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Gabriel's Rebellion: The Virginia Slave Conspiracies of 1800 and 1802. By Douglas R. Egerton. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993. xviii, 262 pp. Cloth, $39.95, ISBN 0-8078-2113-6. Paper, $13.95, ISBN 0-8078-4422-5.)
Douglas R. Egerton opens Gabriel's Rebellion by "unapologetically" promising to "tell a story" that will re-create the "dramatic" quality of the events he writes about. He provides a fast-paced account of Gabriel's conspiracy in Henrico County, Virginia, during the summer of 1800 and of the conspiracy scheduled for Easter in 1802. As he insists, narrative history need not "eschew analysis," and Egerton makes several new and potentially controversial claims. He asserts that Gabriel shared the "small producer ideology" of urban artisans throughout early America and saw Richmond merchants, "not whites in general," as his enemies. From Gabriel's "urban perspective," the city's "white mechanics" appeared ready to confront...