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

In the past decade, the slave conspiracy of 1800 in Richmond, Virginia, led by Gabriel reached a millennial moment given the wave of renewed interests by politicians, artists, and historians. In 2002, Richmond adopted a resolution to commemorate the 202nd anniversary of Gabriel's execution. After a successful petition to the Virginia Board of Historic Resources, a highway marker recognizing the site of Gabriel's execution and likely burial was unveiled in October 2004. In August 2007, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine issued a posthumous pardon for Gabriel and his co-conspirators—superseding the actions of fellow Democrat and gubernatorial predecessor James Monroe two centuries earlier. In 2010, songwriter Tim Barry, a Richmond native, memorialized Gabriel's life, death, and legacy in a song entitled "Prosser's Gabriel." These efforts have now been joined by what will surely be considered the definitive historical account of Gabriel and his plot. Nicholls offers a convincing, comprehensive, extensively researched, and thoroughly documented account of one of the most imaginative efforts by enslaved peoples to cast off the chains of American bondage.

Whispers of Rebellion tracks the history of the rebellion from its rumblings across the physical, sociopolitical, and interpersonal geographies of Henrico and other nearby counties in Virginia to the immediate aftermath and repercussions of the court trials. What makes Nicholls' account compelling is his extraordinary work in collecting and interpreting the available archival materials. His careful reading of the extant sources provided a solid frame from which he could correct errors repeated by previous historians. Included among his new insights are that Sam Byrd, Jr., probably initiated the conspiracy and Jack Bowler served as an early leader who recruited Gabriel. In addition, the plot was solely the work of aggrieved slaves and free blacks; no whites were involved or were asked by Gabriel and other leaders to lend support. Finally, the evidence suggests that no outside movement, political ideology, or force—not the American, French, or Haitian Revolutions, artisan republicanism, or cultural assimilation—helped to shape the planning in any way.

Nicholls hides some his best historical and historiographical commentary in the extensive notes at the end of the book. His decision to embed much of his analyses there allows the book's narrative to flow more smoothly without the need for frequent tangents. The notes, when combined with some of the analysis in the main body of the book, become a referendum—of sorts—on Douglas Egerton's Gabriel's Rebellion: The Virginia Slave Conspiracies of 1800 and 1802 (Chapel Hill, 1993). This widely acclaimed work turns out to be riddled with factual and interpretive flaws, including misreadings of documentary sources, chronological errors, and a range of unsubstantiated claims. Nicholls highlights no less than forty errors in Egerton's work—some of which previously served to bolster his tenuous interpretation of Gabriel's conspiracy as a multiracial class revolt inspired by artisan republicanism. To this end, Nicholls' book has become the new starting point for future inquiries about Gabriel's plot. Indeed, Whispers of Rebellion could represent even a compelling final word after a century of scholarly inquiry into the 1800 conspiracy.