Virginia
Gabriel Prosser (c. 1776 – October 10, 1800), having attained his surname from his slaveholder,[1][2][a] was an African blacksmith enslaved by the Prosser family who planned a large slave rebellion in the Richmond, Virginia, area in the summer of 1800. Information regarding the revolt, which came to be known as “Gabriel’s Rebellion”, was leaked prior to its execution, and he and twenty-five followers were hanged.
Gabriel’s planned uprising was notable not because of its results—the rebellion was quelled before it could begin—but because of its potential for mass chaos and widespread violence. There were other slave rebellions, but this one “most directly confronted” the Founding Fathers “with the chasm between the ideal of liberty and their messy accommodations to slavery.”
