Gov. Tim Kaine informally pardoned former Henrico resident, Gabriel Prosser, this week for leading a slave rebellion in over 200 years ago, The Times Dispatch reports. Well, it’s about time!
From the T-D:

In restoring Prosser’s “good name,” Kaine said the slave, put to death in 1800 with 34 other African-Americans, was motivated by “his devotion to the ideals of the American revolution — it was worth risking death to secure liberty.”

Prosser, the property of a Henrico planter, envisioned an uprising by thousands of slaves that would include the “wholesale massacre” of whites in Richmond and other slave-holding areas, according to journalist-historian Virginius Dabney in “Richmond: The Story of a City.”

Unfolding 31 years before the better-known Nat Turner insurrection in Southampton County, the Prosser-led revolt began in Richmond on Aug. 30, 1800. The plot was thwarted after two slaves confessed to a white plantation owner, who immediately alerted Gov. James Monroe, a future president.

A powerful rainstorm forced a delay in the rebellion, giving the militia time to round up Prosser and others. Tried and condemned to death, many of the slaves were hanged near what is now Broad and 15th streets, according to Dabney.

“Gabriel’s cause — the end of slavery and the furtherance of equality of all people — has prevailed in the light of history,” Kaine said in a recent letter to Linda Thomas, president of the Virginia chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Thomas sought the pardon.

“It is important to acknowledge that history favorably regards Gabriel’s cause while consigning legions who sought to keep him and others in chains to be forgotten,” Kaine wrote.