary house [had] become so numerous as to render their maintenance burthensome [sic] and their safe keeping inconvenient.”46

      News of the planned uprisings traveled south to eastern North Carolina, where conspiracies were reported in May. Newspapers attributed these to the influence of a spiritual leader named Tom Copper, a maroon who, according to the Raleigh Register, had “a camp in one of the swamps” near Elizabeth City. Newspapers grew reluctant to report on the conspiracies, and silence took the place of their usual paranoia in an effort to prevent the spread of rebellion. At this time, large numbers of slaves or fugitives were executed or punished in counties adjacent to the swamp territory where Copper was headquartered and thought to be organizing (Camden, Bertie, Currituck, Martin, Halifax, and Pasquotank counties). In retaliation for this repression, in early June 1802, six maroons on horseback fought a battle with Pasquotank militia in a failed effort to liberate comrades being held in the Elizabeth City jail.

      Historian Herbert Aptheker writes of the significant multiracial element in this period of revolt:

A striking feature of the Virginia conspiracies of 1802 is that evidence of white participation is fairly good. Thus, a Mr. John B. Scott, while informing the Governor on April 23 of the trial and execution of slaves in Halifax, stated, “I have just received information that three white persons are concerned in the plot; and they have arms and ammunition concealed under their houses, and were to give aid when the negroes should begin.” One slave witness, Lewis, twice declared that whites, “that is, the common run of poor white people” were involved.47

      The presence and participation of the Great Dismal Swamp maroons becomes most clear in this third insurrectionary period of 1800–1802, when unrest spread across the state’s border and involvement by whites as well as Blacks became explicit. Counties surrounding the swamp, three in Virginia and six in North Carolina, all saw increased guerilla raids in this time. War bands on the North Carolina side, led by Tom Copper, were multiracial and originated just east of the Scratch Hall maroon settlement.

Insurrectionary activity continued to occur over the next decade, with specific reports coming from counties that bordered the swamp in 1805, 1808, and 1810. Throughout the period, planters reported “distressing apprehensions of fire and other casualties.” In 1808, the planter citizens of Edenton in Chowan County, North Carolina, established a Black Code to protect “our wives and children [who are] surrounded by desperadoes, white and Black.” By no coincidence, Chowan County was the area most adjacent to Scratch Hall.48

      The Influence of the Maroons on Slave Insurrection

      The period between 1790 and 1810, and in particular the three insurrectionary eras discussed here, represent a tremendously inspiring yet difficult time in African American and labor history, with slaves facing as much repression and consolidation of white power as they did opportunities for rebellion. Compared with strategies of individual escape, these attempts at revolt often presented great risk and little immediate benefit for those participating. But on a systemic level, the increasing frequency, violence, and regional coordination of

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