Slave Revolts Leading up to the Civil War

Revolts seemed to be relatively common wherever slavery occurs, be it Ancient Rome, Russia, Haiti, or the United States of America. Slaves, assumedly, had their own reasons to believe that their revolts would be successful whether it was a belief in God's protection, a feeling of strength in numbers, or a general sentiment of being dead would be better than living in slavery, but few had a reason as good as those after the successful slave rebellion that occurred in Haiti. This rebellion led by Toussaint L'Ouverture was an inspiration for a Gaggle of rebellions in America in the nineteenth century, among them Denmark Vesey's, Gabriel's, the Louisiana slave revolt of 1811, and Nat Turner's. These rebellions seemed to have the overall intention of freeing those they took with them, unfortunately while these revolts had many outcomes, few were anything there leaders would have liked.

The Haitian rebellion of 1791 and the French Revolution were two beacons of hope for slaves all around the world. A man named Gabriel, who was born and raised in Virginia, took a special liking to the latter of the two, sparking a revolution of his own in the Richmond area. Eugene Genovese says, "the inflammatory rhetoric and the appeals to and denunciations of French revolutionary ideology made a deep impression on the slaves" on the subject of Gabriel's rebellion. It's very easily believed to be true, especially once the timing of the revolt is considered, because as with most well led revolts it is in response to an event that gave the people hope. Gabriel's revolt however was given away, and so he and twenty-five of his cohorts were jailed, tried, and hanged. In response to this the a few state legislatures, including Virginia's, passed restrictions on free blacks, as well as restrictions on the assembly, education, and hiring out of slaves, all in an effort to quell any further insurrections.

Chronologically, the next would be the rebellion that occurred in Louisiana in 1811,