Page 52 - 1619 Project Curriculum

The 1619 Project

⬤ Aug. 30, 1800: Gabriel Prosser, a 24-year-old literate blacksmith, organizes one

with the intention of forming an

of the most extensively planned slave rebellions,

independent black state in Virginia. After other enslaved people share details of his

and hanged.

plot, Gabriel’s Rebellion is thwarted. He is later tried, found guilty

As he approached the Brook Swamp beneath the city of Richmond, the Negroes Tom and Pharoah of the Sheppard plantation betrayed

Va., Gabriel Prosser looked to the sky. Up above, the clouds coalesced Gabriel’s plot on a Saturday morning, Monroe was not surprised. By

into an impenetrable black, bringing on darkness and a storm the fe- virtue of the privilege bestowed upon him as his birthright, he was ex-

rocity of pecting them.
which the region had scarcely seen. He may have cried and

he may have prayed but the thing Gabriel did not do was turn back. He Gabriel Prosser was executed Oct. 10, 1800. Eighteen hundred; the

was expecting fire on this night and would make no concessions for the year Denmark Vesey bought his freedom, the year of John Brown’s and

coming rain. Nat Turner’s births. As he awaited the gallows near the foot of the James

And he was not alone. A hundred men; 500 men; a thousand men had River, Gabriel could see all that was not to be — the first wave of men

gathered from all over the state on this 30th day of August 1800. Black tasked to set fire to the city perimeter, the second to fell a city weakened

men, African men — men from the fields and men from the house, men by the diversion; the governor’s mansion, James Monroe brought to heel

from the church and the smithy — men who could be called many things and served a lash for every man, woman and child enslaved on his High-

but after this night would not be called slaves gathered in the flooding land plantation; the Quakers, Methodists, Frenchmen and poor whites via Wikimedia. Landscape, right: Peter Traub via Wikimedia.

basin armed with scythes, swords, bayonets and smuggled guns. who would take up with his army and create a more perfect union from

the men tested the rising water, citing the Gospel of John:
One of which they would spread the infection of freedom — Gabriel saw it all.

‘‘For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled He even saw Tom and Pharoah, manumitted by the government of Vir-

the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped ginia, a thousand dollars to their master as recompense; a thousand dol-

in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.’’ But the water would lars for the sabotage of Gabriel’s thousand men. He did not see the other

not abate. As the night wore on and the storm persisted, Gabriel was 25 men in his party executed. Instead, he saw Monroe in an audience he

and paid little notice to. For Gabriel Prosser the black-
overcome by a dawning truth: The Gospel would not save him. His army wanted no part of

could not pass. smith, leader of men and accepting no master’s name, had stepped into

Gov. James Monroe was expecting them. Having returned from his the troubled water. To the very last, he was whole. He was free.

appointment to France and built his sweeping Highland plantation on House: Sergey Golub

the periphery of Charlottesville, Monroe wrote to his mentor Thomas

Jefferson seeking advice on his ‘‘fears of a negro insurrection.’’ When By Barry Jenkins

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