Covenants and Craftsmanship in Gabriel’s World


This essay provides the theological background and the religious material culture context of Gabriel’s rebellion, Richmond, Virginia, 1800. Gabriel and some of his conspirators attended a covenanted Baptist church in Richmond. They adapted the idea of a covenant for a document in which they pledged with their signs or signatures, as enslaved men, to rise against their masters. They also engaged in theologically-inspired discourse about the sacred purpose of the material weapons they would use in their uprising. Additionally, scholars can today see meanings in other elements of their social world, such as food and alcohol. Alcohol consumption became a focus of the conspirators’ trial and one of the enslaved witnesses came to see sacred significance in it because he almost certainly understood that if he testified to exonerate his companions from suspicion of drunkenness he could save their lives.