"The local annals of Maryland or of any other State are something more than mere local history, something more than part of the history of the United States or of the whole English-speaking people. They are really contributions to the general science of politics-no less than the lessons which we should have had if Aristotle's comments on the kindred commonwealths of old Greece had been spared to us."-Freeman. IN HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL SCIENCE HERBERT B. ADAMS, Editor History is past Politics and Politics present History.-Freeman I AN INTRODUCTION TO American Institutional History WRITTEN FOR THIS SERIES BY EDWARD A. FREEMAN, D. C. L., LL. D. PUBLISHED BY THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY BALTIMORE MR. FREEMAN'S VISIT TO BALTIMORE. BY THE EDITOR. Mr. Freeman came to America in the fall of 1881, on the joint invitation of the Lowell Institute in Boston and of the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. The united influence of these two local institutions, representing the intellectual union of Northern and Southern cities, was seconded by two other influences of a local character: first, by Mr. Freeman's natural desire to visit his own son, who married in Baltimore and who now lives upon a plantation in Virginia; secondly, by an ardent longing to see with his own eyes a New England Town Meeting, which, in the genealogy of local institutions, is a long-lost child of Old England and a grandchild of the Fatherland. The historian of "The English People in their Three Homes" regards the local institutions of the United States, North and South, as the historic offspring of England and Germany, as truly as his own name, once applied to all freemen of the English Colonies in America, is directly perpetuated by children and grandchildren in the Old Dominion, where he indulged what he pleasantly calls "oldfatherly emotions towards the last-born bairn's bairn,” and where, true to historical impulses, he began a "Virginia Domesday" in the old forms: "Freeman tenet; Bell tenuit Ante Guerram. Valebat dollarios; modo . . . Waste fuit." With the grim humor of William the Conqueror, who, when he fell to the earth upon landing at Pevensey, grasped the soil and thus took seizin of England, Mr. Freeman describes his son's territorial conquest upon the shore of the Rapidan, "Potuit ire quo voluit cum ista terra, for the soil of the Old Dominion sticketh to the boots and is carried about hither and thither!" This extract from a letter dated Somerleaze, Rapid Ann Depot, Culpeper County, Virginia, December 25th, 1881, needs no better commentary than the following extract from the Inquisitio Eliensis, Domesday, iii, 497 (or Stubbs' Select Charters, 86): "Deinde quomodo vocatur mansio, quis tenuit eam tempore Regis Eadwardi; quis modo tenet; . . . quantum valebat totum simul; et quantum modo; . . .' The suggestion of Domesday-forms came to Mr. Freeman not only from the history of Virginia land-tenure, but from Professor William F. Allen's paper on "The English Cottagers of the Middle Ages," a paper which had been sent Mr. Freeman in answer to his query "about a man in Wisconsin, who has written something about villainage-what a long way off to know about such things-how can I get it?" And after receiving the 99 66 9966 above paper, Mr. Freeman inquired with manifest surprise, “Are his cottagers the cotarii of Domesday?" The historian of the Norman Conquest was reminded of items in Domesday by the "Afri" of the South, who still survive in emancipated forms. The negroes of the Old Dominion are no longer "servi," but their varying economic condition might justify their enumeration in some such classes as appear in the Norman census: 66 villani," "cotarii,' 'sochemani, liberi homines." It brings the historian of "The English People in their Three Homes" to the very heart of both North and South to think of him as spending Christmas with his American children upon a Virginia Plantation, called after the Old Home in England, "Somerleaze," where, resting from lectures and labors, he indulges "oldfatherly emotions" towards his American grandchild. It is pleasant to think of the Nestor historian "among the hills, enjoying the air, with the Blue Ridge right in front," and reading a novel about the Old Dominion written by a Virginia lady now living in Baltimore. He writes to this city for information touching the plot of the historical novel. "Was there not a negro revolt once hereabouts called Gabriel's War? I was reading a pretty story called Homoselle, where it comes in, and I seem to have heard of it before; but nobody here can tell me. If the chronology of the story be right, it must have been between 1837 and 1861." And later he returns to the point: "I knew I had heard something of that Gabriel's War, but Mrs. Tiernan must have altered the date. You say it was early in this century; but Homoselle lies in the time 1837-1861. For, on the one hand, Victoria reigns in Great Britain; on the other, Peace and Slavery reign in Virginia.* I want to know another thing. Homoselle speaks of a *Gabriel's War, a negro insurrection headed by a slave of uncommon ability, known as "General Gabriel," occurred in the year 1800. The uprising was planned with great skill and secrecy, and embraced about one thousand slaves. The plan was to make a night attack upon Richmond, massacre the male inhabitants, spoil the city, seize arms, and create a general panic among whites throughout the State, whereupon, it was thought, a general insurrection could be kindled among the slave population. On the night of the proposed attack there was a furious rain-storm; but the slaves, undaunted, advanced with their scythe-blades and axes. The attack was frustrated by two unforeseen events, the rapid rising of a creek before Richmond, and the betrayal of the plot by a faithful servant of William Mosby-a slave named Pharaoh-who swam the creek at the risk of his life and gave the alarm in Richmond. The town was at once put under arms, and the slaves, finding that their plot was discovered, rapidly dispersed. James Monroe was at that time Governor of Virginia and he offered a reward of three hundred dollars for the arrest of Gabriel, who was finally taken and executed. Many other conspirators were found out and were duly tried and convicted by the court of "Oyer and Terminer," made up of county justices. The Court Records of Henrico County contain evidence upon this matter, see Howison's History of Virginia, ii, 392-3. This insurrection naturally created the greatest horror throughout all Virginia, and the story of Gabriel's War was repeated until it became a household tale. The authoress of Homoselle did not need to consult the written history of Virginia for information, for the oft-told story was stamped upon every child's imagination. Mrs. Tiernan never saw Howison's account of Gabriel's War until after her story was written, the scene of which she purposely laid in later times of which she herself had personal knowledge. Without regard to the exact chronology of Gabriel's War, Mrs. Tiernan utilized a popular tradition for literary purposes, which is not only an artistic but a perfectly legitimate method in Culturgeschichte.-H. B. A. |
