1800

 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)

 

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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.

 

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October 6: Prosser is tried and found guilty.

 

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October 10: Prosser is hanged until dead.

 

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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.

 

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“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)

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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)

 

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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.

 

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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)