2 In 1826 the third college graduate of color in the United States, John Russwurm, gave a commencement address at Bowdoin College, noting that, “Haytiens have adopted the republican form of government. Walker called Haiti the “glory of the blacks and terror of the tyrants” and said that Haitians, “according to their word, are bound to protect and comfort us.” Haiti also proved that, given equal opportunities, people of color could achieve as much as white people. For example, in 1829 David Walker, a Black abolitionist in Boston, wrote an Appeal that called for resistance to slavery and racism. Over the next several decades, Black Americans continually looked to Haiti as an inspiration in their struggle for freedom.
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Free people of color embraced the revolution, understanding it as a call for full abolition and the rights of citizenship denied in the United States. Port cities in the United States were flooded with news and refugees.
The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) inspired free and enslaved Black Americans, and terrified white Americans. Not only did some literate enslaved people read accounts of the successful attack in Virginia’s newspapers, but others also heard about the rebellion firsthand when slaveholding refugees from Haiti arrived in Virginia with their enslaved laborers after July 1793. Furthermore, it demonstrated that white efforts to suppress news of other slave revolts-especially the 1791 slave rebellion in Haiti-had failed. First, it suggested that enslaved Black Virginians were capable of preparing and carrying out a sophisticated and violent revolution-undermining white supremacist assumptions about the inherent intellectual inferiority of Black people. Gabriel’s Rebellion, as the plot came to be known, taught Virginia’s white residents several lessons. Subsequently, the Virginia government increased restrictions on free people of color. Their executions sent the message that others would be punished if they challenged slavery. After briefly escaping, Gabriel was seized, tried, and hanged along with twenty-five others. Faced with bad weather, Gabriel and other leaders postponed the attack until the next night, giving Governor Monroe and the militia time to capture the conspirators. On August 30, two enslaved men revealed the plot to their enslaver, who notified authorities.
Others would attack Richmond’s white residents, seize weapons, and capture Virginia governor James Monroe. Some of the conspirators would set diversionary fires in the city’s warehouse district. Led by the enslaved man Gabriel, close to one thousand enslaved men planned to end slavery in Virginia by attacking Richmond in late August 1800. Free and Enslaved Black Americans and the Challenge to Slavery 1 All would, in their own way, lay claim to the freedom and equality promised, if not fully realized, by the Revolution. The wealthy and the powerful, middling and poor whites, Native Americans, free and enslaved African Americans, influential and poor women: all demanded a voice in the new nation that Thomas Paine called an “asylum” for liberty. Some, like Jefferson’s victory, were accomplished peacefully, and others violently. Thomas Jefferson’s electoral victory over John Adams-and the larger victory of the Democratic-Republicans over the Federalists-was but one of many changes in the early republic. Native American Power and the United States
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