The slave known only as Gabriel was born in 1776 near Richmond, Virginia, at Brookfield, the Henrico County plantation of Thomas Prosser. By Virginia standards, Brookfield was a large plantation, with a population of approximately fifty laborers. The identity of Gabriel's parents is lost to history, but he had two older brothers, Martin and Solomon. Most likely, Gabriel's father was a blacksmith, the occupation chosen for Gabriel and Solomon. Status as a craft artisan provided the young blacksmith with considerable standing in the slave community, as did his ability to read and write. By the mid-1790s, as he approached the age of twenty, Gabriel stood "six feet two or three inches high." A long and "bony face, well made," was marred by the loss of two front teeth and by "two or three scars on his head." In later years, a legend arose which held that Gabriel wore his hair long in naive imitation of Samson, in hopes that his locks would give him extraordinary strength. Contemporary descriptions say only that his hair was cut short and was as dark as his complexion. According to the journalist James T. Callender, blacks and whites alike regarded him as "a fellow of courage and intellect above his rank in life."
In the fall of 1798 Gabriel's old master died, and ownership of Brookfield passed to twenty-two-year-old Thomas Henry Prosser, who maximized his profits by hiring out his surplus slaves. Despite all of the work to be done at Brookfield, Gabriel spent a considerable part of each month smithing in Richmond for white artisans. Although still a slave under Virginia law, Gabriel enjoyed a rough form of freedom. Indeed, his ties to the plantation became so tenuous that several historians have identified him as a free man.
Emboldened by this quasi-liberty, in September 1799 Gabriel moved toward overt rebellion. Caught stealing a pig by a white neighbor, Gabriel wrestled him down to the ground and bit off the better "part of his left Ear." Under Virginia law, slaves were not tried as whites. They were prosecuted by special tribunals composed of five justices of the peace. Gabriel was formally charged with attacking a white man, a capital crime. Although found guilty, Gabriel escaped the gallows by pleading "benefit of clergy," which allowed him to avoid hanging in exchange for being branded on the thumb with a small cross, as he was able to recite a verse from the Bible.
Gabriel's branding and incarceration served as a brutal reminder that despite his literacy and privileged status, he remained a slave. By the early spring of 1800, his fury began to turn into a carefully considered plan to bring about his freedom, as well as the end of slavery in Virginia. Slaves and free blacks from Henrico County would gather at Brookfield on the evening of 30 August to march on Richmond. If Governor James Monroe and the town leaders agreed to Gabriel's demands for black liberty and an equitable distribution of the property, the slave general intended to "hoist a white flag" and drink a toast "with the merchants of the city."
The conspiracy matured in the context of developments in the Caribbean and political affairs of the late 1790s. Since 1793, large number of refugees from the slave rebellion in French Saint Domingue had arrived in Virginia, many of them bringing their bondservants with them. Monroe worried, as he later expressed it in a letter to Brigadier General Mathews, that the "scenes which are acted in Saint Doming[ue], must produce an effect on all the people of colour" in the Chesapeake. But if the uprising in the Caribbean helped to inspire mainland rebels, it was the divisive election of 1800 that provided Gabriel with his opportunity. Rumors circulating around Richmond held that if Jefferson was victorious, the Federalists would not relinquish power, and one Federalist newspaper predicted an "ultimate appeal to arms by the two great parties." Most likely, Gabriel hoped not only to exploit this split among white elites, but also to throw his lot in with the side that would do the slaves the most favor in the coming civil conflict.
The planned uprising collapsed just before sunset on the appointed day when a severe thunderstorm hit the Richmond area. The chaos of the storm convinced two Henrico slaves that the revolt could not succeed. They informed their owner of the conspiracy, and he hurried word to Monroe. After hiding along the James River for nearly two weeks, Gabriel risked boarding the schooner Mary. Captain Richardson Taylor, a recent convert to Methodism, spirited Gabriel downriver to Norfolk. There, Gabriel was betrayed by an enslaved crewman, who had heard of Monroe's three-hundred-dollar reward for Gabriel's capture. Returned to Richmond under heavy guard, Gabriel was quickly tried and found guilty of "conspiracy and insurrection." On 10 October 1800, the young revolutionary died on the town gallows near Fifteenth and Broad Streets. He was twenty-four. In all, twenty-six slaves, including Gabriel and his two brothers, were hanged for their part in the conspiracy. Eight more rebels were transported to Spanish New Orleans; at least thirty-two others were found not guilty. Reliable sources placed the number of slaves who knew of the plot to be between five and six hundred.
In the aftermath, as was the case in the wake of most slave conspiracies, white authorities, as one newspaper put it, moved to "re-enact all those rigorous laws" that had been allowed to lapse after the Revolution. In late 1802, Monroe established the Public Guard of Richmond, a nighttime police force designed to protect the public buildings and militia arsenals. The state assembly passed a law ending the right of masters to hire out their surplus slaves, and in 1806 the legislature amended the state's Manumission Act of 1782 by requiring liberated bonds-people to leave Virginia or face reenslavement.