Flight and Rebellion: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth-Century Virginia

In the year 1800 Gabriel Prosser's insurrection--one of the earliest and largest slave rebellions in the history of America--shook plantation society. Slavery had been in existence in Virginia for more than a century by then, and acculturation had led to marked changes in slave behavior. Looking behind this early revolt, Professor Mullin sees the acculturative process as a dynamic factor in slavery's development before the nineteenth century. His study views its changes in historical perspective, widening the prevailing focus upon the institution's structure in the ante-bellum period, and showing the importance of the slaves' own attitudes towards their lives.