Year
1800
__________
“A major
step in the ultimate triumph of republicanism over the principles of monarchy.”
James Monroe, referring
to the election of President Jefferson.
__________
Slave revolt in Virginia.
August 30: At two o’clock in the afternoon, Mosby
Shepherd called on Virginia Governor James Monroe “with the alarming news that
two of his slaves had just informed him of a revolt planned for that very
evening.”
(This
description is from Harry Ammon’s biography on Monroe.)
According to Shepherd’s informants, the
slaves of Henrico County planned to kill their masters during the night. They
would then move on to Richmond and set fire to the city, during the confusion
seizing arms stored in government buildings.
Late in the day, however, “a most
horrible thunderstorm” swept the area. “The sudden storm disrupted the plans of
the rebels, forcing them to disperse.” Patrols reported that “quantities of
crudely made weapons” had been discovered, and twenty slaves were quickly
arrested. Additional troops were called out, and the governor’s council
instructed Monroe to warn county authorities throughout the state and maintain
regular patrols. Investigation revealed that the plot originated on the
plantation of Thomas Prosser, six miles from Richmond.
According to reports at the time, Prosser
treated his slaves with great “barbarity.” One of his slaves, named Gabriel, “a
fellow of courage and intellect above his rank in life,” had planned the
insurrection, which was said to have included slaves in Henrico, Chesterfield,
Louisa, Caroline, and Hanover counties, as well as the city of Richmond.
For some time, Gabriel escaped arrest.
There were rumors that even some whites had supported the plot.
As Monroe later explained to lawmakers,
it seemed incredible that slaves alone could have hatched such a complex plot.
“It was natural to suspect that they were prompted to it by others who were
invisible, but whose agency might be powerful.”
Once Gabriel was captured, Monroe went to
the prison to talk with him. He found the slave to “have made-up his mind to
die, and to have resolved to say but little on the subject of the conspiracy.”
Monroe was inclined to be more merciful
than his council, but they voted to execute thirty-five slaves for their
complicity.
Monroe later warned the legislature,
“What has happened may occur again at any time, with more fatal consequences,
unless suitable measures be taken to prevent it. Unhappily while this class of
people exists among us we can never count with certainty on its tranquil
submission.” (24/186-189)
*
NOTE TO TEACHERS: In my opinion, the following entry from the Encyclopedia Virginia
strikes a wrong note at the start. The topic is the
slave revolt, led by Prosser, here called a “conspiracy,” which carries a
negative connotation.
First,
we have the summary:
August
30:
Gabriel’s Conspiracy was a plan
by enslaved African American men to attack Richmond and destroy slavery in
Virginia. Although thwarted, it remains one of the half-dozen most important
insurrection plots in the history of North American slavery. Named after an
enslaved blacksmith who emerged as the most significant leader of the plot,
Gabriel’s Conspiracy originated during the spring and summer of 1800 in a
Henrico County neighborhood north of Richmond and extended primarily across
Hanover County into Caroline County and south toward Petersburg. Two enslaved
men betrayed the plot just hours before a torrential rainstorm prevented the
conspirators from gathering on the night of August 30, 1800. In response,
Virginia authorities arrested and prosecuted more than seventy enslaved men for
insurrection and conspiracy. Twenty-six of those found guilty were hanged and
eight more were transported, or sold outside of the state, while another
suspected conspirator committed suicide before his arraignment. A small number
of free Blacks were also implicated and one was prosecuted. The alleged
involvement of two Frenchmen in the plot provided fodder for Federalist attacks
on Thomas
Jefferson’s candidacy for the presidency that year. The aborted
uprising also provoked refinements in the state’s slave laws at the next
meeting of the General Assembly, including the adoption of transportation as an
alternative to capital punishment for some enslaved offenders and calls for an
end to private manumissions and for the deportation of free Blacks.
Planning for the
revolt began in the spring of 1800 and ripened in the summer. By late August,
the slaves, and a few free allies, were ready. They would strike first at the city
of Richmond.
A party of about fifty men would slip into the lower part of the
town and set fire to the area’s predominantly wooden structures in order to
draw the city’s residents into fighting the conflagration. Meanwhile, the main
column of men would first attack the white residents of the Brook and then
swarm into upper Richmond, overcoming the few guards who watched over state
arms on deposit at the Capitol and penitentiary, as well as at the public
magazine. These men also intended to seize Governor Monroe, if not actually
kill him. Once fully armed, they would destroy the exhausted firefighters as
they struggled home.
Because their plan to overrun the guards did not require that
most men be equipped with firearms at the outset, blacksmiths like Gabriel, his
brother Solomon, and Thornton, who worked at a forge at Hanover Court House,
refashioned scythe blades into swords; one witness claimed that twelve dozen
such weapons were created. In addition, Jack Bowler reported that he had made
fifty pikes, or spears, by affixing bayonets to the ends of poles. Bowler,
Gabriel, and another plotter gathered gunpowder, and Gabriel and his brother
Martin made musket balls. While the men already secretly possessed a handful of
firearms, they also planned to seize a small cache of militia muskets stored at
a neighborhood tavern. In early August, Gabriel and two other men actually
slipped into the Capitol to survey the weapons there. They obtained keys to the
building from Robert Cowley, once enslaved by the Randolph family but now a
free man who served as the keeper of the Capitol and doorman to the Council of
State. A later investigation exonerated Cowley of any complicity in the plot.
Some of those who supported
the plan saw what was coming as “a war for freedom” pitting black against
white. “The slaughter would be indiscriminate. Others were told that people
friendly to freedom – Quakers, Methodists, and Frenchmen, and even poor white
women with no enslaved laborers – were to be spared.”
Two slaves, Pharoah and Tom,
owned by Mosby Sheppard, revealed the plan to their master, and Governor James
Monroe mobilized patrols to guard the roads. Then a deluge of rain dampened the
spirits of the black men who had dreamed of a fight for freedom. Gabriel was
soon captured.
*
October
6: Prosser is tried and found guilty.
*
October
10: Prosser is hanged until dead.
*
PHAROAH
AND TOM were later rewarded for what they had done and were granted their
freedom. As the number of executions grew, families near the site of the
hangings complained, because they found the hangings “offensive.” Governor
Monroe went so far as to ask Thomas Jefferson for advice. How many hangings
would be necessary to instill fear and ensure such revolts were never plotted
again?
Jefferson warned that too many
executions would make it look as if Virginia authorities wanted revenge, not justice.
The state was also expected to repay owners for the costs of the lost slaves –
and this financial consideration also proved a factor. Most of the remaining
prisoners were pardoned.
While Prosser’s plan had
failed, the whites would not easily forget it. As one newspaper writer put it, “no person can repose in security
and safety.” Indeed, he found himself “bereaved of the blessings of civil
liberty, namely, ‘security of property and safety of person and life.’”
What the wives and families of
the slain plotters thought, what African Americans believed about Prosser’s
fate, history (as far as we know) does not report.
*
“Triumph
of republicanism over the principles of monarchy.”
TURMOIL surrounding the 1800 election
made both sides wary. The previous year, a Federalist clerk in Albemarle County
claimed that the Virginia legislature had appropriated additional funds, in
preparation for armed insurrection. According to Ammon, “A year later the
editor of the Fredericksburg Virginia Herald repeated the accusation,
adding that the Republicans were not only planning to oust the administration
but to destroy the government itself.”
In May 1800, Virginia Governor James
Monroe, “puzzled by an encampment of four hundred regulars not far from
Richmond, expressed skepticism at the official explanation that they had been
assigned to guard Harpers Ferry. Every slight move of the War Department caused
a further ripple of alarm.”
A letter arrived by courier from
Pennsylvania with the news that “22,000 men in that state were ready to take up
arms.” The letter, from John Tyler, “urgently recommended that the legislature
be convened, if there were no change in the balloting during the next week, so
that Virginia could join hands with Pennsylvania and New York to prevent a
Federalist coup.” (24/193)
Monroe regarded Jefferson’s election as
“a major step in the ultimate triumph of republicanism over the principles of
monarchy.” (245/194)
*
IN THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION of
1800, Thomas Jefferson prevailed over John Adams, with 73 electoral votes to
Adams’ 65.
In those days, however, electors voted twice – once for
president, once for vice president – but did not specify which vote was for
which office. No one had ever considered what would happen in the case of a tie
involving two men from the same political party – especially if one of
those two was a man with no more scruples than a cabbage. So, 73 men voted for
Jefferson, clearly intending him to be president. The same 73 men voted for
Aaron Burr, clearly meaning for him to serve as vice president.
In case of a tie, the Constitution did specify that the vote
would move to the U.S. House of Representatives, with each state having one
vote (decided by majority vote among the state’s representatives). The members
of the Federalist Party in Congress saw a chance to cause trouble and threw
their support to Mr. Burr. For 36 ballots, the House remained deadlocked: eight
states for Mr. Jefferson, eight for Burr.
At last, one Federalist relented, and abstained from voting,
Jefferson had his ninth state and was finally elected, as his 73 supporters had
always meant.
*
JOHN
BACH McMASTER described the election this way:
The
Election of 1800. – The cost of the war made new taxes necessary,
and these, coupled with the Alien and Sedition Acts, did much to bring about
the defeat of the Federalists. Their candidates for the presidency and vice
president were John Adams and Charles C. Pinckney. The Republicans nominated
Jefferson and Aaron Burr, and won. Unfortunately Jefferson and Burr each
received the same number of votes, so it became the duty of the House of
Representatives to determine which should be President. When the House elect a
President, each state, no matter how many representatives it may have, casts
one vote. There were then sixteen states in the Union. The votes of nine,
therefore, were necessary to elect. But the Federalists held the votes of six,
and as the representatives of two more were equally divided, the Federalists
thought they could say who should be President, and tried hard to elect Burr.
Finally some of them yielded and allowed the Republicans to make Jefferson
President, thus leaving Burr to be Vice President.
*
VAN LOON writes of the South: “In
a society soaked in mint juleps a single word could lead to a quarrel, and a
quarrel in the year 1800 was inevitably followed by ‘pistols for two.’” (124/313)
*
BENJAMIN
ANDREWS, in The History of the United
States, writes that in 1800 the population of the nation was 5,305,482.
This included 896,849 slaves. New York had 60,489 people. Washington D.C. had
3,210.
Horse-racing,
cock-fighting, shooting matches, at all which betting was high, were
fashionable, as well as the most brutal man-fights, in which ears were bitten
off and eyes gouged out. President Thomas Jefferson was exceedingly fond of
menageries and circuses, his diary abounding in such entries as: “pd for seeing
a lion 21 months old 11 1’2 d.;” “pd seeing a small seal .125;” “pd seeing
elephant .5;” “pd seeing elk .75;” “pd seeing Caleb Phillips a dwarf .25.” (2/286)
In this era,
“Christmas was not observed in New England,” it “was hardly known.” (2/292)
Spanish dollars,
halves and quarters were in circulation. The Spanish eighth, the “real,”
“ryall, or “royall,” was worth 12 ½ cents. “Many of these pieces were sadly
worn, passing at face value only when the legend could be made out.”
Newspapers in 1800
probably issued 4,500,000 copies combined during twelve months. Doggerel from a
Republican paper:
See Johnny at the helm
of State,
Head itching for a crowny;
He longs to be, like
Georgy, great,
And pull Tom Jeffer downy. (2/301)
In New York one could
get a decayed tooth filled or a set of false teeth made. Four daily stages ran
between New York and Philadelphia. The United States Mint was still working by
horsepower, not employing steam till 1815.
(2/304-305)
There were two
insurance companies in the country, “possibly more.” Cast-iron plows were
replacing wood.
*
December
31: H.L. Mencken later summarized the
century now ending:
The
Eighteenth Century, of course, had its defects, but they were vastly
overshadowed by its merits. It got rid of religion. It lifted music to first place
among the arts. It introduced urbanity into manners, and made even war
relatively gracious and decent. It took eating and drinking out of the stable
and put them into the parlor. It found the sciences childish curiosities, and
bent them to the service of man, and elevated them above metaphysics for all
time. Lastly and best, it invented the first really comfortable human
habitations ever seen on earth, and filled them with charming fittings. When it
dawned even kings lived like hogs, but as it closed even colonial planters on
the banks of the Potomac were housed in a fashion fit for gentlemen. (49/202)
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