What security for domestic purity and peace there can be where every man has had two connections, one of which must be concealed; and two families. . . .
HARRIET MARTINEAU, Society in America, 1837
The organ of justice, is the couple considered as a personal duality, forming by the contrast of attributes a complex being, the social embryo. . . . Nature in man and woman is not by consequence, the same. Moreover, it is through him that the conscience of both of them opens onto justice, each one becomes for the other at the same time witness, judge and a second self. Being in two personages, this couple is the real human subject.
PROUDHON, Pornocracy or Women in Modern Time [published in 1875]
The Richmond Jail, Sept. 13, 1800
SIR,
Nothing is talked of here but the recent conspiracy of the Negroes. One Nicholas Prosser, a young man who had fallen heir, sometime ago, to a plantation within six miles of the city, had behaved with great barbarity to his slaves. One of them, named Gabriel, a fellow of courage and intellect above his rank in life, laid a plan of revenge. Immense numbers immediately entered into it, and it has been kept with incredible secrecy for several months. A number of swords were made in a clumsy enough manner out of rough iron; others by breaking the blade of a scythe in the middle, which thus made two swords of a most formidable kind. They were well fastened in proper handles, and would have cut off a man’s limb at a single blow. The conspirators were to have met in a wood near Prosser’s house, upon Saturday before last, after it was dark. Upon that day, or some very short time before it, notice was received by a fellow, who being invited, somewhat unguardedly, to go to the rendezvous, refused, and immediately informed his master’s overseer. No ostensible preparations were, however, made until the afternoon preceding the night of the rendezvous, and as the militia are in a state of the most contemptible disorganization, as the blacks are numerous, robust, and desperate, there must have been bloody work. But upon that very evening, just about sunset, there came on the most terrible thunderstorm, accompanied with an enormous rain, that I ever witnessed in this state. Between Prosser’s and Richmond, there is a place called Brook Swamp, which runs across the high road and over which there was a bridge. By this the Africans were of need to pass, and the rain had made the passage impracticable. Besides they were deprived of the junction and assistance of their good friends in the city, who could not go out to join them. They were to have attacked the Capital and the penitentiary. They could hardly have failed of success, for after all, we only could muster four or five hundred men of whom not more than thirty had muskets. This was our state of preparation while several thousand stands of arms were piled up in the Capital and penitentiary. I do not pretend to blame the executive council, for I really am not sufficiently master of the circumstances to form an opinion. Five fellows were hung this day and many more will share the same fate. This plan was to massacre all the whites, of all ages and sexes, and all the blacks who would not join them; and then march off to the mountains with the plunder of the city. Those wives who should refuse to accompany their husbands were to have been butchered along with the rest, an idea truly worthy of any African heart. It convicts with my knowledge that many of the wretches, who were, or would have been, partners in the plot, have been treated with the utmost tenderness by their owners and more like children than slaves. …
I read through the rest of the letter, which dealt with general political opinions, and to the name of the sender: Thomas T. Callender. I fixed the name in my mind, then handed the letter my master had asked me to read back to him.
“I suppose you already know all about it,” the familiar voice added with something like sadness.
Indeed, the slave intelligence had brought the news long before now, and the story of Gabriel Prosser was already legend.
Davey Bowles had brought the first news and told me of the uprising. Gabriel Prosser and Jack Bowler had been the leaders of the insurrections. Gabriel, a handsome, twenty-four-year-old giant of six-foot-three and his comrade Jack, three inches taller and four years older, had organized more than a thousand men in Henrico County. Brilliant and literate, he had carefully planned his rebellion. Gabriel’s wife, Nanny, had been active as well, as were his brothers Solomon and Martin. They had all been betrayed by a fellow servant called Ben Wolfolk, who had heard of the conspiracy through two loose-mouthed slaves, George Smith and Samuel Bird. The insurrection was to have taken place on the first of September; the rendezvous for the rebels had been a brook six miles from Richmond. Eleven hundred men were to have assembled there and were to have been divided into three columns. All were to have marched to Richmond under the cover of night.
The rebels had counted heavily on the French, whom they had understood to be at war with the United States, for the money that was due them, and that a warship, which would help them, had landed at South Key. If successful in this first stage, the penitentiary in Richmond had enough arms, the powderhouse was well stocked, the capital contained the state treasury, the mills would give them bread, the control of the bridge across the James River would keep off enemies from beyond. Thus secured, they had planned to issue a proclamation summoning to their standard of red silk, with the words “Liberty or Death” printed on it, their fellow slaves and humanitarian whites. In a week, they had estimated they would have had fifty thousand rebels and could have taken other towns. In case of failure, they were to retreat into the mountains, as the rebellious slaves of Santo Domingo had done.
There had been intimations all summer of insurrection in Richmond, and the white table talk had been ominous with it. Yet the attack itself had surprised and shaken them. Why? I wondered, when they all lived, black and white, with this threat every day of every year. The whites had been surprised and unprepared. Only treachery had prevented success—treachery and God, for the appointed day had been prey to the most furious storm ever known to Virginia’s memory. Why? I asked myself again and again. A tempest had burst upon the land instead of insurrection. The governor of Virginia, Master Monroe, had called in the United States Cavalry and the hangings had begun. I looked at the date on the letter. It was already outdated. Gabriel Prosser was already dead. Captured by treachery on a schooner in Norfolk, he had been brought back to Richmond in chains. There he had manifested the utmost composure and taking all the responsibility onto himself, had conducted himself as a hero, and had made no confession. Now, I looked at a fourth letter. Master Monroe was writing to Thomas Jefferson for advice. How to stop the hangings? More than thirty-five had gone to the gallows, and the Richmond jails were groaning with prisoners. They had suspended the trials. If they hanged everybody, they would annihilate the blacks in that part of the country.
“I think there has been enough hanging.”
Why, when he kept so many things from me, did he want to share this particular burden? Did I not already have enough to bear? He knew that I could never come down on his side in this.
My lover looked at me with surprise.
“You know about the hangings?”
“Yes.”
“You know how many?”
“Rumor has it forty or fifty, with hundreds waiting to be tried.”
“Governor Monroe doesn’t know what to do. Here, look at this.”
I read Master Monroe’s letter.
“All I can say is,” I said, “you can’t kill every slave in Virginia.”
He got up from his desk and came toward me. “No,” he said slowly, “you can’t kill every one.” He took the letter from my hands and went back to his desk. “When to stay the hand of the executioner is an important question. Those who have escaped from immediate danger must have feelings which dispose them to extend the executions. . . .”
“I still say there’s been hanging enough. You can’t kill everyone.”
I thought of the new seed planted in my womb. A new slave.
“You must understand,” I began, “they are not felons or common malefactors, but persons guilty of what our society obliges us to treat as a crime, and which their feelings represent in a far different shape—”
“I know this,” he interrupted. He was turned away from me, the frightened, imploring letter of Master Monroe still in his hand.
He turned toward me but did not approach. He was afraid of me. He could forget in private, but he could never forget in public.
More to himself than to me, he said, “It is certain that the world at large will forever condemn us if we indulge or go one step beyond necessity.”
At the word “necessity,” I looked into his eyes but said nothing.
“Our situation is indeed a difficult one,” he continued, “for I doubt if those people can ever be permitted to go at large among us with safety.”
“Then exile them! The French and British do so,” I begged. “Those people” were my people! Even as we spoke, he forgot. Banishment. Was that not James’s choice? I pressed my palms to my womb. If I could save one … just one of them.
“I have thought of it,” he said. “Surely the legislature would pass a law for their exportation, the proper measure as you have pointed out on this, and … all similar occasions.”
I thought again of Gabriel Prosser. He had died on the gallows with ten of his men and with hundreds in the Richmond jail waiting to be tried and hanged, but they, the slaves, didn’t believe it. Already there was a song that had started somewhere on some plantation, and was now winging from slave quarter to slave quarter. Prosser, the song went, didn’t die on the gallows, but escaped with the help of a young slave boy named Billy. He lived to rise again. We were not about to let Gabriel Prosser die. He would rise again. Another black man would rise to take his place just as he had at Santo Domingo. My master looked down into my eyes.
“Exile them,” I whispered.
Relief broke over his face. “Thank you,” he said, and his eyes were filled with an ineffable tenderness. He, for the first time in his life, had a glimpse of the terror of slavehood and loving me he had acknowledged this terror. On this mountain, his eyes seemed to say, we can hold everything at bay, even this.
Shyly he reached out and touched me. He still seemed afraid of me. “Let me work now,” he said.
I suffered his touch, but my mind was ablaze. There were so many things I wanted to say.
I turned and left him to his letters. I climbed the miniature stairs at the foot of his bed to my room. It was not until my master had left for Philadelphia, the balloting for the presidency still in doubt, that I heard that the last of Gabriel’s condemned rebels had been reprieved and banished from Virginia by James Monroe.
I had not pleaded in vain.