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.There, Byrd persuaded his uncles, Reuben and Jesse Byrd,  two freemen of colour, to contact other urban blacks.Reuben, a moderately prosper-ous carpenter and mason, agreed to serve as coordinator for the Petersburgrebels.Since Sam Byrd Sr., a  free mulatto of Hanover Town[,] enlisted menthere, the involvement of freedmen in the plot serves as a reminder that thestaggered pace of manumission in Virginia, as in the North, kept the blackcommunity bound tightly together even after some members became free.18Inevitably, word began to fl ow down the James River to Suffolk andNorfolk.Black boatmen around the Chesapeake had long been the carriers ofinformation and runaway slaves as well as goods for merchants; now severalbecame involved as couriers.One of them, Jacob, was a slave but also a ship scaptain for hire who regularly  passed between [Petersburg] and Norfolk.As with the Petersburg conspirators, the men of the lower James planned tomeet on a yet-to-be-determined date outside of Norfolk and await news ofthe Richmond uprising.Byrd even prevailed upon a free black mail carrier tomaintain contact with Jefferson s Charlottesville, where he had found slaves very willing to join. By the end of July, word of the revolt had spread to atleast six Virginia towns.It was, as Monroe later observed, a secret known  inmany and some distant parts of the State. 19general gabriel s flag | 277As late summer arrived, Gabriel decided the time had come to movebeyond the recruitment of key lieutenants to enlisting large numbers ofsoldiers.On August 10, following a child s funeral on a nearby plantation,Gabriel  gave an invitation to some of the Negroes to drink grog down atthe Spring. There, he announced, he had a plan to fight not just for blackfreedom but also  for his Country. Wielding the weapons he and Solomonhad forged swords  made of [wheat] scythes cut in two  Gabriel talkedof storming the capitol after a diversionary fire at Rockett s warehouse land-ing had drawn most whites down to the James.Governor Monroe was to betaken hostage but not harmed, and the friends of liberty,  Quakers, Method-ists, and French people, would be spared, together with  poor white womenwho had no slaves. 20Having outlined his plan, Gabriel shouted that all who wished to joinhim should  stand up and those who would not [to] set down. As oneby one the slaves rose to their feet, Gabriel s men worked their way throughthe crowd  and enlisted a considerable number who signed a paper [withtheir names or] their marks. At that moment, Jack Ditcher, who had beeninvolved in the conspiracy for as long as Byrd had been, challenged Gabriel sleadership by asking those there  to give him the voice for General. Onlya few years older than Gabriel, Ditcher had also learned a few lessons fromthe Revolutionary years. We have as much right to fight for our libertyas any men, he shouted.The bondmen decided to resolve the question asdid white Americans that fall: they held an election.Preparing to marchinto a potentially suicidal battle, the men at the spring evidently preferredGabriel s brains to Ditcher s brawn. [U]pon the votes being taken, Gabrielhad by far the greater number. 21Ditcher s challenge had introduced disharmony into the ranks of the reb-els.To quell divisions within the movement that might lead the cautiousto back away, Gabriel raised the doctrine of political equality.He  expectedthe poor white people would also join him, for the Revolution had failedthem as much as it had Chesapeake bondpeople.Gabriel also revealed asecret previously known only to the rebel leadership. Two [white] French-men, Charles Quersey and Alexander Beddenhurst (perhaps a member ofthe German-speaking Fourth Regiment), both Revolutionary War veterans, had actually joined, he told the crowd.Gabriel understood that the age ofrevolution was less an event than it was a process.When the fighting began,poor whites and rural slaves would be immediately forced to choose sides.Typical of those expected to throw in against the merchants was an unskilledwhite laborer known only as Lucas; he promised George Smith that he wouldjoin once the uprising was under way and if there was money to be had.There278 | death or libertywas good reason, as one horrifi ed journalist later wrote, to believe that  themost redoubtable democrats in the state might join Gabriel s revolutionaryarmy.To make his point clearer still, Gabriel concluded by announcing thathe planned to march into battle carrying a crude fl ag emblazoned with thewords  death or Liberty. 22The fact that Gabriel turned the words of Patrick Henry upside downsuggests that his hope was to do the same with Chesapeake society.Not onlyhad the Revolution failed to fulfi ll its egalitarian promise, but the counter-revolution under way in the South was spreading slavery farther across thenew country.He knew that Virginia had refused to consider serious reformfollowing its 1782 act permitting private manumission; perhaps only a con-fl agration like that in Saint-Domingue and high-visibility hostages such asGovernor Monroe were necessary to force the state into action.No Americanalive in the late eighteenth century could forget that their nation was con-ceived in violence, and Gabriel s flag was to be a visible reminder that whiteVirginians once claimed to believe in liberty.23The rebels decided on Saturday, August 30, for the night of the assault [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]