20: "A Wolf by the Ears": Gabriel Rebels and Cotton Becomes King

“I have nothing more to offer than what General Washington would have had to offer, had he been taken by the British and put to trial by them. I have adventured my life in endeavoring to obtain the liberty of my countrymen, and am a willing sacrifice in their cause.”

This is the story of Gabriel’s fight for freedom. An intelligent, literate, and enslaved blacksmith, Gabriel is raising a slave army to seize Virginia’s capital of Richmond and set up a new society where all people, regardless of their color, are free. But the world is changing around him. Chesapeake tobacco plantations, the international slave trade, and northern slavery are dying.

Meanwhile, Eli Whitney’s new invention--the cotton gin--is taking southern slavery and the interstate slave trade to a whole new level. This rebellion’s a risky move. Gabriel and his lieutenants are taking their lives in their hands, and they know it. But such risk should sound familiar; after all, there’s nothing more American than a willingness to live by Patrick Henry’s immortal phrase: “give me liberty, or give me death!”

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