removal beyond the limits of the United States" of recaptured Africans,
and that bore somewhat more fruit, was in large measure due to the
colonization movement and of importance in connection with the founding
of Liberia.

[Footnote 1: See DuBois, 95, ff.]

[Footnote 2: Niles's _Register_, XIV, 176 (May 2, 1818).]

Thus, while the formal closing of the slave-trade might seem to be a
great step forward, the laxness with which the decree was enforced
places it definitely in the period of reaction.


3. _Gabriel's Insurrection and the Rise of the Negro Problem_

Gabriel's insurrection of 1800 was by no means the most formidable
revolt that the Southern states witnessed. In design it certainly did
not surpass the scope of the plot of Denmark Vesey twenty-two years
later, and in actual achievement it was insignificant when compared not
only with Nat Turner's insurrection but even with the uprisings sixty
years before. At the last moment in fact a great storm that came up made
the attempt to execute the plan a miserable failure. Nevertheless coming
as it did so soon after the revolution in Hayti, and giving evidence
of young and unselfish leadership, the plot was regarded as of
extraordinary significance.

Gabriel himself[1] was an intelligent slave only twenty-four years old,
and his chief assistant was Jack Bowler, aged twenty-eight. Throughout
the summer of 1800 he matured his plan, holding meetings at which a