the right wing to seize the penitentiary building which had just been converted into an arsenal, while the left took possession of the powder-house.  These two columns were to be armed with clubs, and while they were doing their work the central force, armed with muskets, knives, and pikes, was to begin the carnage, none being spared except the French, whom it is significant that the Negroes favored.  In Richmond at the time there were not more than four or five hundred men with about thirty muskets; but in the arsenal were several thousand guns, and the powder-house was well stocked.  Seizure of the mills was to guarantee the insurrectionists a food supply; and meanwhile in the country districts were the new harvests of corn, and flocks and herds were fat in the fields.

[Footnote 1:  His full name was Gabriel Prosser.]

On the day appointed for the uprising Virginia witnessed such a storm as she had not seen in years.  Bridges were carried away, and roads and plantations completely submerged.  Brook Swamp, the strategic point for the Negroes, was inundated; and the country Negroes could not get into the city, nor could those in the city get out to the place of rendezvous.  The force of more than a thousand dwindled to three hundred, and these, almost paralyzed by fear and superstition, were dismissed.  Meanwhile a slave who did not wish to see his master killed divulged the plot, and all Richmond was soon in arms.

A troop of United States cavalry was ordered to the city and arrests followed quickly.  Three hundred dollars was offered by Governor Monroe for the arrest of Gabriel, and as much more for Jack Bowler.  Bowler surrendered, but it took weeks to find Gabriel.  Six men were convicted and condemned to be executed on September 12, and five more on September 18.  Gabriel was finally captured on September 24 at Norfolk on a vessel that had come from Richmond; he was convicted on October 3 and executed on October 7.  He showed no disposition to dissemble as to his own plan; at the same time he said not one word that incriminated anybody else.  After him twenty-four more men were executed; then it began to appear that some “mistakes” had been made and the killing ceased.  About the time of this uprising some Negroes were also assembled for an outbreak in Suffolk County; there were alarms in Petersburg and in the country near Edenton, N.C.; and as far away as Charleston the excitement was intense.

There were at least three other Negro insurrections of importance in the period 1790-1820.  When news came of the uprising of the slaves in Santo Domingo in 1791, the Negroes in Louisiana planned a similar effort.[1] They might have succeeded better if they had not disagreed as to the hour of the outbreak, when one of them informed the commandant.  As a punishment twenty-three of the slaves were hanged along the banks of the river and their corpses left dangling for days; but three white men who assisted them and