University of Virginia Library

JAMES MONROE.

James Monroe succeeded James Wood as Governor of Virginia, December
1, 1799, and served until December 1, 1802, when he was succeeded
by John Page. He was again governor from January 4, 1811,
to December 5th following, when he was succeeded by George William
Smith, Lieutenant-Governor of the State. An extended account of the
career of James Monroe will be found in Volume II. of this work, in
the serial of biographical sketches of presidents of the United States.

The period of the first service of James Monroe as Governor of Virginia
was, however, marked by an event, tragical in its sequence, which
though frequently referred to as "Gabriel's Insurrection," but few of the
present generation have any definite knowledge of, as there has been no
circumstantial account of it published, since that which contemporaneously
appeared in the newspapers, of which but few files have been preserved,
and they are practically inaccessible to the public. Some notice
of it, therefore, in these pages, can not but prove interesting.

In a message of Governor Monroe to the General Assembly of Virginia,
dated December 5, 1800, he states that on the 30th of August
preceding, about two o'clock in the afternoon, Mr. Mosby Shepherd, a
reputable citizen of Henrico county, who resided about three miles north
of the city of Richmond, beyond a small stream known as the Brook,
called upon him and informed him that he had just received advice
from two of his slaves that the negroes in the neighborhood mentioned
intended to rise that night, kill their masters and their families, and

proceed to Richmond, where they would be joined by the negroes there,
and would seize all the public arms and ammunition, murder the white
inhabitants and take possession of the city. Thereupon Governor Monroe
took immediate measures to avert the threatened fell design by
stationing guards at the state penitentiary, where the public arms were
deposited; at the magazine, and at the state capitol, and by disposing
the city troop of cavalry (commanded by Captain Moses Austin, then
conducting a shot tower in the city of Richmond, and who was subsequently
noted as a Texan pioneer) in detachments to patrol the several
routes leading to the city from the suspected neighborhood. "The close
of the day, however, was marked by one of the most extraordinary falls
of rain ever known in our country. Every animal sought shelter from
it." The brook was in consequence so swollen in its volume as to be
impassable, thus interposing a bar to the execution of the plan of the
negroes. Nothing occurred during the night of the alarming character
suspected, to disturb the tranquillity of the city, and the only unusual
circumstance reported by the patrolling troopers in the morning following,
was, that all negroes passed on the road, in the interval of the storm,
were going from the city, whereas it was their usual custom to visit it
on that night of the week (Saturday), which circumstance was not unimportant,
as it had been reported that the first rendezvous of the negroes
was to be in the country. The same precautions being again observed
the succeeding night without developments of the alleged design,
Governor Monroe was on the point of concluding that the alarm was
groundless, when from further information from Major William Mosby
and other gentlemen, residents of the suspected neighborhood, he was
fully satisfied that the insurrection had been planned by the negroes, and
that they still intended to carry it into effect. He therefore convened
the Executive Council of the State, on Monday, September 1, who took
such measures that in the afternoon of the same day twenty of the
negro conspirators were apprehended on the estate of Colonel Thomas
H. Prosser, a prominent and influential gentleman, and from those of
others in the suspected neighborhood, and brought to Richmond. "As
the jail could not contain them, they were lodged in the penitentiary."
The ringleaders, or chiefs, had fled and were not then to be found.

Every day now threw light on the diabolical plot and gave it additional
importance. In the progress of the trials of the conspirators, it
was satisfactorily demonstrated that a general insurrection of the slaves
in the State was contemplated by the originators of the plot. A species
of organization had taken place among them, and at a meeting held for
the purpose, they had elected a commander, one Gabriel, the slave of
Colonel Prosser, and to whom they had given the title of General.
They had also appointed subordinate officers, captains, sergeants, etc.

SCENE IN WEST VIRGINIA.

They contemplated a force of cavalry, as well as of infantry, and had
formed a plan of attack on the city, which was to commence by setting
fire to the wooden buildings in the lower portion of it, called Rocketts,
with the expectation of attracting the inhabitants thither whilst they
assailed the penitentiary, magazine and capitol; intending, after capturing
these and getting possession of arms and ammunition, to meet the
people on their return and slaughter them. The accounts varied as to
the number who were to inaugurate the movement. According to the
testimony adduced in the trials of the conspiring wretches, it was
variously stated at from five hundred to ten thousand. It was manifest,
however, that it embraced a majority of the slaves in the city of Richmond
and its neighborhood, and that the combination extended to the
adjacent counties of Hanover, Caroline, Louisa, Chesterfield, and to the
neighborhood of Point of Fork in Fluvanna County, and there was good
cause to believe that the knowledge of the project pervaded other portions,
if not the whole of the State. It was suspected "that the design
was prompted by others who were invisible, but whose agency might be
powerful." To meet such contingency, Governor Monroe called into
service the 9th, 19th and 23d, and a portion of the 33d regiments of
the State Militia, which were chiefly stationed in Richmond and the
adjacent town of Manchester. The military force was gradually diminished,
until, on the 18th of October following, the residue was discharged.

The judicial disposition of the ring-leaders of the plot was summary,
five of them were executed on the 12th of September, and five more on
the 15th thereafter. "General" Gabriel, the sable chief, was apprehended
on the 27th of the same month, in the city of Norfolk, and suffered
death in January following. The savage disposition of Gabriel,
according to the records of Henrico County Court, had, a year previous
to his final heinous conception, subjected him to punishment and lengthy
imprisonment for biting off the ear of a fellow slave. In the testimony
given by the witnesses (who were all negroes), in the trials of the conspirators,
there were some curious as well as characteristic communications
made. The whole plot was stupidly conceived, with a provision
ludicrously trifling. The entire armament captured, consisted of twelve
rude swords which had been manufactured from scythe blades by one
of the conspirators, Solomon, the brother of "General" Gabriel, a blacksmith,
and the slave, also, of Colonel Prosser. A broken pistol was
also owned by one of the conspirators, and it was stated by some of the
witnesses at the trial, that "General" Gabriel had provided also six
guns, ten pounds of gunpowder, and five hundred bullets, which he had
moulded. It was evidently the expectancy of the bloody-minded
wretches to secure, primarily, arms from the residences of their masters,
whose households were to be the unsuspecting victims of midnight
assassination. As in the case of Nat. Turner, the leader in the subsequent

and more serious insurrection which occurred in Southampton
County, in August, 1831, religious fanaticism seems also to have been
a factor in Gabriel's insurrection, as it was urged by Martin, one of the
prime instigators, that God had said in the Bible, "If we will worship
him, we should have peace in all our land, five of you shall conquer an
hundred, and a hundred, a thousand of our enemies." A piece of silk,
for a flag, was to be provided, with the motto "Death or Liberty" inscribed
upon it. "None of the whites were to be spared except
Quakers, Methodists and French people, unless they agreed to the freedom
of the blacks, in which case they would at least cut off one of their
arms." It was also designed to send a messenger to the nation of
Catawba Indians in North Carolina, and to request their co-operation.
The immunity stated as having been designed the Quakers, might have
been actuated by a consciousness of the active philanthropy of that
society towards the negroes, but why Methodists should be spared is
less satisfactorily comprehended. Perhaps there were many followers
of that church among the negroes. The coincidence of the mercy to the
French, and the proposed mission to the Catawba Indians is strikingly
curious, and affords grounds for the supposition that a tradition had
lingered in the minds of the benighted negroes of the dread French and
Indian War of some fifty years previous. The Indians of North Carolina,
it may be added, had given the colonists much trouble some forty
years earlier, even in the administration of Governor Spotswood. The
matter is one to engage interest and speculative thought. An exemplification
of the characteristic superstition of the negro is afforded in the
desire of the conspirators to "enlist the outlandish (i. e., foreigners)
people, because they were supposed to deal with witches and wizards,
and of course useful in armies, to tell when any calamity was to befall
them." Monroe County, now in West Virginia, formed in 1799 from
Greenbrier County, was named in honor of Governor, afterwards
President, Monroe.