Whispers of Rebellion: Narrating Gabriel’s Conspiracy by Michael L. Nicholls (review)

Accounts of the Gabriel Prosser slave conspiracy that occurred near Richmond, Virginia in 1800 have generated historical scholarship that includes wide-ranging perspectives of what actually transpired in the place where the Tidewater and Piedmont regions meet. Some dismiss the so-called conspiracy as having been nothing more than loose talk among a small group of alleged plotters, and suggest that the hysteria that accompanied its discovery far outweighed the threat that such conversations might have engendered. Others view the plot as having been much more substantial, with the possibility that seeds of transatlantic revolutionary rhetoric might have inspired the leaders of the incipient conspiracy. The truth lies somewhere in the range of interpretation between these disparate perspectives. It is quite possible that Michael L. Nicholls’s Whispers of Rebellion: Narrating Gabriel’s Conspiracy may bring us closer than we have ever been to a comprehensive understanding of both the causes that animated the plotters, and the effects of a perceived threat among those in power who intended to maintain order in Virginia at all costs.

Whispers of Rebellion has the potential of becoming the standard work on Gabriel’s Conspiracy. Nicholls has amassed an impressive volume of primary research on the incident, and he presents his case in a matter-of-fact narrative without trying to prove any lofty, predetermined premise beyond what the facts may convey. The results of this methodology are refreshing, and the writing so powerful that it draws the reader into the process of interpreting events for what they were—and nothing more. Nicholls realizes that his work is one that transcends the fine nexus where threats of violence and actual violence exist, and he understands the civic consciousness of Virginia in 1800, where the thought of committing an act of insurrection might well be deemed as onerous as the impulse to act upon such thought.

In laying the groundwork for a narrative history of Gabriel’s Conspiracy, Nicholls sets the scene for the plot by presenting a detailed analysis of the geographic and spatial boundaries that both separated and linked the lives of African American bondsmen who were enslaved in Virginia, and the white inhabitants of Richmond and its environs. The network of roads, rivers, and streams that linked these communities provided arteries of commercial passageways where both enslaved and free might move in daily activity, but it was also used to carry ideas from plantations and farms to conspiracy-minded individuals. Notions of rebellion were spread along these routes as individuals contemplated a plan of action for an uprising that had the potential to inflict great harm upon the region.

Nicholls pays meticulous attention to the trial records of all who were implicated in Gabriel’s Conspiracy in order to consider the spatial distribution of the plantations and farms that were somehow touched by the expanding ideology of insurrection. The realization that this plot involved participants from several counties in the Tidewater and Piedmont areas suggests that the planning for this event was more thorough than many might have expected. Within the ranks of those who were chosen to participate, there existed a type of rigid military discipline and a carefully constructed “need-to-know” basis of information that was shared with potential recruits. The narrative of events makes clear that this was not an accidental plot that was hatched on short notice, but rather a well-formulated conspiracy that had substantial organizational planning and development.

The leaders of the conspiracy used their links of kinship connections and association with like-minded potential participants to expand the network of recruits. The level of sophistication found in this network is impressive, and the use of shared “insider information” was especially profound. In one of the most remarkable encounters of the conspiracy, leaders of the plot were allowed inside the Virginia State House on an unofficial “tour” of the facilities to plan how they might most effectively seize that structure when the direct attack on Richmond...