brother named Martin interpreted various texts from Scripture as bearing
on the situation of the Negroes. His insurrection was finally set for
the first day of September. It was well planned. The rendezvous was to
be a brook six miles from Richmond. Under cover of night the force of
1,100 was to march in three columns on the city, then a town of 8,000
inhabitants, the right wing to seize the penitentiary building which had
just been converted into an arsenal, while the left took possession of
the powder-house. These two columns were to be armed with clubs, and
while they were doing their work the central force, armed with muskets,
knives, and pikes, was to begin the carnage, none being spared except
the French, whom it is significant that the Negroes favored. In Richmond
at the time there were not more than four or five hundred men with about
thirty muskets; but in the arsenal were several thousand guns, and the
powder-house was well stocked. Seizure of the mills was to guarantee the
insurrectionists a food supply; and meanwhile in the country districts
were the new harvests of corn, and flocks and herds were fat in the
fields.

[Footnote 1: His full name was Gabriel Prosser.]

On the day appointed for the uprising Virginia witnessed such a storm
as she had not seen in years. Bridges were carried away, and roads and
plantations completely submerged. Brook Swamp, the strategic point for
the Negroes, was inundated; and the country Negroes could not get
into the city, nor could those in the city get out to the place of
rendezvous. The force of more than a thousand dwindled to three hundred,
and these, almost paralyzed by fear and superstition, were dismissed.
Meanwhile a slave who did not wish to see his master killed divulged the
plot, and all Richmond was soon in arms.