Whispers of Rebellion: Narrating Gabriel's Conspiracy

Afterword

The suppression of the conspiracy disrupted and devastated lives along the Brook. For about five weeks, patrols regularly stalked the area. By mid-October, twenty-two men from the neighborhood had been executed; four of them, plus Michael from Chesterfield, were hanged near Prosser’s Tavern to terrorize the inhabitants. The state kept records only of their deaths, taking no notice of the interment of the hanged men, no matter where they died. Last rites or proper burials by their families and friends may not have taken place; indeed, such gatherings might have been feared and dispersed. Perhaps the costs of interment were included in the $73.43 the sheriff collected for the executions, but no one otherwise submitted a bill for digging graves or making coffins. In addition to the executed, two more men from the Brook were among the eight plotters who were sold by the state and transported to Spanish territory west of the Mississippi. Together, these twenty-four men comprised approximately 5 percent of the adult slave men in the upper district of Henrico, perhaps 10 percent or more of the men of the Brook, and an even higher proportion of men in their prime who had lived in the neighborhood. Other souls were missing too. Michael, the Chesterfield slave noted above whose wife resided near the Brook, would never visit again; John would never trek up Brook Road between his hire at the penitentiary and his Hanover owner’s place; nor would Sam Graham ever venture into the neighborhood from Hanover or Caroline, drawn on a visit, if not a funeral , at Young’s spring. The death or removal of these sons, husbands, brothers, and acquaintances opened voids, destroyed connections, and Afterword 142 } whispers of rebellion made it necessary for kin, men and women, to assume new responsibilities for their grieving survivors, old and young, and to restring the cords of neighborhood.1 Other men did return to the Brook. Beginning with Martin’s acquittal on 12 September, a total of eleven men came home after their trials , as did seven more who had received pardons. How many of them might have been seen as too troublesome or too dangerous to keep and were subsequently sold or removed from the locale cannot be counted, but it seems likely that some were. On the other hand, Frank and Daniel, or at least two men who shared names with the two acquitted slaves of Nathaniel Wilkinson, appeared on his estate inventory in 1808, a possible indication that some continuity remained. Even Peter, the pardoned slave of Allen Williamson, passed to his widow Lucy as part of her dower allotment in 1803. An unknowable number of other men, alleged to have been involved but not tried, also returned, as did a handful after serving as witnesses. Their whispers and banter were undoubtedly lowered for a while, but at the same time, these men had asserted themselves and shared a close encounter with death, an intense experience which may have strengthened the bonds among the survivors.2 Others returned to the Brook; whether they resumed a place in the fabric of the neighborhood cannot be readily determined. When requesting some reward for Peter Smith, the free man of color who fostered Jack Bowler’s surrender, Gervas Storrs noted the “odium he may incur from the blacks.” It is not possible to know whether he suffered any, but considering Bowler’s physical prowess, most observers would have believed it was Bowler’s decision to submit, not Smith’s ability to seize him, that put him in irons. Until at least 1803, Smith remained in the neighborhood , and was even listed with a tithable slave in 1802. He then moved to Richmond and was again listed with a taxable slave. That person may have been a black man named Jerry Smith, perhaps a son, whom he freed in the fall of 1804. The following year, he bought from an estate and then manumitted a woman named Nanny, along with her infant daughter Mary. In 1811 and in 1812, he paid taxes on yet another slave aged at least twelve years. He then dropped from Richmond’s tax records.3 The Commonwealth’s witnesses had played a different role, and as the plot broke, Monroe had believed that they needed to be taken up, in part, to secure their own safety, too. Three of them would seem particularly [3.144.27.148] Project MUSE (2024-04-16 23:05...