Whispers of Rebellion: Narrating Gabriel's Conspiracy (Carter G. Woodson Institute Series in Black Studies) - Hardcover

Nicholls, Michael L.

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9 ratings by Goodreads

9780813931937: Whispers of Rebellion: Narrating Gabriel's Conspiracy (Carter G. Woodson Institute Series in Black Studies)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0813931932 ISBN 13: 9780813931937

Publisher: University of Virginia Press, 2012

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An ambitious if ultimately unrealised plan to revolt that ended in the conviction and hanging of over two dozen men, Gabriel's Conspiracy of 1800 sought nothing less than to capture the capital city of Richmond and end slavery in Virginia. Whispers of Rebellion draws on recent scholarship and extensive archival material to provide the clearest view yet of this fascinating chapter in the history of slavery and to question much about the case that has been accepted as fact. In his examination of the slave Gabriel and his group of insurgents, Michael Nicholls focuses on the neighbourhood of the Brook, north of Richmond, as the plot's locus, revealing the area's economic and familial ties, the geographic proximity of the key conspirators, and how their contacts allowed their plan to spread across three counties and into the cities of Richmond and Petersburg. Nicholls explores under documented aspects of the conspiracy, such as the participants' recruitment and motives, showing them to be less ideologically driven than previously supposed. The author also looks at the state's swift and brutal response, and argues persuasively that, rather than the coalition between blacks and whites that has been described in other accounts, the participants were all slaves or free blacks, suffering under an oppressive white population and willing to die for their freedom.

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Review:

Michael Nicholls's "Whispers ofRebellion" explores a community riven by the fault lines of slaveryas well as anyone else has. This book will become the standard account of Gabriel'sConspiracy.--Philip J. Schwarz, Virginia Commonwealth University, editor of"Slavery at the Home of George Washington"(Virginia)

Michael Nicholls's "Whispers of Rebellion" explores a community riven by the fault lines of slavery as well as anyone else has. This book will become the standard account of Gabriel's Conspiracy.--Philip J. Schwarz, Virginia Commonwealth University, editor of "Slavery at the Home of George Washington" (Virginia)

Clearly written and exhaustively documented, "Whispers of Rebellion" will immediately become the most complete and reliable account of Gabriel's Conspiracy generally recognized as one of the five or six most important examples of collective slave resistance in Anglo-America between 1700 and 1861.--James Sidbury, Rice University, author of "Ploughshares into Swords: Race, Rebellion, and Identity in Gabriel's Virginia, 1730 1810""

Michael Nicholls's Whispers of Rebellion explores a community riven by the fault lines of slavery as well as anyone else has. This book will become the standard account of Gabriel's Conspiracy.

--Philip J. Schwarz, Virginia Commonwealth University, editor of Slavery at the Home of George Washington (Virginia)

Clearly written and exhaustively documented, Whispers of Rebellion will immediately become the most complete and reliable account of Gabriel's Conspiracy--generally recognized as one of the five or six most important examples of collective slave resistance in Anglo-America between 1700 and 1861.

--James Sidbury, Rice University, author of Ploughshares into Swords: Race, Rebellion, and Identity in Gabriel's Virginia, 1730-1810

About the Author:

Michael L. Nicholls is Professor Emeritus of History at Utah State University and the author of Aspects of the African-American Experience in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg.

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