Ploughshares into Swords : Race, Rebellion, and Identity in Gabriel's Virginia, 1730-1810

"During the summer of 1800, slaves in and around Richmond conspired to overthrow their masters and abolish slavery. This book uses Gabriel's Conspiracy and the evidence produced during the repression of the revolt to expose the processes through which Virginians of African descent built an oppositional culture. James Sidbury portrays the rich cultures of eighteenth-century Black Virginians and the multiple, and sometimes conflicting, senses of identity that emerged among enslaved and free people living in and around the rapidly growing state capital. The book also examines the conspirators' vision of themselves as God's chosen people and the complicated African and European roots of their culture. In so doing, it offers an alternative interpretation of the meaning of the Virginia that was home to so many of the Founding Fathers of the United States. This narrative focuses on the history and perspectives of black and enslaved people in order to develop Gabriel's Virginia as a counterpoint to more common discussions of Jeffersonian Virginia."--BOOK JACKET Cover......Page 1 Frontmatter......Page 4 Contents......Page 10 Acknowledgments......Page 12 Introduction......Page 14 Prologue: From Blacks in Virginia to Black Virginians......Page 24 1 - The emergence of racial consciousness in eighteenth-century Virginia......Page 27 Part I - Cultural process: Creolization, appropriation, and collective identity in Gabriel's Virginia......Page 64 2 - Forging an oppositional culture: Gabriel's Conspiracy and the process of cultural appropriation......Page 68 3 - Individualism, community, and identity in Gabriel's Conspiracy......Page 108 4 - Making sense of Gabriel's Conspiracy: Immediate responses to the conspiracy......Page 131 Part II - Social practice: Urbanization, commercialization, and identity in the daily life of Gabriel's Richmond......Page 162 5 - The growth of early Richmond......Page 164 6 - Labor, race, and identity in early Richmond......Page 197 7 - Race and constructions of gender in early Richmond......Page 233 Epilogue: Gabriel and Richmond in historical and fictional time......Page 268 8 - Gabriel's Conspiracy in memory and fiction......Page 269 Appendix: Richmond households in 1784 and 1810......Page 290 Index......Page 294

James Sidbury's Ploughshares into Swords places the enslaved population of Virginia squarely within the emerging Atlantic world culture—of the market economy, of urban culture, of Virginia's rapidly changing religious culture. Sidbury stresses the way black Virginians appropriated white cultural forms, transformed their meaning, and in the process created symbols of black liberation and a culture that had autonomous features even though it drew from the larger culture. His skillfull interweaving of these two separate strands of argument provides rare insights into the entire process of identity formation and creolization.

Sidbury focuses on the history and perspectives of enslaved blacks to develop 'Gabriel's Virginia' as a counterpoint to 'Jeffersonian Virginia.'