Revulsions of Capital: Virginia, 1829–32

Abstract

This chapter argues that Virginia was not the “calm and peaceful” world prior to Turner's Rebellion as Gray claimed. Turner's rebellion, in fact, took place amidst regional black restlessness at the prospect of seemingly endless enslavement, and regional white discord over the relationship between land, labor, and political representation. In the rebellion's aftermath, that white discord became a more profound rupture in the politics of slavery itself, driving a bitterly divided House of Delegates to entertain the possibility of gradual emancipation. From that rupture there emerged a new political and economic equilibrium, centered not on propertied hierarchy but on property's commoditization, notably, commodified labor.