Kaine Pardons Former Henrico Resident in Slave Rebellion
Gov. Tim Kaine informally pardoned former Henrico resident, Gabriel Prosser, this week for leading a slave rebellion in over 200 years ago, The Times Dispatch reports. Well, it’s about time! From the T-D: In restoring Prosser’s “good name,” Kaine said the slave, put to death in 1800 with 34 other African-Americans, was motivated by “his devotion to […]
Gov. Tim Kaine informally pardoned former Henrico resident, Gabriel Prosser, this week for leading a slave rebellion in over 200 years ago, The Times Dispatch reports. Well, it’s about time!
From the T-D:
In restoring Prosser’s “good name,” Kaine said the slave, put to death in 1800 with 34 other African-Americans, was motivated by “his devotion to the ideals of the American revolution — it was worth risking death to secure liberty.”
Prosser, the property of a Henrico planter, envisioned an uprising by thousands of slaves that would include the “wholesale massacre” of whites in Richmond and other slave-holding areas, according to journalist-historian Virginius Dabney in “Richmond: The Story of a City.”
Unfolding 31 years before the better-known Nat Turner insurrection in Southampton County, the Prosser-led revolt began in Richmond on Aug. 30, 1800. The plot was thwarted after two slaves confessed to a white plantation owner, who immediately alerted Gov. James Monroe, a future president.
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