I n 1800, a slave named Gabriel meticulously plotted a rebellion in Richmond, Virginia. He was a skilled blacksmith whose owner rented him out and pocketed most of the wages. Gabriel stood more than six feet tall and could read and write. He had once bitten off a white overseer’s ear but escaped the gallows thanks to a quirky loophole in the legal code—he recited a biblical passage at his trial and was punished, instead, with a brand on his left hand.
Gabriel planned to lead hundreds of slaves into Richmond, waving a flag inscribed “Death or Liberty”—an ironic turn of Patrick Henry’s famous American Revolution oration, “Give me liberty or give me death.” The rebels would spread through the city and seize guns, money, and food. They would take Governor James Monroe as a hostage and burn the bridge over the James River to foil a counterattack. The rebellion, they hoped, would reverberate across Virginia as thousands of slaves rose up and joined them. Gabriel and his colleagues believed they were the latest wave in an inexorable historical tide. The Americans had thrown off English tyrants, the French had rebelled against an oppressive king, and the slaves in Saint-Dominique (Haiti) had cast aside their masters. Now, the bondsmen and women in Virginia would take their turn and redeem America’s promise of liberty.
But luck turned against the rebels. Torrential storms washed out the roads and bridges on August 30, the appointed day. The uprising was deferred, causing two recruits to panic and spill the secret. Once authorities got wind of the plan, all hell broke loose. Governor Monroe hung some twenty-seven black men and white Virginia buzzed with anxiety.
The slave rebellion loomed large because it broke just as Americans were conducting their first actively contested presidential election in 1800.
{Republic of Wrath, pages 30-31}
T he large side wheeler backed away from the wharf in the pre-dawn darkness, blew its whistle, and steamed through Charleston harbor flying the Confederate flag. The Planter flashed the correct signals, got clearance from the watch, and steamed straight at the Federal ships blockading the outer harbor. Alarms soon sounded on the Union vessels and the USS Onward came about, lifted big gun number three, and prepared to blast the Confederates speeding toward them. Then someone on deck shouted to hold fire. The Planter had run a dirty white sheet up its mast. Soon everyone could see that its jubilant crew were contraband—fleeing slaves. Their leader, Robert Smalls, had meticulously planned the dash for freedom. He became an instant hero and, as The New York Times reported, met “wild and prolonged cheering” when he and his family, who had been on board, landed in New York.
Smalls joined the Union Navy and rose to the rank of acting captain for his cool head under fire. After the war, he received a bounty for capturing an enemy ship and used it to buy the McKee house in Beaufort, South Carolina—the very house where he had been kept a slave. Smalls went on to represent South Carolina in the US Congress for five terms. In one of his last political acts, he played a futile role at the 1895 South Carolina constitutional convention that rewrote the laws to drive African Americans out of politics.
Smalls’ last frustrated speech at the convention proposed that any white cohabiting with a black should be banned from public office and any child from the union should inherit the father’s name and property. After all, he told the delegates, if a black man improperly approached a white woman, he would be hanged. But any convention that was asked to apply justice to a white man who had debauched a black woman would immediately adjourn for lack of a quorum. The white delegates, temporarily embarrassed, declined to adopt the Smalls amendment and pressed white supremacy into law.
Robert Smalls embodied the vertiginous black experience during the Civil War era. African Americans repeatedly disrupted the white republic. Slaves ran to freedom before the war, subverting the rickety compromises that tried to keep the country together by using harsh fugitive slave laws as a bargaining chip for peace between the North and the South. They burst out of bondage during the war and ran (or, in Smalls’ case, sailed) toward union lines, transforming the military facts on the ground. Some two hundred thousand African Americans served in the Union army and navy—a vital lift in the grinding war of attrition.
The war made a new country. African Americans struggled to build communities, unite families, educate children, enter politics, and get ahead. But the backlash was ferocious. Black Americans faced a trial by fire—long, violent, waves of terror that went on for decades and slowly crushed the civil rights they had won. Smalls went down, at the South Carolina constitutional convention, pointing at the hypocrisy of a society that murdered black men for allegedly crossing the same sexual boundaries which white men insouciantly transgressed.
{Republic of Wrath, pages 128-9}
T he rag-tag American army had defeated the most powerful empire in the world. Now, in March 1783, they camped in Newburgh, New York, waiting for the peace treaty that would end the American Revolution. But there was no cheer among the troops because Congress, which did not have the power to raise taxes, had not paid them in months. The soldiers were cold, hungry, and impoverished.
Wild plans filtered through the camp. Some officers thought the army should march on Congress, demand their pay, and perhaps thrust one of their own into power. The idea that the American Revolution might have ended in a coup sounds fantastic to us today. But that is exactly how revolutions normally end—strong men seize power. Some of General George Washington’s officers were ready and willing. The plotters called a secret meeting. “The passions were all inflamed,” fretted an anxious Washington when he got wind of the cabal.
On March 15, hundreds of officers gathered on a windy bluff overlooking the camp in a large building known as the Temple of Virtue. A nervous Washington strode through his mutinous troops to the front of the room and read a meticulously crafted speech. He implored them to back down, cheered them for their valor, and promised to always champion their interests. It was a beautiful speech—so eloquent, in fact, that it is still read by every cadet at the US Military Academy—but it didn’t work. The men remained sullen and unmoved.
Washington then unfolded a letter from a member of Congress promising to win the soldiers their pay. Washington read, haltingly, and then stopped. Reaching into his tunic, he pulled out a new pair of spectacles. The officers had never seen their general wearing glasses. The tall, powerful solider who had taken command eight years ago was getting old—he was now past fifty. “Gentlemen, you must pardon me,” muttered Washington, “I have grown gray in your service and now I find myself growing blind.” Stagecraft? Perhaps. But seeing their general’s infirmity worked like no words could. We know from their letters home that these tough, battle-hardened warriors began to weep. That was the end of their rebellion.
{Republic of Wrath, pages 6-7}
