An Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections Part 2

How did Toussaint succeed? How did I succeed also, before his time, in the plain of the Cul de Sac, and on the plantation Gouraud, more than eight months after liberty had been granted (by Polverel) to the slaves? Let those who knew me at the time, and even the blacks themselves, be asked. They will all reply that _not a single negro_ on that plantation, consisting of more than 460 laborers, _refused to work;_ and yet this plantation was thought to be under the worst discipline, and the slaves the most idle in the plain. I, myself, inspired the same activity into three other plantations, of which I had the management."

The above account is far beyond any thing that could have been reasonably expected; indeed, it is most gratifying. We find that the liberated negroes, _both in the South and West,_ continued to work on _their old plantations,_ and for _their old masters;_ so that there was also a spirit of industry among them; for they are described as continuing to work _as quietly as before._ Such was the conduct of the negroes for the first nine months after their liberation, up to the middle of 1794. Of the conduct of the negroes during the year 1795, and part of 1796, I find no account. Had there been any outrages, they would have been mentioned. Let no one connect the outrages, which a.s.suredly took place in St. Domingo in 1791 and 1792, _with the effects of the emanc.i.p.ation of the slaves._ The great ma.s.sacres and conflagrations which at that time made so frightful a picture in the history of this unhappy island, occurred _in the days of slavery,_ before the proclamation of Santhonax and Polverel, and before the great conventional decree of the mother country was known.

They had been occasioned, too, _not originally by the slaves themselves,_ but by quarrels between the _white_ and _colored_ planters, and between the _royalists_ and the _revolutionists,_ who, for the purpose of wreaking their vengeance on each other, called in the aid of their slaves; and as to the insurgent negroes of the North, who filled that part of the colony in those years with terror and dismay, they were originally put in motion, according to Malenfant, _by the royalists themselves,_ to strengthen their own cause, and to put down _the partisans of the French revolution._

When Jean Francois and Bra.s.son commenced the insurrection, there were many white royalists among them, and the negroes were made to wear the white c.o.c.kade.

I now come to the latter part of the year 1796, and we shall find that there was no want of industry or of obedience in those who had been emanc.i.p.ated. _"The colony,"_ says Malenfant, _"was flourishing under Toussaint; the whites lived happily on their estates, and the negroes continued to work for them."_ Now, Toussaint came into power, being General-in-chief of the armies of St. Domingo, near the end of the year 1796, and remained in power till the year 1802, or till the invasion of the island by the French expedition by Bonaparte, under Le Clerc. Malenfant, therefore, means to state that from 1796 to 1802, a period of six years, the planters and farmers kept possession of their estates; that they lived on them peacefully, and without interruption or disturbance; and that the negroes, though they had all been set free, continued to be their laborers.

Gen. La Croix, who published his "Memoirs for a History of St.

Domingo" at Paris in 1819, informs us that when Santhonax returned to the colony in 1796, _"he was astonished at the state in which he found it on his return."_ This, says, La Croix, was owing to Toussaint, who, while he had succeeded in establishing perfect order and discipline among the black troops, had succeeded in making the black laborer return to the plantation, there to resume the drudgery of cultivation.

But the same author tells us that, in the next year, 1797, the most wonderful progress had been made in agriculture. He uses these remarkable words:--_"The colony marched as by enchantment to its former splendor; cultivation prospered; every day produced perceptible proofs of its progress. The city of the Cape and the plantations of the North rose up again visibly to the eye."_ To effect this wonderful improvement, many circ.u.mstances conspired, but princ.i.p.ally the fact that the negroes, being free, had a powerful motive to be industrious and obedient.

The next witness is Gen. Vincent, who was a colonel, and afterwards a general of brigade of artillery at St. Domingo, and was there during the time of Santhonax and Toussaint. He was called to Paris by Toussaint, when he arrived just at the moment of the peace of Amiens, and found, to his inexpressible surprise and grief, that Bonaparte was preparing an immense armament, to be commanded by Le Clerc, for the purpose of _restoring slavery in St. Domingo!_ Against this expedition, the General remonstrated with the First Consul, telling him that, though the army destined for this purpose was composed of the brilliant conquerors of Europe, it would do nothing in the Antilles, and would a.s.suredly be destroyed by the climate of St.

Domingo, if not destroyed by the blacks. He stated that every thing was going on well in St. Domingo and therefore conjured him, in the name of humanity, not to attempt to reverse this beautiful order of things. His efforts were ineffectual. The armament sailed, and, arriving on the sh.o.r.es of St. Domingo, a scene of blood and torture followed, _such as history had seldom if ever before disclosed,_ which, though _planned and executed by whites,_ all the barbarities said to have been perpetrated _by the insurgent blacks of the North_ amounted comparatively to nothing. At length, the survivors of that vast army were driven from the island, with the loss of sixty thousand lives. Till that time, the planters had retained their estates; and then it was, and not till then, that they lost their all. The question may be asked, why did the First Consul make this frightful invasion? It was owing, not to the emanc.i.p.ated negroes, who were _peaceful, industrious, and beyond example happy,_ but to the prejudices of their former masters--prejudices common to almost all slaveholders. Accustomed to the use of arbitrary power, they could not brook the loss of their whips. Accustomed to look down on the negroes as an inferior race of beings, as mere reptiles of the earth, they could not bear, peaceably as these had conducted themselves, to come into that familiar contact with them as free laborers, which the change in their condition required. They considered them, too, as property lost, and which was to be recovered. In an evil hour, they prevailed on Bonaparte, by false representations and _promises of pecuniary support,_ to undertake to restore things to their former state; and the result is before the world as an example and a warning. When will our slaveholding brethren learn that the advocates of immediate emanc.i.p.ation are the only true friends of both slaveholders and slaves, and that the only path of safety is the path of duty, which demands the immediate repentance of all sin, and especially that "sum of all villanies," slavery?

In the year 1800, the city of Richmond, Va., and indeed the whole slaveholding country were thrown into a state of intense excitement, consternation and alarm, by the discovery of an intended insurrection among the slaves. The plot was laid by a slave named Gabriel, who was claimed as the property of Mr. Thomas Prosser. A full and true account of this General Gabriel, and of the proceedings consequent on the discovery of the plot, has never yet been published. In 1831 a short account, which is false in almost every particular, appeared in the Albany _Evening Journal_ under the head of "Gabriel's Defeat." It was the same year republished in the first volume of the _Liberator,_ and during the last year (1859) has been extensively republished in many other papers. The following is the copy of a letter dated Sept.

21, 1800, written by a gentleman of Richmond, Va., and published in the Boston _Gazette,_ Oct. 6th:--

"By this time, you have no doubt heard of the conspiracy, formed in this country by the negroes, which, but for the interposition of Providence, would have put the metropolis of the State, and even the State itself, into their possession. A dreadful storm with a deluge of rain, which carried away the bridges and rendered the water courses every where impa.s.sable, prevented the execution of their plot. _It was extensive and vast in its design. Nothing could have been better contrived. The conspirators were to have seized on the magazine, the treasury, the mills, and the bridges across James river._ They were to have entered the city of Richmond in three places with fire and sword, to commence an indiscriminate slaughter, the French only excepted. They were then to have called on their fellow negroes and the friends of humanity throughout the continent, by proclamation, to rally round their standard. The magazine, which was defenceless, would have supplied them with arms for many thousand men. The treasury would have given them money, the mills bread, and the bridges would have enabled them to let in their friends, and keep out their enemies. Never was there a more propitious season for the accomplishment of their purpose. The country is covered with rich harvests of Indian corn; flocks and herds are every where fat in the fields; and the liberty and equality doctrine, nonsensical and wicked as it is, (in this land of tyrants and slaves,) is for electioneering purposes sounding and resounding through our valleys and mountains in every direction. The city of Richmond and the circ.u.mjacent country are in arms, and have been so for ten or twelve days past. The patrollers are doubled through the State, and the Governor, impressed with the magnitude of the danger, has appointed for himself three Aids de Camp. A number of conspirators have been hung, _and a great many more are yet to be hung._ The trials and executions are going on day by day. Poor deluded wretches! _Their democratic deluders, conscious of their own guilt, and fearful of the public vengeance, are most active in bringing them to punishment. "Quicquid delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi"!_ Two important facts have been established by the witnesses on the different trials. First, that the plan of the plot was drawn by two Frenchmen in Richmond, and by them given to the negro General Gabriel, who is not yet caught; and secondly, that in the meditated ma.s.sacre, _not one Frenchman_ was to be touched. It is moreover believed, though not positively known, that a great many of our profligate and abandoned whites (who are distinguished by the burlesque appellation of _democrats_) are implicated with the blacks, and would have joined them if they had commenced their operations. The particulars of this horrid affair you will probably see detailed in Davis' paper from Richmond, but certainly in Stewart's paper in Washington. The Jacobin printers and their friends are panic struck.

Never was terror more strongly depicted in the countenances of men.

They see, they feel, the fatal mischiefs that their preposterous principles and ferocious party spirit have brought upon us."

The Virginia _Gazette_ of Sept. 12th thus writes:--"The public mind has been much involved in dangerous apprehensions concerning an insurrection of the negroes in several of the adjoining counties.

Such a thing has been in agitation by an ambitious and insidious fellow named Gabriel, the property of Mr. Thomas Prossor. * * * *

Yesterday a Court was held at the Court House in this city, when six of them were convicted, and condemned to be executed this day, Sept.

12th."

"On Thursday, Sept. 18th," says the New York _Spectator,_ "five more were executed near the city of Richmond, who were concerned in the insurrection."

These eleven negroes were executed before the apprehension of Gen.

Gabriel, for whose arrest Gov. Monroe offered a reward of $300. The following is a copy of a letter dated Norfolk, Sept. 25th, 1800:--

"Last Tuesday, on information being given that Gen. Gabriel was on board the three-masted schooner Mary, Richardson Taylor skipper, just arrived from Richmond, he was committed to prison in irons. It appeared on his examination that he went on board on the 14th inst., four miles below Richmond, and remained on board eleven days; that when he went first on board, he was armed with a bayonet and bludgeon, both of which he threw into the river."

"On Sat.u.r.day last," (Sept. 27th,) says a Richmond paper, "the noted Gabriel arrived here by water, under guard from Norfolk, and was committed to the Penitentiary for trial. We understand that when he was apprehended, he manifested the greatest marks of firmness and composure, showing not the least disposition to equivocate, or screen himself from justice. He denied the charge of being the first in exciting the insurrection, although he was to have had the chief command, but that there were four or five persons more materially concerned in the conspiracy, and said that he could mention several in Norfolk; but being conscious of meeting with the fate of those before him, he was determined to make no confession."

"It was stated," says a New York paper, "to be the best planned and most matured of any before attempted." "Gabriel was condemned," says another paper, "on the 3d of October, and executed on the 7th, (having been respited from the 4th,) without making any _useful_ confession. On the 3d of October, ten more negroes were executed, and on the 7th, fifteen more--viz.: five at the Brook, five at Four Mile Creek, and four with Gabriel at the Richmond gallows."

These fifteen, as far as we have any account, were the last who were either executed or tried. The Court, in their eager haste to apprehend and punish the conspirators, of whom five, six, ten and fifteen at a time were executed, and that only the day after trial, of whom not one had committed any overt act, and against whom no testimony appears to have been furnished by any white witness, found, after the apprehension of General Gabriel, that they had made some sad mistakes. This fact, with others, caused such a revulsion of feeling, and excited so great a sympathy in behalf of the poor creatures, that they were obliged, by a moral necessity, to pause in their course.

Under date of Oct. 13th, the _Commercial Advertiser_ thus writes:--

"The trials of the negroes concerned in the late insurrection are suspended until the opinion of the Legislature can be had on the subject. _This measure is said to be owing to the immense numbers, who are implicated in the plot, whose death, should they all be found guilty and be executed, will nearly produce the annihilation of the blacks in this part of the country."_

The next day, Oct. 14th, a correspondent from Richmond makes a similar statement with this addition:--

"A conditional amnesty is perhaps expected. At the next session of the Legislature of Virginia, they took into consideration the subject referred to them, _in secret session, with closed doors._ The _whole_ result of their deliberations has never yet been made public, as the injunction of secrecy has never been removed. To satisfy the Court, the public, and themselves, they had a task so difficult to perform, that it is not surprising that their deliberations were in secret."

From 1800 till 1816, nothing was divulged. In the spring of 1816, the Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer, in a speech delivered by him in 1833, says, "The intelligence broke in upon me, like a ray of light through the profoundest gloom, and by a mere accident, which occurred in the spring of 1816, that, upon two several occasions, the General a.s.sembly of Virginia had invited the United States to obtain a territory beyond their limits, whereon to colonize _certain portions_ of our colored population. For the evidence of these facts, _then new to me,_ I was referred to the Clerk of the Senate; and in the _private records_ I found them verified."

On the 21st of December, 1800, the Virginia House of Delegates pa.s.sed, in _secret session,_ the following resolution:--

"Resolved, That the Governor [Monroe] be requested to correspond with the President of the United States, on the subject of purchasing land without the limits of this State, _whither persons obnoxious to the laws, or dangerous to the peace of society, may be removed."_

The General a.s.sembly of Virginia, having through their agent, Mr.

Jefferson, failed in 1800, 1802 and 1804, to obtain a place of _banishment_ for that portion of their colored population whom they were afraid to hang, and unwilling to pardon, pa.s.sed on Jan. 22, 1805, still in _secret session,_ the following resolution:--

"Resolved, That the Senators of this State in the Congress of the United States be instructed, and the Representatives be requested, to exert their best efforts for the obtaining from the General Government a competent portion of territory in the country of Louisana, to be appropriated to the residence of _such people of color as have been, or shall be, emanc.i.p.ated, or may hereafter become dangerous to the public safety,"_ &c.--[See African Repository, June, 1832, and November, 1833.]

The Legislature of Virginia having failed in all their attempts to find a suitable Botany Bay, to which the free people of color, convicts, and other dangerous persons could be banished, pa.s.sed in 1805 a law prohibiting emanc.i.p.ation, except on the condition that the emanc.i.p.ated should leave the State; or, if remaining in the State more than twelve months, should be sold by the overseers of the poor for the benefit of the Literary Fund.

Here we see another consequence of the attempt of slaves to obtain their freedom, viz., an increased persecution of the free people of color, a law to prevent their increase, and a desire to banish all of them from the State. The conspiracy of Gen. Gabriel and his coadjutors was, therefore, the occasion, if not the cause, of the formation, in 1817, of the Colonization Society, whose great object was, by removing all disturbing causes, to make slavery secure, lucrative, and perpetual. Another noticeable fact, made manifest by the intended insurrection, is the state of fearful insecurity in which the residents of a slaveholding community must feel that they are living. The late a.s.sertion of Gov. Wise, that "We, the Virginians, are in no danger from our slaves or the colored people,"-- or that of Senator Mason, "We can take care of ourselves,"--or that of Miles, of South Carolina, "We are impregnable,"--betrays the depth and extent of their fear by the very attempt to conceal it; like timid boys "e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.n.g. through white lips and chattering teeth,"

_Who's afraid?_ In the wide-spread panic of 1800, the slaveholders appear to have been excessively puzzled to ascertain what could have induced their slaves to engage in such a conspiracy. They, of course, could not have originated such a plot, and had been, in their opinion, so well-treated that _they_ could have no motive to wish for their freedom. It was at first rumored that Gabriel had in his possession letters written by white men; then, that the conspiracy of the negroes was "occasioned by the circulation of some artfully written hand-bills, drawn up by the noted Callender in prison, and circulated by two French people of color from Guadaloupe, aided by a United Irish pretended Methodist preacher"; then, "that the instigators of the diabolical plan wished thereby to insure the elections of Adams and Pinckney, and that the blacks, as far as they were capable, reasoned on the Jeffersonian principles of emanc.i.p.ation." They were, at last, unwillingly compelled to believe that the whole plot originated with slaves, and was confined to them exclusively, and that, like all other human beings, deprived by arbitrary power of all their just rights, they were determined to be free.

In a letter written in 1800, by Judge St. George Tucker, of Virginia, and published in Baltimore, he thus speaks:--

"The love of freedom is an inborn sentiment, which the G.o.d of nature has planted deep in the heart. Long may it be kept under by the arbitrary inst.i.tutions of society; but, at the first favorable moment, it springs forth with a power which defies all check. This celestial spark, which fires the breast of the savage, which glows in that of the philosopher, is not extinguished in the bosom of the slave. It may be buried in the embers, but it _still lives,_ and the breath of knowledge kindles it into a flame. Thus we find there never have been slaves in any country, who have not seized the first favorable opportunity to revolt. These, our hewers of wood and drawers of water, possess the power of doing us mischief, and are prompted to it by _motives which self-love dictates, which reason justifies._ Our sole security, then, consists in their ignorance of this power, and their means of using it--a security which we have lately found is not to be relied on, and which, small as it is, every day diminishes. Every year adds to the number of those who can read and write; and _the increase of knowledge is the princ.i.p.al agent in evolving the spirit we have to fear._ * * * By way of marking the prodigious change which a few years have made among that cla.s.s of men, compare the late conspiracy with the revolt under Lord Dunmore.

In the one case, a few solitary individuals flocked to that standard, under which they were sure to find protection. In the other, they, in a body, of their own accord, combine a plan for a.s.serting their freedom, and rest their safety on success alone. The difference is, that then they sought freedom merely as a good; now they also claim it as a right. * * * Ignorant and illiterate as they yet are, they have maintained a correspondence, which, whether we consider its extent or duration, is truly astonishing."

Thus far Judge Tucker.

Monday, Sept. 1st, was the day set by General Gabriel and his a.s.sociates to make the attack on Richmond with fire and sword. The plot was, however, discovered only the day previous, and, as I have been informed, was made known by a slave named Ben, who was unwilling that his master (a Mr. W. who had been very kind to him) should lose his life.

The incidents of this conspiracy were embodied in a song, and set to a tune, both of which were composed by a colored man. The song is still sung.

In the New York _Spectator,_ of Sept. 24th, 1800, is a letter dated CHARLESTON, S. C., Sept. 13th, which says that "the negroes have rose in arms against the whites in this country, and have killed several.

All the troops of light horse are ordered out by the Governor to suppress the insurrection. Some reports state the number of insurgents, who were embodied about thirty miles from the city, to be about four or five thousand strong. Others decreased this number to seven or eight hundred."

In June, 1816, a conspiracy was formed in Camden, South Carolina; but information of the intent was given by a favorite and confidential slave of Col. Chestnut.

On May 30th, 1822, a "faithful and confidential slave" disclosed to the Intendant of Charleston, S. C., that, on Sunday evening, June 16th, the slaves had determined to rise in rebellion against the whites, "set fire to the Governor's house, seize the Guard-house and a.r.s.enal, and sweep the town with fire and sword, not permitting a white soul to escape." Of the supposed conspirators, one hundred and thirty-one were committed to prison, thirty-five executed, and thirty- seven banished. Of the six ringleaders, Ned Bennet, Peter Poyas, Rolla, Batteau, Jesse, and Denmark Vesey, all were slaves, except Vesey, who had been a slave thirty-eight years, a few man twenty-two years, having in 1800 purchased his freedom.

On July 12th, two slaves were executed; July 26th, twenty-two; July 30th, four; and August 9th, one.