History That Doesn't Suck - 20: "A Wolf by the Ears": Gabriel Rebels and Cotton Becomes King

Episode Date: July 23, 2018

“I have nothing more to offer than what General Washington would have had to offer, had he been taken by the British and put to trial by them. I have adventured my life in endeavoring to obtain the liberty of my countrymen, and am a willing sacrifice in their cause.” This is the story of Gabriel’s fight for freedom. An intelligent, literate, and enslaved blacksmith, Gabriel is raising a slave army to seize Virginia’s capital of Richmond and set up a new society where all people, regardless of their color, are free. But the world is changing around him. Chesapeake tobacco plantations, the international slave trade, and northern slavery are dying. Meanwhile, Eli Whitney’s new invention--the cotton gin--is taking southern slavery and the interstate slave trade to a whole new level. This rebellion’s a risky move. Gabriel and his lieutenants are taking their lives in their hands, and they know it. But such risk should sound familiar; after all, there’s nothing more American than a willingness to live by Patrick Henry’s immortal phrase: “give me liberty, or give me death!” ____ Connect with us on HTDSpodcast.com and go deep into episode bibliographies and book recommendations join discussions in our Facebook community get news and discounts from The HTDS Gazette  come see a live show get HTDS merch or become an HTDS premium member for bonus episodes and other perks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Say it. Alright. Let's save Christmas. There it is. Only in theaters November 15th. Welcome to History That Doesn't Suck. I'm your professor, Greg Jackson, and as in the classroom, my goal here is to make rigorously researched history come to life as your storyteller. Each episode is the result of laborious research with no agenda other than making the past come to life as you learn. If you'd like to help support this work, receive ad-free episodes, bonus content,

and other exclusive perks, I invite you to join the HTDS membership program. Sign up for a seven-day free trial today at htdspodcast.com slash membership, or click the link in the episode notes. Welcome to History That Doesn't Suck. I'm your professor, Greg Jackson, and I'd like to tell you a story. It's the evening of August 30th, 1800. We're about six miles north of Richmond, Virginia, near the Brookfield Plantation in the county of Henrico, where furious rain comes down in sheets as thunder rips through the sky.

To quote the U.S. revolutionary veteran, our current Virginian governor and future U.S. president, James Monroe, this is, quote, one of the most extraordinary falls of rain ever known in our country close quote you'd have to be crazy to go out in a storm like this well crazy or deprived of freedom like Gabriel is born the same year as America this 24 year old african-American towers at 6'3 and has broad shoulders from years of pounding iron as a blacksmith.

He's handsome. Well, he's scarred and missing his two front teeth. But you can't take away those sharp features that give him his rugged good looks. Gabriel's a smart one, too. Not only is he literate, but he spent months building a network of potentially thousands of slaves, a veritable slave army,

that he will march the six miles south to Richmond, where they will take Governor Monroe captive, demand an end to slavery, and usher in a new era for the old dominion state. One in which all people, black and white, are free. And that plan is supposed to spring into action tonight. But will it work in this full-on deluge? Amid the torrential rainfall, enslaved black men gather, as previously planned, at Brook Bridge.

Now, we don't have many details on this gathering. We do know, however, that they are far fewer than planned, and it's because of the storm. This tempest is so strong, it's threatening to sweep away the very bridge that marks their meeting point. Streams are flooded. Crossing these bodies of water increasingly look like an act of suicide. Roads are utterly washed out. Yet still, some brave few, soaked to the bone, covered in mud and clutching, their scythes turned into swords, have managed to make their way here. Why don't we start? George Smith calls out. This impatient man numbers among Gabriel's enslaved soldiers and is eager to fight for his liberty.

The answer to George's question falls on Gabriel's shoulders. Should he try to lead this group to Richmond despite their flagging numbers in the storm? They may not even make it there. On the other hand, the state capital is overrun with rumors of Gabriel's imminent slave rebellion. Because of that, some planters and farmers are patrolling, despite the storm, for gatherings of slaves at this very minute, which means time is of the essence. After all, a slave patrol could happen upon them at any moment. So maybe they should risk it tonight. You have to decide, Gabriel. Decide!

Your life and those of countless others hang in the balance, so decide! In the last episode, I told you the story of two audacious men and their role in the North's path toward industrialization. Today, I'd like to tell you the story of an audacious man who dares to stand up to Southern slavery, the enslaved blacksmith, Gabriel. Of course, in doing so, I want to place him in his historical context. So first, I'm going to divide the South into two major areas, the Lower South and the Chesapeake region—so we can see the role that their specific climates and crops are playing in the birthing and perpetuation of Southern slavery. Then we'll look at how things are changing in early 1800s America. We have gradual emancipation in the North, the end of the international slave trade in 1808, and the South's shifting to a new crop, cotton. As you'll see, cotton, which takes off

because of new technology, reinvigorates Southern slavery, takes it to a new level of cruelty, and sets the region in a radically different trajectory than the North. Once we've done all that, then we can circle back to Gabriel and finish his grim tale. But before I go into all of this, I want to break the fourth wall with you. Slavery is one of, if not the most difficult topics to discuss in America. This is especially true in our current political climate. So let me be clear. I'm not your cable news source.

I'm a historian. This means nuance. This means I'm not going to sugarcoat this history, and I make no apologies for that. But I do hope what my team and I have prepared will build bridges between 21st century Americans, not walls, and that it will do justice to the memory of the early 19th century Americans we will discuss in the next hour who did not enjoy the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Okay, that said, let's do this. Of the two regions I am dividing the South into today, let's start with the most Southern, the Lower South.

Basically, we're talking about South Carolina and Georgia. Got it? Lock that in. Good. You might have heard deep south used here as well, but since that term also includes other future states on roughly the same latitude, we'll stick with the lower south. Plantation life took off down here long before the American Revolution because of its climate. I touched on this in episode 11, as you may recall, but let's take this a step further. Things are so hot and so wet down here, it literally sets life on a different trajectory than up north. For example, back in 1700, the lower South had a life expectancy of 42 years old. Yeah, 42.

Meanwhile, New Englanders at the same time were living into their late 60s. Let me put that another way. New Englanders lived almost three decades longer, or twice as long, as some Southerners. See, in a world without modern medicine, death comes fast when you lack New England winters that freeze and kill viruses and disease-carrying insects. And as you can imagine, if humans are so deeply impacted by the weather, that means crops are too. This hot, wet climate is why the lower south doesn't grow wheat like Northerners. They favor rice. Incredibly labor-intensive rice requires the full-time care of a skilled labor force to produce a successful crop.

Now, rice might be well-suited to the region, but it's also grown around the world, meaning these southern farmers have to compete on the world market and thus want their crop to be as cheap as possible. Initially, this means indentured servants and slaves, but the servants die or finish their limited contracts quickly, so slaves soon become the better option. We're talking about rice plantations in the lower south, but to help you get the scale of this, let me point out that this is happening across hot

climates in the Americas, from the future southern U.S. to the Caribbean to South America. This is also the case in New Spain's, or as you know it in the 21st century, Mexico's, gold mines. As indigenous peoples are exposed to old world diseases, to which they have no developed immunity and die, planters and miners come to prefer Africans. This leads to the transatlantic slave trade that destabilizes African societies as well over 10 million people are forcibly taken as slaves to the Americas between the 16th and 19th centuries. Most of them aren't destined for the future United States, but as you can see, the Lower South's rice-growing ways has made it quite dependent on, addicted to even, slave labor. And that addiction is why the Lower South state delegates at the Philly Convention were ready to kill the Union if the other states tried to rein in slavery back in episode 15. Now, before we leave the lower

south, which again are South Carolina and Georgia, let's look at how climate is also impacting the way plantations function. Remember how life expectancy is low down here? A major cause of these early deaths is malaria. This nasty disease induces fatigue, vomiting, fever, and is often a death sentence. It's carried by mosquitoes, and those deadly insects love the standing water soaking the lower south's rice fields. So these plantations are dangerous, especially if you're of northern European descent. Yes, I'm serious. The reason for that is the cold winters and climates of the north are not hospitable to mosquitoes and malaria, so humans from northern climes haven't undergone a natural selection process for surviving this disease. But those from warmer climes, parts

of southern Europe, the Middle East, and especially Africa, oh they have. This means enslaved Americans, whose African descent gives them red blood cells called sickle cells because of their sickle-like shape, have a fighting chance of surviving on these malaria-ridden rice plantations. I can't decide if that's a curse or a blessing, but there you go. So given that the mostly Northern European descent plantation masters are truly SOL if they hang out near their own mosquito-ridden rice fields, they devise a way to keep slaves working without their supervision. This is the task system. Slaves are assigned several tasks for the day's work, and when the tasks are complete, they have time to themselves.

Don't get the wrong idea. This isn't like the list of five chores your mom gave you to finish before you could go out with your girlfriend. Under the task system, plantation overseers assign difficult jobs like planting, flooding fields, draining fields, hoeing, harvesting, and repairing complicated irrigation systems. If you don't finish your tasks, you get punished. If you finish too quickly, you get assigned more tasks the next day. But this system does encourage slaves to work hard without close supervision. And at the end of the day, they can go back home to their small hut and work their garden plot, which could be up to five acres. Here, they take care of themselves, grow food to feed their families, and maybe even have some surplus to sell at market.

Okay, so that's the Lower South. Let's move a bit further north to the Chesapeake region. This includes Maryland, Delaware, and the state where we left Gabriel contemplating rebellion while standing in the rain, Virginia. Don't worry, we will circle back to him later. The Chesapeake's climate is friendly to a labor-intensive cash crop too, but rather than rice, it's tobacco. So like the Lower South, slave plantations catch on here as well. But after nearly two centuries of growing tobacco, yeah let let that sink in. Colonial Virginia preceded the

Declaration of Independence by roughly 170 years. The soil is depleted of the nutrients tobacco needs in 1800. So what does that mean? Well, without the crop that makes slavery lucrative, slavery starts to die. Remember when we talked about George Washington switching from tobacco to wheat and corn on his Virginia plantation in episode 17? He did that because tobacco crop yields and prices are dropping like a rock. And like George, other Virginian planters are bailing on this now failing slave-reliant cash crop to plant wheat and corn. Some are raising livestock. And of course, as the Chesapeake turns to more New England-style

farming, that means its labor needs begin to mirror the North too. Suddenly, having a large number of slaves is becoming less of a financial advantage and more of a financial liability. And if you've ever heard that the Founding Fathers thought slavery would cure itself, well, now you know where that train of thought comes from, the Chesapeake's depleted soil and its impact on tobacco plantations. The decrease in slavery's utility is also why it was a big deal that George Washington refused to split up families by selling slaves for whom he had no work further south to the rice plantations. In fact, have you ever heard the expression,

sold down the river to express a betrayal? For example, if your boss throws you under the bus to save his own skin, you might say, Rick, that S-O-B, he totally sold me down the river during that conference call. Well, the phrase references masters who would literally sell their slaves further south. So, down the river, probably the Mississippi to be specific. Permanently separating them from their friends, parents, spouses, and children. For many, it's a fate worse than death.

It's effed up and it's the origin of this saying that still survives in 21st century American English. While some a-hole masters sell slaves south, others start to rent out their slaves to skilled laborers in nearby towns and cities. For instance, our rebellious buddy Gabriel is a rented slave who works in Richmond as a blacksmith. Most slave owners in the Chesapeake rent out their unneeded slaves in order to make a little money on the side. This is often a step up for the enslaved. They can learn new skills, might keep some of their wages, have more control over their day-to-day, and of course, it means not being sold down the river. Let's get real though, that's not why most slave owners do it. There are more benefits for the masters in the local white community than for the slaves. Masters have a new way of making profits from their slaves.

Even children are rented to poorer neighbors for the low price of feeding and clothing the kid for a few months. Furthermore, white people from lower classes can participate in slavery through the affordable, temporary rental of slaves. People who could never dream of affording their own slave can have a taste of being a master over an enslaved person, which only deepens their notion of power and superiority over blacks. But selling or renting out slaves aren't the only way Chesapeake masters are handling the shifting economy. Some simply free their unneeded slaves. Yes, that's a thing. By 1810, 76% of all blacks in Delaware are free.

Compare that to 31% in 1790. Well, Virginia is no Delaware. And who is, really? Still, many slave owners in Virginia fight to change state laws to make it easier to free their unneeded slaves. But alas, the trend of freeing slaves doesn't keep up with the enslaved birth rate, so this isn't killing the practice of slavery. For example, despite this trend, Virginia has roughly 400,000 slaves in 1810,

and over 90% of them are born in the U.S., not Africa. Now, not everyone in Virginia, or elsewhere for that matter, is on board with just freeing slaves. Many fear retribution. As our deeply conflicted friend Thomas Jefferson put it, quote, deep-rooted prejudice is entertained by the whites. 10,000 recollections by the blacks of injuries they have sustained, new provocations, the real distinctions which nature has made, will produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race. Close quote. Okay, time out. What Tom just said is pretty heavy, so let me weigh in. On the one hand, Tom is prophetic. Deeply rooted prejudices and the recollection of injuries, profound, indescribable injuries, have certainly survived into 21st century America.

Slavery is like painful scar tissue that bristles and tears with America's every movement. But despite some of the rhetoric out there, I think America will increasingly prove the sage of Monticello very wrong. Clearly, he's wrong in saying nature has made, quote, real distinctions, close quote. I also refuse to believe he's right that America is destined for a zero-sum race war. Coming from his era, Tom never could have envisioned our world, where Americans work, socialize, and marry across increasingly blurred racial lines. So good news, Tom. We are better than your fears.

But right now, in 1800, he and others argue that freed slaves should be relocated to a place far from where they lived in slavery. Tom bluntly states that the South holds, quote, a wolf by the ears, close quote. They know they should let it go, but they're afraid of their own imagined backlash if they do. Was the Sphinx 10,000 years old? Were there serial killers in ancient Greece and Rome? What were the lives of transgender, intersex, and non-binary people like in the ancient world? We're Jen and Jenny from Ancient History Fangirl. We tell you true stories and

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within 20 years, the opinion of the injustice of slaveholding has become almost universal, close quote. And another writer, probably the founding father who freed all of his slaves, John Dickinson, takes it a step further. He says that any slaveholder who rails against British tyranny is like, and I quote, an atrocious pirate sitting in all the solemn pomp of a judge passing sentence of death on a petty thief. Close quote. Whoa, talk about throwing down the gauntlet. This type of fiery speech becomes commonplace in the United States, but the policies surrounding slavery in the state and federal government lack the same ferocity. Most Americans who are against slavery want a gradual emancipation scheme.

After all, it's easy to talk a big game, but when rubber hits the road, people don't want to be inconvenienced, just like today. So by 1804, every northern state commits to some form of gradual emancipation. Because, as we discussed in episode 15, slavery does exist in the north. But without a climate to incentivize cash crops, like rice and tobacco, the north has far fewer slaves. It also tends to treat them better. Don't get me wrong, slavery is still slavery. But as you saw with the task system, there are regional differences in what slaves do, and that impacts how they are treated. I mean, if you told me I was going back in time and would be a slave, but could choose which state, my answer would be anywhere north

of Maryland. Anyhow, these laws and policies are seen as a true step in the right direction to rid the nation of slavery. But if American slavery is really going to die, many abolitionists say they have to strike its core, the international slave trade. As Benjamin Rush puts it, After all, Benjamin and other abolitionists are looking to the example of the French and Dutch West Indies, where ending the international slave trade is slowly strangling it and killing the practice. So, Americans figure this scheme can work in the US too. Oh, and I do mean Americans, not just abolitionists. As the atrocities kidnapped Africans face crossing the Atlantic become better known publicly, which includes slaves being chained together in holds where they can't stand, can't sit, get pissed on by their fellow captives, and run a 10% chance of dying before even reaching the Americas, slaveholders and abolitionists alike agree this is jacked up. Even the slave-owning Speaker of the House, North Carolinian Nathaniel

Mason, defends a bill to end the international slave trade. Quote, I believe every member in this House is solicitous to put a complete stop to this nefarious traffic. Close quote. So with support from every corner of the country, the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807 passes by a vote of 113-5 on March 2, 1807, and goes into effect on January 1, 1808. And by the way, what's up with the five congressmen who voted against it? I trust they occupy a special place in hell. Well, that's it, or so the abolitionists think. Most are sure that this ban will gradually kill slavery. One Philadelphia newspaper reports the ban with the headline, quote, abolition of slavery, close quote. And a New Yorker declares, to quote him,

this monster has received a fatal blow and will soon, we hope, fall expiring to the ground. Close quote. So the abolitionist movement falls into this malaise that often hits political movements when people think the work is done. Like that one time everyone in your town rallied behind a bond to build a few new schools. And when the bond passed, everyone patted themselves on the back and went home because school districts couldn't possibly need anything else ever again, right? The same thing happens to popular abolitionist movements. But while the anti-slavery lobbies of the North lose momentum, slavery is only gaining steam in

the South. See, the international slave trade is not the route which abolitionists think it is. As we established earlier with the example of Virginia, most slaves are native born. So really, the international slave trade isn't what's propping up American slavery. While the ban on the international slave trade is laudable, it's like using a water gun on a house fire. And that house fire is about to spread to the whole block because of the small invention of a Yankee innovator that helps farmers harvest the potentially profitable short staple cotton. Alright, here we go. It's time for the rise of king cotton. First off, you need to know there are two types of cotton, long staple cotton and short staple cotton. Lock that down. Long staple cotton is easier to clean

and therefore more profitable, but it's a fussy sucker and it only grows, really, on the islands off the coast of Georgia and South Carolina. Short staple cotton is less demanding than its long-haired cousin and grows just fine inland, but it's really hard to clean, so it isn't profitable, even with slave labor. That's why hardly any southerners are growing cotton to send to those British or northern textile mills we talked about in episode 19. Until Eli Whitney comes along, that is. Eli is a tinkerer. An inventor, really. And when this Massachusetts-born Yale alum graduates in 1792, he needs cash, so he takes on a tutoring position in South Carolina. He never actually gets there. On the ship from Boston, he meets Phineas Miller, who manages the late Nathaniel Green's estate in Georgia.

Yes, that Nathaniel, our buddy who outsmarted Lord Cornwallis in episode 12. Anyway, Phineas talks Eli into coming to Georgia and hanging out on the Green plantation for a few months. Now, that sounds way better than tutoring that bratty kid from some rich rice planter, so he heads to Georgia. While there, Nathaniel's widow, Catherine Green, notices Eli's knack for problem solving and suggests that he sink his teeth into cleaning cotton. Within a few months, he has a working prototype for a machine that combs the seed right out of short staple cotton in no time. Suddenly, this unprofitable crop is a goldmine. Basically, this machine, this cotton engine, more commonly known as the cotton gin, is to short staple cotton what fracking is to oil. Catherine and Phineas love Eli's cotton gin. They show it to all the neighbors.

It's a total game changer. Water-powered gins can clean up to 55 pounds of cotton a day. Ka-ching! You can almost see the Scrooge McDuck dollar signs in the eyes of these cotton planters as they ditch their old crops in favor of the now lucrative short staple cotton, ready to be sold to those hungry textile mills in the North and Great Britain. The crop comes in almost overnight. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating just a bit on the timing, but really, Eli has just unknowingly upended the southern economy. While old farms start growing at least some cotton, the adventurous head farther west to carve cotton plantations out of the frontier. And of course, now that we have a new labor-intensive cash crop

that can grow just about anywhere, suddenly America's waning dependence on slaves gets a new lease on life. And life on cotton plantations also takes American slavery to a new level of cruelty. There's no task system with free time every day and plenty of garden space. Cotton plantations have no need to rent out their slaves, meaning skilled slaves lose their opportunity for autonomy and cash. Cotton farmers want every bit of manpower they can get for every hour of sunlight. Men and women, skilled and unskilled, spend day after day, literally, as one man put it, quote, whittling a plantation right out of the forest, close quote.

They fell trees, remove stumps, plow, plant, build fences, outbuildings, and slave cabins. But once the plantation exists, here's the worst part of harvesting cotton. It ripens unevenly. What does that mean for cotton pickers? These slaves must pick the ripe cotton tufts and leave the not-yet-ready bowls for another day. So, slaves walk the same rows of cotton plants day in and day out, plucking the ripened cotton and placing the bowls in a sack slung over their shoulders under the scorching southern sun. And when the sack gets to 100

pounds or so, they strain under its weight until they make it to the cart at the end of their row, dump it out, then go back for more. Again. And again. And again. Six days a week. And this cotton harvest is long. It can last from August through the end of December. In order to maximize profits across the drawn-out season, slave owners and overseers organize slaves in ways that ensure productive work days and reinforce the power of white plantation owners. In fact, as one Alabama planter put it, he reduces his slaves to a quote, perfect dependence on him, close quote, by ensuring that his, and I quote again, Negroes have no free time, whatever, close quote. These harsh working conditions create efficient

cotton farms that make fists full of cash for the masters, so the cotton fields just keep spreading across the South. We aren't really going this far today, but I'll tell you really quick that by 1840, the southern U.S. will produce 75% of the world's supply of cotton. As you can see, in the south, cotton is the new king. And this new monarch helps maintain and reinforce the south's dependence on the industrial world. In exporting cotton to the increasingly industrialized North and Great Britain in the decades to come, the South inadvertently makes itself dependent on them. This effectively puts Southerners in a sort of colonial relationship with the Yanks and Brits. To put that another way, we call this a neo-colonial relationship. The South is soon stuck. Its entire economy now

revolves around cotton, and this prohibits it from evolving socially, economically, or politically. It's in a total state of arrested development, as slavery increasingly serves as the foundation of Southern culture and economics. And a profoundly significant new development that is rocking southern culture and its economy is the interstate slave trade. Let me remind you that the international slave trade has been shut down, but cotton just made slaves valuable again, at least to those in the cotton business. So how do they get more slaves? Well, remember how those Chesapeake planters have a surplus of labor that they are trying to hire out or emancipate? They just found a much more lucrative way to pawn off their slaves. Yes, many are selling them down the river.

There's no way to put a silver lining on this. The interstate slave trade is cruel, and there are literally books full of accounts of the horrors that happen along the trade routes. There's no doubt in my mind that we don't know the half of it. Some slave owners use the threat of sale to encourage good behavior. One slave says, quote, if a man did anything out of the way, he was in more danger of being sold than being whipped. Close quote. Even Tommy Jefferson, who actually has a reputation for being a decent master, sells a slave as recourse for breaking a rule.

He angrily declares that he'll send the slave into, to quote Tommy, so distant an exile as to cut him off completely from ever being heard of again. Close quote. And some slave owners just use the sale of teenaged and young adult slaves as another source of income. There's a huge market for, I quote again, choice, first-rate young hands from 14 to 25 years of age, close quote, on the southern frontier. Horrifyingly, there is also a market for young, attractive, enslaved women, especially those who

have a significant amount of white blood. They're known as fancy girls, and they're sold as quote-unquote companions for masters. Let's not beat around the bush. They're sex slaves. Now, not all slave owners participate in this god-awful world equally. Not all will buy fancy girls. Not all will split families. Some masters are born into the system and are quite conflicted about it, like George Washington. But of course, enough masters buy and sell to keep these markets going.

That said, no one is more to blame than professional slave traders. These guys have a well-earned, terrible reputation. One slave describes his ordeal of being sold west in poignant detail. He says, quote, a strong iron collar was closely fitted by means of a padlock around each of our necks. A chain of iron about a hundred feet long was passed through the hasp of each padlock, except at the two ends where the hasps of the padlocks passed through a link of the chain. In addition to this, we were handcuffed in pairs. The poor man to whom I was ironed wept like an infant when the blacksmith, with his heavy hammer, fastened the ends of the bolts that kept the

staples from slipping from our arms. Close quote. With this system, traders move slaves in droves, and I mean droves. In the 1790s alone, nearly 50,000 enslaved Americans are sold from the Chesapeake region. The domestic slave trade is big business, with expert dealers who know the prices, map out the best routes, and have systems of slave pens and houses all along the way. Now, there are large slave markets in several southern cities, like Richmond or New Orleans, and most slaves being sold end up at one of them, but some are sold piecemeal along the route. In fact, in one almost unfathomable instance, a child is sold away from his mother to pay the bar tab of the slave trader. And while this heartless action

separates this boy from his mom early, he almost surely would have been taken from her eventually. In fact, once a group of slaves, called a koffel, reaches a market, it's nearly guaranteed that families will be sold away from one another. One buyer even insists that, quote, It is better to buy none in families, but to select only young hands. Close quote. Now, Louisiana has this sticky little law that does get in the way of slave traders. It's illegal to sell any child under the age of 10 away from his or her mother. But slave traders move a lot of kids, and it's easier to sell them as individuals. So they lie.

Auction records are full of countless kids, all listed conveniently at 10 years old. I don't know about you, but I find it hard to believe that so many 10-year-old kids just happen to come up for auctions so regularly. See, they really are dirty slave traders. In one particularly devastating instance, the trader just ignores the law altogether. When a, quote, noble-looking woman with a bright-eyed seven-year-old, close quote, comes up for auction in New Orleans. Nobody wants to buy the pair. So the auctioneer separates them. And just like that, he sells the boy to a man from Mississippi and sells his mother, likely as a fancy girl, to a man from Texas. The woman begs her new owner to, quote, buy little Jimmy too, close quote, but he refuses. Her child is dragged away. A witness to this heart-rending

scene says, quote, she burst forth in the most frantic wails that ever despair gave utterance to. Close quote. I'm sure if you're a parent, you get that. I do. Amid all these awful slave trade practices, I have but one small comfort to offer you. Slave breeding farms are a myth. Slave owners sell off the slaves they see as unnecessary to their plantations. Nothing more. Well, now that you're thoroughly depressed, and a scholar on American slavery and its various aspects, from its regional climate differences to crops and the slave trade, let's get back to where we started this episode, Gabriel's Revolt. I want to tell it to you from start to finish.

To do that, we need to hold off on rejoining Gabriel's rainy, rebellious night. Instead, we're heading a few months back to early 1800. Ready? You know how we do this. Rewind. So here we are, back in Henrico County, Virginia, but early 1800. The white population of Richmond is watching with bated breath as the cutthroat presidential election goes on endlessly. Remember that from episode 18? Yeah. Anyway, with slave owners good and distracted by the Federalists and Democratic Republicans slinging mud, an enslaved man named Sam Byrd Jr. begins to recruit other slaves into a plot to, quote, kill the white people, close quote.

Sam lives as a slave on Jane Clark's farm just north of Richmond, but is often rented out as a laborer, which gives him the opportunity to recruit others to his cause. He has a lot of success, too. Among others, Sam convinces Jack, the strongest slave in Virginia, Bowler, a.k.a aka Jack Ditcher, so-called for his mad ditch-digging skills, to join him. And this guy is jacked. He's 6'4", has long hair that he ties back, and has a wicked scar over his right eye.

Basically, if Gabriel's Rebellion is ever made into a movie, I'm saying Jason Momoa of Khal Drogo Game of Thrones fame would depict him well. But what does this have to do with Gabriel? Well, Jack helps Sam out by talking to Gabriel while he's rented out as a blacksmith in Richmond. Now, as you heard in the opening of this episode, Gabriel might not be Jack, but he still cuts an imposing figure. The handsome slave with short hair looks older than 24, but that's what scars and a brand on the left hand will do to a person. And if you'll indulge me telling you about that brand for a second, it comes from a year earlier. Gabriel threw down with a local white farmer over the small matter of a missing pig, and in the process, he bit the farmer's ear clean off.

Well, not too clean. Remember, Gabriel's missing his two front teeth, so I imagine the biting was more of a tearing. Anyway, instead of sending Gabriel to the gallows, the court finds his master $1,000, then lets Gabriel take the benefit of the clergy, like the soldiers at the Boston Massacre in episode 3, by branding his left hand. With that, Gabriel promised to play nice and was returned to his master. Yeah, Gabriel's not going to keep that promise. Almost as soon as he hears about the rebellion from Jack, Gabriel recruits his brothers, Solomon and Martin, to the cause. But as the plot gains

momentum, Gabriel surpasses Sam as the leader of the movement. After all, Gabriel can read and write. He's built like a beast and he works in town, where he can keep his eyes and ears on the white population. The brilliant blacksmith soon has his fellow smiths secretly turning old scythes into swords. Recruiters to the cause are regular guests at the few social gatherings that slaves are allowed to have where they convince more to join the revolt. But they keep a few crucial details, like the meeting date and place, secret.

That way, if someone gets caught or betrays the cause, he doesn't have the power to stop the rebellion completely. And don't misunderstand, these guys are already risking their lives. Of course it's illegal for slaves to rebel. It's forbidden by Virginia state law for slaves to quote, consult, advise, or conspire to rebel or make insurrection. Close quote. So these guys have stones, especially considering that they have brought several hundred slaves on board. And together, they pull what little coin they have from tips and wages to buy gunpowder. They hold secret meetings disguised as church services and celebrations to keep this whole affair hidden from the white citizens and the authorities. Okay, so now that you get how secretive they have to be, let's lay out the plan.

On the designated night, some 50 men will slip into the Rockets neighborhood of Richmond and start a fire in the wooden warehouses there. This will create a diversion, and while the white citizens of Richmond scramble to put out the fire, the core group of several hundred slaves will march from the Brook Bridge north of town into the city center. Once there, they'll take out the guards at the state penitentiary, seize the arms, take the magazine for ammunition, and finally kidnap Governor James Monroe from his house. When Johann Rall received the letter on Christmas Day 1776, he put it away to read later. Maybe he thought it was a season's greeting and wanted to save it for the fireside. But what it actually was, was a warning, delivered to the Hessian colonel,

letting him know that General George Washington was crossing the Delaware and would soon attack his forces. The next day, when Rall lost the Battle of Trenton and died from two colonial Boxing Day musket balls, the letter was found, unopened in his vest pocket. As someone with 15,000 unread emails in his inbox, I feel like there's a lesson there. Oh well, this is The Constant, a history of getting things wrong. I'm Mark Kreisler. Every episode, we look at the bad ideas, mistakes, and accidents that misshaped our world. Find us at constantpodcast.com or wherever you get your podcasts. From the creators of the popular science show with millions of YouTube subscribers comes the MinuteEarth podcast. Every episode of the show dives deep into a science question

you might not even know you had. But once you hear the answer, you'll want to share it with everyone you know. Why do rivers curve? Why did the T-Rex have such tiny arms? And why do so many more kids need glasses now than they used to? Spoiler alert, it isn't screen time.

Our team of scientists digs into the research and breaks it down into a short, entertaining explanation jam-packed with science facts and terrible puns. Subscribe to MinuteEarth wherever you like to listen. Once in possession of the arms and the governor, they will attack the inhabitants of the city to, quote, conquer the white people and possess ourselves of their property, close quote. Damn, these guys are not messing around. But if whites acquiesce

to their demand of freedom, then, to quote again, they would then hoist a white flag and Gabriel would dine and drink with the merchants of the city on the day when it would be agreed to. See, Gabriel isn't necessarily about violence and blood. The dude just wants a seat at the table. Come August 10th, the conspirators meet after the funeral service of a friend's baby and discuss when to put their plan into action. Some think they should hold off until they have more arms and men. Gabriel worries that if they wait too long, less loyal rebels may leak the plot to their masters. Furthermore, Gabriel's brother Martin makes a solid point. Quote, The country is at peace. The soldiers are discharged and the arms all put away.

There is no patrolling in the country. Close quote. And so, the rebels finally agree to strike in three weeks. Saturday, August 30th, 1800. The white population has been hearing rumors of a slave insurrection for a few weeks now. But they don't know the details. Names, places, dates. They can do very little to undermine the plot. Gabriel's wife, Nanny, even warns Gabriel that Governor Monroe knows about the plot and has moved the arms out of the penitentiary. The governor doesn't actually know anything, by the way, but the rumor mill has some rebels running scared.

And two of them are going to cave. The morning of August 30th, the very day of the revolt, two slaves named Pharaoh and Tom walk into Richmond and head to the counting house of Mosby Shepard, the son of Tom's master, Elizabeth Shepard. Almost as soon as Mosby invites the two traitors in, they trip over their own tongues as they gush about the plot. Mosby calmly asks for details. The two slaves answer with the meeting place and name Gabriel as the leader of the rebellion. After sending the duo on their way, Mosby rushes out to spread the word. He heads to his uncle's farms, then back to town where he writes a quick note to the governor.

Quote, I have just been informed that the Negroes were to rise in the neighborhood of Mr. Thomas H. Prosser and to kill the neighbors. From thence, they were to proceed to town where they would be joined by more Negroes, after which they were to take possession of the arms and ammunition and then take possession of the town. There is not a doubt in my mind, but what my information is true. Close quote. Well, James performs his gubernatorial duties and raises the alarm as the storm clouds roll in. Gabriel heads to the Brook Bridge. He has no idea that Pharaoh and Tom betrayed the cause only hours earlier. And now we're back to where we left Gabriel at the opening of this episode. Why don't we start?

George Smith calls out. And the answer to that is because of the storm. Gabriel, Solomon, and Jack Ditcher all agree they have no choice but to postpone the rebellion. They try to quietly spread the word, telling other rebels it's, quote, too rainy an evening to carry their plan into effect, close quote. After all, how could they even set fire to Barnes for a diversion in

this downpour? But of course, word of this postponement doesn't reach the informer Mosby or the dozens of militiamen called out to search for a rebellion in the rain. We don't know for sure, but it's likely many of them search the streets of Richmond and the surrounding areas all day and all night looking for a rebellion to stamp out. Obviously, they find nothing. When Mosby finally gets home at about 8 a.m. on Sunday morning, he's soaked to the skin and just wants to sleep. But as he lays down for a nap, one of his house slaves confides to him that the plot has been delayed and will take place tonight instead. What is it about this guy?

Why do slaves keep spilling the beans to him? Anyway, Mosby and the local militia patrol the area and Richmond for another night, but they find absolutely no evidence of insurrection. What to do? I mean, there isn't actually a slave revolt, but everyone from Mosby to Richmond Mayor James McClurg, all the way up to the governor, no one was planned. So on Monday morning, James suggests that Mayor McClurg order the citizens of Richmond to, quote, apprehend and commit to prison those whose guilt they had good cause to suspect, close quote. The pliant mayor goes along with this and six slaves are soon arrested and others follow. Some of the arrested slaves come quietly. Others put up a fight. Michael, for instance, who was one of the first recruits to the cause, is spotted walking down the road with his scythe sword.

Way to keep a low profile, Michael. Anyway, he tries to fight off his captors, but they overpower him. After arresting about 20 men and desperately trying to find enough jail space, they still don't have Gabriel. It's now Tuesday morning and nobody's seen him since Sunday afternoon. And so, still fearing a rebellion, James meets with city, county, and state leaders. Together, they decide to muster a guard for the penitentiary and the armory, as well as set a curfew for the local taverns. Meanwhile, county magistrates Jervis Storrs and Joseph Seldon are making headway interrogating arrested slaves.

18-year-old Ben soon cracks under pressure and lays out everything they want to know. Acting on Ben's information and the story of the traitors Pharaoh and Tom, the governor issues a reward for the capture of Gabriel on September 8th. He writes, I quote, it is advised that a proclamation be issued offering a reward for $150 for apprehending Gabriel. Close quote. Soon enough, a week's passed, and still no one's seen him. But with a $150 reward, hey, he might get lucky. I mean, the court is only offering a $100 reward for a recently escaped from prison accused murderer.

Clearly, they really want Gabriel. And with the enslaved blacksmith still on the lam, Henrico County Attorney General George William Smith starts the trials of the indicted insurrectionists. That almost sounds like a fake name, right? I mean, George William Smith. It's like an alias from Austin Powers or something. Anyhow, on Thursday, September 11th, Gabriel's brother Solomon stands trial first. He's accused of, quote, being an evil disposed person who did unlawfully advise, consult, conspire, and plot how to rebel and make an insurrection against the laws and government, close quote, of Virginia. He pleads not guilty. Solomon's trial, which includes the

evidence of young Ben and Pharaoh, lasts only a few hours. He, along with all the other rebels that will stand trial, go before seven judges, no jury, who hear the evidence and proclaim their individual verdict. Now Solomon and all of the other accused slaves are being charged with a felony, conspiracy, which carries the death penalty. But all seven judges have to deliver guilty verdicts in order for the defendant to be sentenced to death. Otherwise, he gets pardoned. Because of this, some particularly bloodthirsty men want the slaves tried in military courts under martial law. But Governor Monroe just wants to crush rebellion, not invoke martial law. He holds the

line and gets, well, fair may be going too far, but civilian trials for the accused. Anyway, back to Solomon's trial. In his testimony against Solomon, Ben says that the blacksmith's brother, quote, made a number of swords for the purpose of carrying into the execution the plan of an insurrection. And Solomon was to be treasurer. This plan was to be executed on the Saturday night on which there was fall of rain and gust. After murdering the inhabitants of the neighborhood, the assembly were to repair to Richmond and seize upon the arms and ammunitions. Close quote. Damn, Ben! Look, you're a kid. You're afraid.

And I get that. But dude. Well, after hearing that testimony and Pharaoh's, the judges unanimously sentence Solomon to death. The trials continue. Six more men are tried on Thursday. After only four days of trials, 20 men have been tried. Of those, 10 are hanged to death. All of these hangings give the Virginia governor, James Monroe, pause. This is really spiraling out of control. What should he do? He seems so sure of himself when he was bossing around Mayor McClurg and ordering the militia to round up conspiring slaves, but not so much now. He writes to his old friend, Vice President Thomas Jefferson, and begs for advice. To quote,

We have had much trouble with the Negroes here. Ten have been condemned and executed, and there are at least 20, perhaps 40 more to be tried. It is unquestionably the most serious and formidable conspiracy we have ever known of the kind. We made a display of our force and measures of defense with a view to intimidate those people. Where to arrest the hand of the executioner is a question of great importance. Close quote. So James doesn't want to appear to capitulate to insurrecting slaves, but the cruelty and excessive severity is weighing on him. Despite coming from early 19th century Virginia's slaveholding society, you can see this isn't

sitting right with him. Thomas writes back to James on September 20th. We'll get to Tom and his views on slavery in a later episode, but suffice it to say he's a conflicted philosophical soul on the issue. I think that comes across in his response. He writes, Where to stay the hand of the executioner is an important question. Those who have escaped from the immediate danger must have feelings which would dispose them to extend the executions. But there is a strong sentiment that there has been hanging

enough. The other states and the world at large will forever condemn us if we indulge a principle of revenge or go one step beyond absolute necessity. I hazard these thoughts for your own consideration only, as I should be unwilling to be quoted in the case. So Tom dodges. As you'll see in the future, this is his M.O. when it comes to slavery. But James still has no answers. The white population of Virginia has been frightened into a mob mentality, so he's not on the same page with them. Ultimately, he continues to hold out against military tribunals

while permitting the civil trials to go on, as Gabriel is still at large. Right, Gabriel! Where is he? The blacksmith has boarded a small three-mast ship called the Mary. It's currently sailing slowly on the Elizabeth River. When it docks in Norfolk, which is a little less than 100 miles southeast of Richmond. A slave on the sailing crew named Billy disembarks to run a quick errand. While out, he sees the brother of his wife's master. Did you follow that? I'll repeat that in case you didn't. Billy tells the brother of his wife's master, whose name is John Moss, by the way, that there's a guy on the Mary who looks a lot like the wanted Gabriel and boarded the ship just down river from Richmond about 10 days ago.

Remember that $150 reward? It's been raised twice. First to $300, now to $600. Yeah, John wants that cash and doesn't need telling twice. He goes to the local constables and rushes them down to the docks. When the two officers board the schooner, they find Gabriel below deck, unrestrained. Now, the captain of the Mary, Richard Taylor, tries to claim that Gabriel is his prisoner, but the constables don't buy it. I'm guessing there was a plan or agreement between Richardson, his crew, and Gabriel, but we'll never know. The officers arrest Gabriel and put him on a ship bound for Richmond the next day. On the morning of September 24th, Gabriel begins sailing back home in irons. According to one newspaper, a huge crowd comes out to catch a glimpse of the man

with, quote, a mind capable of forming the daring project which he had conceived. Close quote. It only takes three days for the ship to sail back from Norfolk to Richmond. The captured rebel arrives in Richmond on Saturday afternoon, September 27th. Newspapers declare that, quote, a period is put to the anxiety which for several weeks past has convulsed the public mind. Close quote. Of course, this describes the anxiety of the white population, not the enslaved population. Unfortunately, no paper reports on how they feel when their rebellion's leader appears in chains. Gabriel goes straight to the governor's office to be questioned by the most powerful man in the state. But the strong-willed Gabriel refuses to say anything in his defense or at the expense of

his compatriots. The governor calls an unprecedented Sunday meeting of his executive council to deal with this. He writes, I have to request you will be so obliging as to convene tomorrow at the council chamber at 10 o'clock. The overwhelmed governor doesn't actually attend the Sunday meeting, though. His young son is dying. He stays home and sends three members of his council to interrogate Gabriel. But they report to the grieving father that, quote, Gabriel did not seem disposed at present to make any confession worth notice.

Close quote. And so they send the uncooperative rebel back to his solitary confinement with a special guard to await his trial on Monday, October 6th. The reason Gabriel waits so long is that the courts are backlogged with other trials. Between Gabriel's arrival in Richmond and his trial, 15 more men are tried and convicted. In addition to the testimony of others we have already discussed, Gabriel's once loyal companion, Ben Woolfolk, attests to the judge that the Smithing rebel leader meant to, quote, kill all unless they agreed to the freedom of the blacks, in which case they would at least cut off one of their arms, Close quote. Oh, that testimony has to cut Gabriel to

the quick. With such damning evidence, Gabriel is sentenced to death. In total, roughly 70 conspirators stand trial. 25 are acquitted, 13 are pardoned, 26 hanged. 8, including Jack Ditcher, are transported out of state. Or, you know, sold down the river. As for Gabriel, he meets his end on October 10th. That same day, 9 of his fellow freedom-seeking slaves swing from the trees, while Gabriel, as the leader, is taken by cart to a gallows set up near the center of town. This location, just off what will be the 95 freeway in Broad Street in 21st century Richmond,

is the African burial ground, and it's here that Gabriel fulfills the measure of New Hampshire's state motto. Live free or die. We would do Gabriel an injustice if we ended this episode without pointing out just how American his ideas and at least some of his followers truly were. Sure, some slaves were out for blood. During the trials, some confessed to wanting to kill their white masters, quote, like sheep, close quote. And can I say, fair enough, they've been enslaved. But that wasn't Gabriel's end goal. He appears to have been influenced by America's own Republican ideals. He may have have been influenced by America's own Republican ideals. He may have also been inspired by the French Revolution's ideals that had recently led to

a successful slave revolt in Haiti. Remember, after taking over Richmond, he planned to quote, dine and drink with the merchants of the city on the day when it would be agreed to, close quote. Oh, and Gabriel planned to march his men under a banner that would have read, death or liberty. Um, Patrick Henry much? Come on, remember? Episode two? Come on. Rebellion in Virginia. Gabriel not only tapped into an American revolutionary hero, he tapped into a Virginian hero. So again, I don't see Gabriel looking to start Thomas Jefferson's feared race war. He's just looking to be treated like the American he is. To put a finer point on it, another slave explained his participation in Gabriel's rebellion to the courts this way,

quote, I have nothing more to offer than what General Washington would have had to offer had he been taken by the British and put to trial by them. I have adventured my life in endeavoring to obtain the liberty of my countrymen and am a willing sacrifice in their cause. Close quote. Damn straight you're just pulling a George Washington. Couldn't agree more with you, my unnamed friend. My agreement 200 years later doesn't give you the justice you deserved, but you were right. Like so many of the topics we cover, American Slavery could be a podcast in and of itself. As you can see, slavery, like any important topic, shouldn't be painted with a broad brush.

There are regional differences. There are evil people who profit. There are good, or at least better people, who are born into slave ownership but can't find a way to extricate themselves. Some do the right thing, but for the wrong reasons, like Chesapeake planters who free their slaves only to save money. And others who do the right thing even though it hurts their bottom line. But while it's good to be nuanced, and we are, we can't emphasize enough the damage and pain of slavery. And that's why slaves like Gabriel justly fight back. Sometimes that's done by simply not working when their overseer turns his back, breaking tools, stealing from the master, or sabotaging projects. These are all small ways of saying screw you to the master.

But Gabriel's level of revolt isn't an anomaly either. There are big ones, including Denmark Vesey in 1822, Nat Turner in 1831, and countless others. In short, despite what you might have heard from the illustrious scholar Kanye West, slavery was not a choice. In fact, in an indirect sense, another slave revolt is about to double the size of America. Ready to search for a Northwest Passage? I am. History That Doesn't Suck is created and hosted by me, Greg Jackson. Research and writing, Greg Jackson and C.L. Salazar. Production and sound Design, Josh Beatty of J.B. Audio Design. Musical Score, composed and performed by Greg Jackson and Diana Averill. For a bibliography of all primary and secondary sources consulted in writing this episode,

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