This is the third of four blogs focusing on African American history in antebellum Virginia. We look at resistance by those held in slavery, including rebellion and escape to freedom. “The River Flows On” includes New York, South Carolina and two Virginia revolts, while “Gabriel’s Rebellion” focuses on conspiracies in 1800 and 1802. Nat Turner’s revolt and its cultural ramifications and political uses is explored in “Nat Turner” and “The Rebellious Slave”.
Escapes of slaves from Washington and Virginia are described in “The Pearl” as an example of a node in the Underground Railroad, and “Henry Box Brown” the story of an escaped slave who makes very much more of his opportunity than most Abolitionists envisioned for their illiterate stage actors.
These books are all used in bibliographies found in peer-reviewed surveys of Virginia history of scholarly merit. Additional insights are used from articles in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, the Journal of Southern History and the Journal of American History.
For book reviews at The Virginia Historian.com in this historical period for other topics, see the webpage for Antebellum, Civil War, Reconstruction. General surveys of Virginia History can be found at Virginia History Surveys. Other Virginia history divided by topics and time periods can be found at the webpage Books and Reviews.
The River Flows On
Walter C. Rucker wrote The River Flows On: Black Resistance, Culture and Identity Formation in Early America in 2006 and the paperback was reprinted in 2008. This Afro-centric perspective focuses on African cultural persistence in dramatic moments of slave resistance in the late colonial and new nation periods. Rucker identifies specific cultural enclaves in New York, South Carolina and two in Virginia that are key to understanding resistance to the North American slave regime.
Large numbers of Africans from particular ethnic groups became the foundation for an enslaved black society that would support violent rebellion seeking freedom. Learn more to buy “The River Flows On” here for your bookshelf.
Gabriel’s Rebellion
Douglas R. Egerton wrote Gabriel’s Rebellion: The Virginia Slave Conspiracies of 1800 and 1802 in 1993. It is readily available in paperback. Egerton notes the inclusion of two Richmond Frenchmen joining the 1800 Gabriel (Prosser) conspiracy, and further concludes it was the same working class-artisan Revolutionary era ideology also evident in the 1802 Easter Plot.
Gabriel saw his enemies as the Richmond merchant class, not whites in general, but he failed to understand that the Jeffersonian Republican majority in the Richmond area was not run by the interracial working class of the city, but the planter class of the countryside. Governor James Monroe suppressed knowledge of the French involvement and Gabriel’s artisan republicanism. In 1802, Jefferson spurned requests to federally sponsor land for colonization of free blacks either in the West or abroad. Learn more to buy “Gabriel’s Rebellion” here for your bookshelf.
Nat Turner
Kenneth S. Greenburg edited Nat Turner: A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory in 2003. The paperback was reprinted in 2004 and is readily available. The most significant, ferocious slave rebellion in U.S. history is examined by first introducing the historical character of Nat Turner, then analyzing the Confessions, describing the events of the revolt, and finally placing the revolt in the largest possible context.
The cultural significance of the meaning of Nat Turner’s Revolt began with accounts darkening his complexion from “rather bright” to a “coal-black prophet” of the true Negro race. There were differing political uses made from debates following the deaths of some 60 whites and 200 blacks. Learn more to buy “Nat Turner” here for your bookshelf.
The Rebellious Slave
Scott Frency wrote The Rebellious Slave: Nat Turner in American Memory in 2003. To begin, Frency examines the evolving image of Nat Turner himself. Then he critiques the 1830s social context and political debates relating to the revolt itself. Anti-slavery reformers both employed memory of the revolt and ignored it; both sides of the slavery issue appealed to interpretations of the revolt following John Brown’s Raid of 1859.
From the 1860s to the 1930s, Turner was an American patriot and a Christian martyr to conservative blacks, a defiant proto-Marxian race hero by radical black leaders, or a maniacal perpetrator of Gothic horrors. In the last half of the 20th century, Turner was either a self-deluded fanatic or a transcendent hero. The book is out of print, but available online. Learn more to buy “The Rebellious Slave” here for your bookshelf.
The Pearl
Josephine Pacheco wrote about a ship in The Pearl: A Failed Slave Escape on the Potomac in 2005. The cargo of eight-five escapees from Washington DC was triggered by a failed court suit for the freedom of Mary Bell and the eminent sale away from her husband. The book examines the bi-racial networks and slave agency of antebellum DC that made it a node of the Underground Railroad even while it was a center of southern commerce and permitted a slave market.
After capture, most slaves were sold to slave traders and transported to the Deep South. Two light skinned slave Methodist women became Abolitionist celebrities and their co-religionists added to the heat of controversy on both sides. Those sold in New Orleans generated an Abolitionist crusade, and the notoriety of The Pearl became grist for Congressional debate and the Compromise of 1850. The event contributed to the The book is out of print, but available online. Learn more to buy “The Pearl” here for your bookshelf.
The Unboxing of Henry Brown
Henry Riggles wrote The Unboxing of Henry Brown in 2003. Born in Louisa County, Virginia, Henry Brown was hired out at a Richmond tobacco factory and earned a wage that provided a rented home for his enslaved wife and three children. His wife’s master sold her and the children south; Henry planned his escape. With the help of a free Richmond artisan to box him in a crate addressed to the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society, and made good his escape by rail and ferry.
Brown became a stage celebrity for the Abolitionist Society, then used his proceeds to commission a panorama exhibiting the “Mirror of Slavery” and his escape, which he narrated onstage. He married in England, successfully promoted a panorama on the Indian Mutiny, and returned to the U.S. The book is out of print, but available online. Learn more to buy “The Unboxing of Henry Brown” here for your bookshelf.
For book reviews at The Virginia Historian.com in this historical period for other topics, see the webpage for Antebellum, Civil War, Reconstruction. General surveys of Virginia History can be found at Virginia History Surveys. Other Virginia history divided by topics and time periods can be found at the webpage Books and Reviews