GABRIEL'S DEFEAT
The materials for the history of Gabriel's revolt are still very fragmentary, and must be sought in the contemporary newspapers. No continuous file of Southern newspapers for the year 1800 was to be found, when this narrative was written, in any Boston or New-York library, though the Harvard-College Library contained a few numbers of the Baltimore Telegraphe and the Norfolk Epitome of the Times. My chief reliance has therefore been the Southern correspondence of the Northern newspapers, with the copious extracts there given from Virginian journals. I am chiefly indebted to the Philadelphia United-States Gazette, the Boston Independent Chronicle, the Salem Gazette and Register, the New-York Daily Advertiser, and the Connecticut Courant. The best continuous narratives that I have found are in the Courant of Sept. 29, 1800, and the Salem Gazette of Oct. 7, 1800; but even these are very incomplete. Several important documents I have been unable to discover,—the official proclamation of the governor, the description of Gabriel's person, and the original confession of the slaves as given to Mr. Sheppard. The discovery of these would no doubt have enlarged, and very probably corrected, my narrative.