Talk:Gabriel's Rebellion

Overblown and speculative

It is unlikely that a large group of slaves gathered to stage a "rebellion" at Richmond, Virginia. Slaves were too busy working. The Virginia militia was composed of lawmen on horseback who wielded swords and guns. This article describing a "rebellion" is overblown. Slaves never owned horses, swords, and guns. There are great excesses of guesswork and speculation in the article. Superslum 14:35, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

This page was once named Gabriel(slave), but someone re-titled it. Some American slaves were unable to afford a pair of shoes, so they worked in their bare feet. It is unlikely that people without shoes on their feet would "meticulously" plot a "rebellion" against well-equipped lawmen. Superslum 18:03, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

There are thousands of fabrications in Wikipedia. The mention of "white co-conspirators" is one of the most peculiar statements that I have seen. White men did not hold discussions with slaves. Superslum 05:16, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

It is commonly known as "Gabriel Prosser's rebellion" ... art least as far as I have heard. Google tends to agree. google search MPS 20:59, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

The PBS article is really bizarre. The slaveowners, the slave patrol, and the State Militia would never have tolerated a gathering of 1,000 slaves. Slaves lived in police states that were designed to maintain slavery. A slave could not eat a bite of food without having his master's permission. Slaves were watched by overseers.

Some strange people gained control of the PBS organization about 25 years ago when the funding was withdrawn. Strange emanations have appeared from the PBS group for the last two or three decades. In other words, PBS has been infiltrated and changed into a group that produces propaganda. 141.158.121.27 13:02, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

The above comments demonstrate the worst kind of opinionated prejudice that Wikipedia has occasionally been accused of. Superslum demonstrates abysmal ignorance of the history of slavery. Read the first chapter of Lerone Bennet Jr.'s BEFORE THE MAYFLOWER (4th edition or later), read MYNE OWNE GROUND about Antonio Johnson, the Angolan who came to own 250 acres in Virginia, read VIRGINIA IN TRANSITION by Rhys Isaac, read SOCIOLOGY OF COLONIAL VIRGINIA by Morris Talpalar, just for starters, and then make the claim that "white" people did not hold discussions with slaves. European servants and African servants were marrying each other for 200 years before rigid racial distinctions were consistently enforced. Nor was slavery such a rigid police state until AFTER Gabriel's and Nat Turner's rebellions. As the Virginia press reported at the time "it is a pity, but slavery and tyranny must go together."

Gabriel's and Denmark Vesey's revolts were VERY nearly successful, and the powers that were in both Virginia and South Carolina recognized it -- in considerable fear. Nat Turner's was hardly likely to succeed, because by that time slaves had so much less to work with.

As to separating what is KNOWN from "Edgerton's conclusions about it," that is a naive and uninformed instruction. Hardly anything is KNOWN. There were few written records or recorded anecdotes from contemporaries, the story was suppressed during the decades after the revolt, and various pseudo-historians wrote distorted accounts that reflected the misconceptions of their own time, not the attitudes that really ruled life in 1800. Edgerton's work is one of the best efforts to date to dig back into contemporary records in a thorough way, but it is not yet definitive. Nor is there any better research available. Gabriel was literate, well read, well informed on the politics of federalists vs. republicans, well acquainted with the French revolution, and worked as a skilled ironsmith in foundries in Richmond. Many of his followers were not field hands at all, they worked in foundries, warehouses, and coal mines. Llawnrodded

What a laugh. No one can arm themself with sticks, stones, and a few hand tools and then stage a "rebellion" against horsemen armed with cutlasses and shotguns. The claim that Gabriel "almost" succeeded is absurd. Another claim that I have noticed in the Wikipedia is that white people "lived in fear of a slave revolt." I do not know what to make of that particular statement, except to say that it is a fabrication that is exactly opposed to the words of slaveowners who said that negroes were "docile" and that white men were "hostile" and "not suited to slavery."

I know that slaves who existed during the colonial era were treated more kindly than those of Gabriel's era. It is of no significance whatsoever that earlier slaves were treated more gently. Things worsened for slaves after the founding of the Republic. Samuel Hopkins was a religious man who spoke out from the pulpit against Negroes. Robert Finley was a college professor who hoped to transfer colored people out of the country. Those men were alive when Gabriel was alive. Gabriel was not affected by long-dead people such as Miles Standish and Pilgrims who arrived on the Mayflower.

People submit similar obfuscatory statements at Gag rule. They mention inappropriate worthless things. Worst of all is that they have erased the most important factor associated with Gag rule, which is that the Congressmen abridged their own First Amendment right to petition their government. They (Congressmen) would not submit themselves to the rules contained in their own supreme law. Superslum 16:00, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Definitions

I am curious about what is meant by "neutrality" in a biographical article about a leader of a slave revolt, dead for two centuries. I presume we are not trying to present both the good and bad aspects of slavery, or be neutral as to whether Gabriel had a moral right to organize a revolt (although if we were writing in 1800, we literally would have had to do just that to be "neutral.") If we are to be neutral as to WHETHER he organized a revolt at all, someone will have to present some FACTS indicating that he did not. Contemporary authorities in Virginia were quite terrified that he did, and that he came close to success. Finally, as I have noted before, Edgerton's work provides the most thorough parsing of facts that exists, although his conclusions, derived from those facts, are subject to debate. There is not much more neutrality to offer than to state that openly. The link below leads to a very good factual summary, with a solid bibliography.

Superslum needs to do some reading, a LOT of reading, before he has anything credible to say. All comments posted here reflect his own personal fantasy of what slavery was, having no basis in history, or in the reality lived by those who were slaves.

The NPOV note is conclusionary. It is UNLIKELY??? that planters made deliberate choices in response to Gabriel's rebellion? Planters, and the Virginia government in which they were the dominant element, made substantial changes in laws, and in organization of militia and slave patrols, in DIRECT response to this rebellion. That response MADE slavery the institution it became in the decades prior to the civil war!

User : Llawnrodded — Preceding undated comment added 00:33, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Sailing North from Richmond

This would be quite a feat, that is to sail north on a schooner from Richmond and reach Norfolk. The James River runs east and west and Norfolk is about 90-100 miles east of Richmond. I don't believe there is a way to sail north from Richmond on a schooner.

Perhaps they equipped a wagon with sails, and then "sailed north" across the land. The claim that they "sailed north" from Richmond proves that people will submit all sorts of nonsensical statements into Wikipedia. Wikipedia contains many more similar fabrications. Velocicaptor 15:49, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Um, so fix it? --Dhartung | Talk 17:12, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

It is impossible to fix this article because someone will promptly discard the correct statements. "Anyone can edit" means that "no holds barred" editing is allowed. Changing some of the articles in Wikipedia is impossible. The sentence that claims that "Gabriel's plan" would have affected the Presidential of 1800 is a very strange statement. Slaves did not produce plans. How many white men were slain by those slaves? Probably none. Who was "Author Douglas Edgerton?" Why is he the primary authority being cited? Was he a Ku Klux Klansman? Velocicaptor 23:03, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

If you're that cynical about Wikipedia, participating may not be very rewarding for you, is all I can say. I do know that the Egerton additions were added as argumentative and I and other editors succeeded in confining them to its own section. The main rationale seems to be that he wrote a book recently. There are other primary sources that could be cited. --Dhartung | Talk 23:22, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Some insight

Please forgive me for my inability to properly use html, I'm simply a history teacher who has read Egerton's book on Gabriels rebellion and wanted to offer some insight into your discussion. First of all, Gabriel Prosser wasn't the typical slave you've descrbied, barefoot etc. He was a skilled artisan and was well read. He knew of the Revolution of 1800 and felt that it would be an oppurtune time to try to abolish slavery. The election of 1800 has been refferred to the Revolution of 1800 because it was a peaceful transfer of power from the federalists to the Democratic Republicans(Antt-Federalists). Thomas Jefferson it was well known was against slavery. Prosser knew this and figured that it would be an oppurtune time to stage a rebellion because he would have the sympathy of the nations highest office.

As a result of Prossers skills as an artisan he saw himself lent out to plantations all over. As a result Prosser was able to interact with slaves on a level that that lay people today would consider improbable if not impossible. Because of Gabriel's status with whites and his abilities he naturally had great standing among his peers and it became easy for him to convince people that such a rebellion would not only prove possible but would work. As his plan grew, so did the number of skilled slaves that could visit other plantations. As a result, you could liken Gabriel to a General issuing orders to his field commanders(the other artisans) and they in turn disseminated that information along to the grunts (slaves throughout the various plantations.) Please note that this rebellion took two years in planning and was unlike other slave rebellions you've read about in history books. The south was compleletly alarmed because of the widespread scale of this rebellion as well as the details that went into it.

As for the weapons issue. One of Gabriel's conspirators was going to leave one of the armorys unlocked so that the slaves could indeed arm themselves. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by "Wunderer" 163.150.15.246 (talk • contribs) .

Much of what you say above is accepted and tangential to the dispute. The major problem, going back a year or two here, occurred because someone came in and edited the article with conclusionary attribution to Egerton and forced the article to argue with itself, e.g. "Smith was a solicitor. Actually Smith was not a solicitor, but a barrister. Writer Jones says that all the historians who say he was a solicitor were anti-Smith." It isn't so much that Egerton's conclusions were startlingly different but that they were presented as argumentative when they did not need to be. --Dhartung | Talk 17:52, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

External link removal

I don't know specifically what 74.71.74.239 (talk · contribs) means in objecting to the external link at http://www.africawithin.com/bios/gabriel_prosser.htm ("out of date and incorrect" helps but is still vague), but the link doesn't add a great deal to the current version of the article and comes from an apparently self-published source, so removing it at this time seems acceptable. I would like to caution 74.71.74.239 that future removals should be explained in the edit summary or on the article Talk page (here), rather than no explanation or an explanation placed in the article. Whether removing something from or adding something to an article, if an editor disputes that action, it is always best to discuss it in some manner rather than engaging in an edit war. -- Dhartung | Talk 05:48, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

(1) You're absolutely right about the edit war. A look at the article's history or User talk:74.71.74.239 shows that his edits have been repeatedly reverted and, most recently, the reason for the reversion was spelled out and he was invited to explain his edits here.

(2) As I wrote at User talk:74.71.74.239, I did some further research, including re-reading Aptheker's American Negro Slave Revolts, and concluded that the website was inaccurate and fanciful. One specific example is that Prosser did not intend to create a "Kingdom of Virginia" and make himself king, as the site says. I don't know the editor's objections since he never explained himself as I asked him to, but he was right: the site was a bad reference. — Malik Shabazz | Talk 17:48, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm glad you sorted it out! Of course, if the anon had explained himself in the first place, this point could have been reached sooner. --Dhartung | Talk 01:14, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

NPOV

Do most people think that it is safe to remove the NPOV tag? It is kind of confusing why it is even there, as it is right smack in the middle of a section where information about a book is being presented. The strange person who added the tag has been blocked from editing Wikipedia. I'm, totally, removing the tag speak up if this was a bad choice. Leondegrance — Preceding undated comment added 23:26, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Notes on Edgerton

As the contributor who first introduced Edgerton's research, coming back after two years or so, I am amazed at all the pseudo-controversy. I introduced it because it needed to be part of any article, and I carefully delineated it as one scholar's recent research, because I knew it would be controversial. If I wished to simply impose my own view of what is credible, Edgerton would be it. But even so, nobody ever gets ALL the truth, or perfect accuracy, in any book. There has been a good deal of mythology about Gabriel, first because the authorities tried to suppress contemporary information, then, because people with a dramatic flair or their own agenda looked back from 100 years or more later and wrote pure fantasy. Edgerton is the only detailed scholarship to look back to remaining contemporary sources that anyone has produced -- of course he has, as do we all, a point of view which guided his interpretation of the data. But he offers much better data than any other published source. As to PBS, I would want to see a FOOTNOTED transcript, and then check THEIR sources, before accepting it as anything but drama, potentially informative drama, but hardly authoritative. The point that Gabriel did not plan to make himself "King of Virginia" is well taken. He was a republican, in the sense used at that time, and fully intended to live in a multi-racial republic once the point had been forcefully made that all slaves were to be freed. After all, he worked and socialized with "white" people of his own class (industrial artisans) as did others of his color and occupation, free and slave. The article is looking rather good right now, everybody has done well at adding details and shaping it coherently. --Llawnrodded —Preceding undated comment was added at 18:05, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Historiography

This usually means looking at how historians have treated a topic over time. Most of the discussion here seems to be about Egerton's book, and it's not even clear what the controversies were. I doubt if many historians really worried about whether the man was known as Gabriel or Gabriel Prosser. In the past it may have been considered easier, or even more respectful, to use a surname for Gabriel, whether or not he had formally adopted one for himself. There were probably many different versions in different records. I understand that people should no longer assume that slaves adopted masters' names; many freedmen after the Civil War, for instance, adopted new names, names that had meaning for them.--Parkwells (talk) 21:47, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Looking Good

Well, for all the back and forth in discussion, the article presently looks quite good, and well balanced in the best sense of the word, presenting many reasonably well researched facts which might support a number of conclusions, none of which are definitive.

A breif noted about "sailing north from Richmond." During that period, roads were abysmal, so the most efficient way to get from Richmond to Norfolk was to sail down the James River, then south along the coast to Norfolk. It would have taken much longer to go overland. Since rivers run where they run, and no canal had been dug the other way, it was necessary to "go with the flow." Llawnrodded (talk) 17:06, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

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