We begin our look at titles about antebellum Virginia as a slave state 1824-1860 with two studies of slave rebellion. “Whispers of Rebellion” explores the slave agency in the 1800 Gabriel Conspiracy, and “”The Land Shall be Deluged in Blood” describes the 1830 Nat Turner Rebellion and its aftermath.
We continue our antebellum Virginia reviews with three venues of biracial interaction, both slave and free, with “Religion and the Making of Nat Turner’s Rebellion” studying the strands of Baptist theology and practice, “Slavery on Trial” addressing accommodations in the Richmond City courts, and “Origins of Proslavery Christianity” investigation into negotiations among black and white evangelicals and their practice of worship.
Two slave venues are looked at in “Institutional Slavery” concerning the hired slaves of churches and colleges, and “The Quarters and the Fields” about non-cotton and non-tobacco plantations in Virginia, Louisiana and South Carolina. “American Dreams of John Prentis” is a biography of an antebellum interstate slave trader.
For more book reviews at TheVirginiaHistorian.com in this historical era addressing other topics, see the webpage for Antebellum, Civil War and Reconstruction Era (1820-1883). 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.
Whispers of Rebellion
Michael L. Nicholls wrote Whispers of Rebellion: Narrating Gabriel’s Conspiracy in 2012. It is now available at the University of Virginia Press, on Kindle and online new and used.
Nichols gives voice to black conspirators in Gabriel Prossor’s Conspiracy for slave rebellion in 1800. The goal was liberty for slaves, whether attested to by a veteran of the siege of Yorktown, a witness to the slave rebellion in St. Domingue, or by slave Sam’s testimony in court. The Richmonder “Frenchmen” co-conspirators reported to slave recruits may have been figments to enhance credibility.
Unlike Douglas R. Egerton’s Gabriel’s Rebellion: The Virginia Slave Conspiracies of 1800 and 1802 (reviewed at TheVirginiaHistorian.com) that focused on Gabriel’s artisan-republican identity and urban connections, Nicholls explains that while the plot did not originate with Gabriel, as he assumed military leadership, recruitment emanated from “the Brook” in Henrico County as a rural uprising of slaves seeking freedom. The network extended to several Tidewater and Piedmont counties. Planning included surveillance of the state capitol that served as the armory for the state militia. Governor James Monroe knew his response would impact the presidential campaign of Thomas Jefferson.
Learn more to buy “Whispers of Rebellion” on Amazon.com.
The Land Shall be Deluged in Blood
Patrick H. Breen wrote The Land Shall be Deluged in Blood: A New History of the Nat Turner Revolt in 2015. It is now available at the Oxford University Press, on Kindle and online new in hardcover and paperback.
Breen writes a new account of America’s most famous slave rebellion of August 1831 in which nearly sixty white men, women and children lost their lives. The rebellion was put down within forty-eight hours, but the effects in Virginia, the South and throughout the United States were profound, including calls for emancipation by non-slaveholders and at the same time redoubling slave patrols. Local courts sought just punishment amidst white fear and rage, slave defiance and evasion, and the aftermath of local grief.
While white lawyer Thomas R. Gray promulgated Nat Turner’s own autobiography in The Confessions of Nat Turner, the overarching public narrative served to reassert white mastery and control while saving relatives of the conspirators from reprisal, thus protecting local slaveholders’ property interest.
Learn more to buy “The Land Shall be Deluged in Blood” on Amazon.com.
Religion and the Making of Nat Turner’s Virginia
Randolph Ferguson Scully wrote Religion and the Making of Nat Turner’s Virginia: Baptist Community and Conflict, 1740–1840 in 2008. It is now available online new in hardcover.
Scully writes a social and cultural history from investigation of the records of early Baptist churches in Isle of Wight, Southampton and Sussex Counties in Virginia from mid-1700s to the 1830s. He seeks to understand biracial evangelical religion in the Revolutionary and Early National periods of American history. General, Regular and Particular Baptists united in 1787. Congregational debates over slavery resulted in a steady stream of slave manumissions from antislavery activists.
But during the 1810s and 1820s, white efforts to marginalize black congregants by changing voting practices and preaching rights had the unforeseen result of increasing the independence of black Baptists rather than extending white control. Post-Revolutionary blacks clung to the Separatist wing of radical theology from the Great Awakening. Black spiritual and political equality could not be both celebrated and suppressed. At the Nat Turner Rebellion that used Baptist language and traditions, the bold attempt to create a biracial religious movement ended.
Learn more to buy “Religion and the Making of Nat Turner’s Virginia” on Amazon.com.
Slavery on Trial
James M. Campbell wrote Slavery on Trial: Race, Class, and Criminal Justice in Antebellum Richmond, Virginia in 2007. It is now available online new and used.
Campbell’s investigation of Richmond court records from 1830 to 1860 confirms that slavery and mastery had a major influence on the application of the law during the antebellum period. However marginalized persons such as free blacks, slaves and poor whites frequently could find some relief and even some agency in light of court accommodations to industrialization, immigration and slavery.
Industrialization in Richmond allowed free African Americans and hired slaves many freedoms that were not available in traditional slave societies. Slaves could secure independent lodging alongside free blacks and poor whites. Crossing and mixing racial lines among free blacks, immigrants, slaves and poor whites became a major issue in Richmond politics resulting in the ascendancy of Mayor Joseph Mayo in 1853. Richmond court cases became more conflicted, and free black communities sometimes turned to local black church courts for justice.
Learn more to buy “Slavery on Trial” on Amazon.com.
Origins of Proslavery Christianity
Charles F. Irons wrote The Origins of Proslavery Christianity: White and Black Evangelicals in Colonial and Antebellum Virginia in 2008. It is now available on Kindle and new in paperback.
Irons examines the interactions between black and white evangelicals primarily in antebellum Virginia leading up to the Civil War. White missions among slaves allowed for African American choices and influence in their proselytizing resulting in a generation of black religious leaders and some independent black churches. Biracial churches with a spiritually vibrant black membership persisted because slaves chose to remain in them. White evangelicals spoke of mutual responsibility between master and slaves with Anglican slaveholders.
At turning point came with the 1830 Nat Turner Rebellion, with white evangelicals redoubling missionary efforts along with teaching a proslavery theology. They reflected concerns about racial security over spiritual fellowship, and Virginians used slave mission success in their arguments against abolitionists. Still there was occasionally segregated worship led by black leaders in a continuing mutual negotiation between black and white evangelicals.
Learn more to buy “Origins of Proslavery Christianity” on Amazon.com.
Institutional Slavery
Jennifer Oast wrote Institutional Slavery: Slaveholding Churches, Schools, Colleges, and Businesses in Virginia, 1680–1860 in 2015. It is now available at Cambridge University press, on eTextbook and online new in hardcover.
Oast portrays a Virginian slavery from colonial times to the Civil War that was entirely without the benefit of ameliorating paternalism that could be found in plantation slavery. These slaves were hired out in an annual lease often separating the hires from their family, and causing many to suffer at the hands of “too many masters” including leasing agents who had little concern for the long-term welfare of the hires.
As long as industrial work could be done well and efficiently, an incentive culture allowed for piece-work rate compensation. In Virginia, this applied to coal mining, gold mining and tobacco manufacturing.
Learn more to buy “Institutional Slavery” on Amazon.com.
The Quarters and the Fields
Damian Alan Pargas wrote The Quarters and the Fields: Slave Families in the Non-Cotton South in 2010. It is now available at the University Press of Florida, on Kindle and online new and used.
Pargas studies non-cotton economies in wheat growing Fairfax County, Virginia, sugar growing St. James Parish, Louisiana, and rice growing in Georgetown District, South Carolina. His conclusion is that when economic conditions were either booming or declining, slave family stability was threatened. When conditions were stable, economic conditions fostered family stability.
Families in Fairfax County were more likely than the others to live apart from their families, be forcibly separated, and have fewer independent economic activities. The intent of enslaved people was to maximize time with their families, better their material conditions and protect their loved ones from sale away. But the Virginians studied were subject to long term hiring out and separation of partners and children by the domestic slave trade.
Learn more to buy “The Quarters and the Fields” on Amazon.com.
American Dreams of John B. Prentis
Kari J. Winter wrote The American Dreams of John B. Prentis, Slave Trader in 2011. It is now available at the University of Georgia Press and online in paperback new and used.
Although three generations are considered in the colonial to antebellum Prentis family, John Prentis, a domestic slave trader 1819-1848 is the focus of the book. The son of a wealthy Virginia judge and brother to a Suffolk attorney, John chose an artisan workingman’s life as an architect’s apprentice to an anti-slavery Philadelphia Quaker, then on his return to Virginia became a horse trader, jail keeper, and pirate chaser.
On turning to slave trading, his wife Catherine assisted in the family business preparing meals, sewing clothing and nursing slaves to health before their sale. Though he was prosperous enough to periodically loan his brother money, he died in 1848 with a self-drafted will including a plea to be recognized as a gentleman. Winter concludes that the personal slaves he emancipated at his wife’s death were probably his own children.
Learn more to buy “American Dreams of John B. Prentis” on Amazon.com.
*Kirk Mariner wrote Slave and Free on Virginia’s Eastern Shore in 2014. It is now available at Sundial Books, Chincoteague VA and online at the The Book Bin in Onley, Virginia.