THE NEGRO PLOTS
As early as the eighteenth century New York had become a cosmopolitan
town. Its population contained not only Dutch and English in nearly
equal numbers, but also French, Swedes, Jews, Negroes, and sailors,
travelers from every land. The settled portion of the city, according
to a map of 1729, extended as far north as Beekman Street on the East
Side and as far as Trinity Church on the West Side. A few blocks
beyond the church lay Old Wind Mill Lane touching King's Farm, which
was still open country. Here Broadway shook off all semblance to a
town thoroughfare and became a dusty country road, meeting the
post-road to Boston near the lower end of the rope walk. "The cittie
of New York is a pleasant, well-compacted place," wrote Madam Knight,
who journeyed on horseback from Boston over this post-road and who
recorded her experiences in an entertaining {207} journal. "The
buildings brick generally, very stately and high, though not altogether
like ours in Boston. The bricks in some of the houses are of divers
coullers and laid in checkers, being glazed look very agreeable. The
inside of them are neat to admiration."
Besides its welcoming houses set among spreading trees, New York
possessed public buildings of dignity and distinction. There was
Trinity Church, whose tall steeple was one of the first landmarks to
catch the traveler's eye as he journeyed down the river from Albany.
The new City Hall, dating from Bellomont's time and standing on a site
at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets, given by Colonel Abraham de
Peyster, was also a source of pride. With its substantial wings and
arched colonnade in the center it was quite imposing. Here the
Assembly, Council, and Court sat. Here, too, were offices and a
library. But the cellar was used as a dungeon and the attic as a
common prison.
New markets and wharves told of the growing commerce of the city and
province. On every hand were evidences of luxurious living. There
were taverns and coffee-houses where gold flowed in abundant streams
from the pockets of pirates and smugglers, and in the streets
crest-emblazoned {208} family coaches, while sedan chairs were borne by
negro slaves along the narrow brick pathways in the center of the town.
The dress of the people told the same story of prosperity. The streets
of the fashionable quarter around Trinity Church were fairly ablaze
with gay costumes. Men of fashion wore powdered wigs and cocked hats,
cloth or velvet coats reaching to the knee, breeches, and low shoes
with buckles. They carried swords, sometimes studded with jewels, and
in their gloved hands they held snuff-boxes of costly material and
elaborate design. The ladies who accompanied them were no less gaily
dressed. One is described as wearing a gown of purple and gold,
opening over a black velvet petticoat and short enough to show green
silk stockings and morocco shoes embroidered in red. Another wore a
flowered green and gold gown, over a scarlet and gold petticoat edged
with silver. Everywhere were seen strange fabrics of oriental design
coming from the holds of mysterious ships which unloaded
surreptitiously along the water front.
The members of one class alone looked on all this prosperous life with
sullen discontent--the negro slaves whose toil made possible the
leisure of their owners. These strange, uncouth Africans seemed {209}
out of place in New York, and from early times they had exhibited
resentment and hatred toward the governing classes, who in turn looked
upon them with distrust. This smoldering discontent of the blacks
aroused no little uneasiness and led to the adoption of laws which,
especially in the cities, were marked by a brutality quite out of
keeping with the usual moderation of the colony. When Mrs. Grant wrote
later of negro servitude in Albany as "slavery softened into a smile,"
she spoke in the first place from a narrow observation of life in a
cultivated family, and in the second place from scant knowledge of the
events which had preceded the kind treatment of the negroes.
In 1684 an ordinance was passed declaring that no negroes or Indian
slaves above the number of four should meet together on the Lord's Day
or at any other time or at any place except on their master's service.
They were not to go armed with guns, swords, clubs, or stones on
penalty of ten lashes at the whipping-post. An act provided that no
slave should go about the streets after nightfall anywhere south of the
Collect without a lighted lantern "so as the light thereof could be
plainly seen." A few years later Governor Cornbury ordered the
justices of the peace in King's County to seize and {210} apprehend all
negroes who had assembled themselves in a riotous manner or had
absconded from their masters.
In 1712, during the Administration of Governor Robert Hunter, a group
of negroes, perhaps forty in number, formed a plot which justified the
terror of their masters, though it was so mad that it could have
originated only in savage minds. These blacks planned to destroy all
the white people of the city, then numbering over six thousand.
Meeting in an orchard the negroes set fire to a shed and then lurked
about in the shadows, armed with every kind of weapon on which they
could lay hands.
As the negroes had expected, all the citizens of the neighborhood,
seeing the conflagration, came running to the spot to fight the flames.
The blacks succeeded in killing nine men and wounding many more before
the alarm reached the fort. Then of course the affair ended. The
slaves fled to the forests at the northern end of the island; but the
soldiers stationed sentries and then hunted down the negroes, beating
the woods to be sure that none escaped. Six of the negroes, seeing
that their doom was sealed, killed themselves, and the fate of the
captives showed that they well knew what mercy {211} to expect at the
hands of the enraged whites. Twenty-one were put to death, one being
broken on the wheel and several burned at the stake, while the rest
were hanged.
After this experience of the danger attending the holding of slaves,
the restrictions upon the negroes grew even more irksome and the
treatment they received more that of outcasts. For instance, a slave
must be buried by daylight, without pallbearers and with not more than
a dozen negroes present as mourners.
In spite of bright spots in the picture the outlook grew constantly
darker; a mistrust ready to develop on slight provocation into terror
perturbed the whites; and every rumor was magnified till there reigned
a panic as widespread as that caused by the reports of witchcraft in
New England. At length in 1741 the storm burst. One March night,
while a gale was sweeping the city, a fire was discovered on the roof
of the Governor's house in the fort. Church bells sounded the alarm
and firemen and engines hurried to the spot; but it was hopeless to try
to extinguish the flames, which spread to the chapel and to the office
of the secretary over the fort gate, where the records of the colony
were stored. The barracks then caught fire, and in a {212} little over
an hour everything in the fort was destroyed, the hand-grenades
exploding as they caught fire and spreading destruction in every
direction.
A month later a fire broke out at night near the Vlei Market. A bucket
brigade was formed and the fire was extinguished. On the same night
the loft in a house on the west side of the town was found to be in
flames, and coals were discovered between two straw beds occupied by a
negro. The next day coals were found under the coach-house of John
Murray on Broadway, and on the day following a fire broke out again
near the Vlei Market. Thus the townsfolk were made certain that an
incendiary plot was on foot. Of course every one's thoughts flew to
the negro slaves as the conspirators, especially when a Mrs. Earle
announced that she had overheard three negroes threatening to burn the
town.
The authorities were as much alarmed as the populace and at once leaped
to the conclusion that the blame for the incendiarism, of which they
scarcely paused to investigate the evidence, was to be divided between
the Roman Catholics and the negroes, who without reasonable grounds had
so long constituted their chief terror.
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The Common Council offered pardon and a reward of one hundred pounds to
any conspirator who would reveal the story of the plot and the names of
the criminals involved. Under the influence of this offer one Mary
Burton, a servant in the employ of Hughson, the tavern-keeper, accused
her master, her mistress, their daughter, and a woman of evil
reputation known as Peggy Carey, or Kerry, as well as a number of
negroes, of being implicated in the plot. She said that the negroes
brought stolen goods to the tavern and were protected by Hughson, who
had planned with them the burning and plundering of the city and the
liberation of the slaves. On this unsupported evidence Peggy Carey and
a number of negroes were condemned to execution, and under terror of
death, or encouraged by the hope of pardon, these prisoners made
numerous confessions implicating one another, until by the end of
August twenty-four whites and one hundred and fifty-four negroes had
been imprisoned. Four whites, including Hughson and Peggy Carey, were
executed; fourteen negroes were burned at the stake; eighteen were
hanged, seventy-one transported, and the remainder pardoned or
discharged.
Accusations were also made that the Roman {214} Catholics had stirred
up the plot; and persons of reputation and standing were accused of
complicity. The effect of the popular panic, which rendered impossible
the calm weighing of evidence and extinguished any sense of proportion,
is seen in the letters of Governor George Clarke. On June 20, 1741, he
writes to the Lords of Trade as follows:
The fatal fire that consumed the buildings in the fort and great part
of my substance (for my loss is not less than two thousand pounds), did
not happen by accident as I at first apprehended, but was kindled by
design, in the execution of a horrid Conspiracy to burn it and the
whole town, and to Massacre the people; as appears evidently not only
by the Confession of the Negro who set fire to it, in some part of the
same gutter where the Plumber was to work, but also by the testimony of
several witnesses. How many Conspirators there were we do not yet
know; every day produces new discoveries, and I apprehend that in the
town, if the truth were known, there are not many innocent Negro
men.... I do myself the honor to send your Lordships the minutes taken
at the tryal of Quack who burned the fort, and of another Negro, who
was tryed with him, and their confession at the stake; with some
examinations, whereby your Lordships will see their designs; it was
ridiculous to suppose that they could keep possession of the town, if
they had destroyed the white people, yet the mischief they would have
done in pursuit of their intention would nevertheless have been {215}
great.... Whether, or how far, the hand of popery has been in this
hellish conspiracy, I cannot yet discover; but there is room to suspect
it, by what two of the Negroes have confessed, viz: that soon after
they were spoke to, and had consented to be parties to it, they had
some checks of conscience, which they said, would not suffer them to
burn houses and kill the White people; whereupon those who drew them
into the conspiracy told them, there was no sin or wickedness in it,
and that if they would go to Huson's [Hughson's] house, they should
find a man who would satisfy them; but they say they would not, nor did
go. Margaret Keny [Kerry] was supposed to be a papist, and it is
suspected that Huson and his wife were brought over to it. There was
in town some time ago a man who is said to be a Romish Priest, who used
to be at Huson's but has disappeared ever since the discovery of the
conspiracy and is not now to be found.
Later in the summer the Governor recorded his suspicions as follows:
We then thought it [the] Plot was projected only by Huson [Hughson] and
the Negroes; but it is now apparent that the hand of popery is in it,
for a Romish Priest having been tryed, was upon full and clear evidence
convicted of having a deep share in it.... Where, by whom, or in what
shape this plot was first projected is yet undiscovered; that which at
present seems most probable is that Huson, an indigent fellow of a vile
character, casting in his thoughts how to mend his circumstances,
inticed some Negroes to rob their Masters and to bring the stolen
[goods] to him on {216} promise of reward when they were sold; but
seeing that by this pilfering trade riches did not flow into him fast
enough, and finding the Negroes fit instruments for any villainy, he
then fell upon the schemes of burning the fort and town, and murdering
the people, as the speediest way to enrich himself and them, and to
gain their freedom, for that was the Negroes main inducement.... The
conspirators had hopes given them that the Spaniards would come hither
and join with them early in the Spring; but if they failed of coming,
then the business was to be done by the Conspirators without them; many
of them were christen'd by the Priest, absolved from all their past
sins and whatever they should do in the Plott; many of them sworn by
him (others by Huson) to burn and destroy, and to be secret; wherein
they were but too punctual; how weak soever the scheme may appear, it
was plausible and strong enough to engage and hold the Negroes, and
that was all that the Priest and Huson wanted; for had the fort taken
fire in the night, as it was intended, the town was then to have been
fired in several places at once; in which confusion much rich plunder
might have been got and concealed; and if they had it in view too, to
serve the enemy, they could not have done it more effectually; for this
town being laid in ashes his Majesties forces in the West Indies might
have suffered much for want of provisions, and perhaps been unable to
proceed upon any expedition or piece of service from whence they might
promise themselves great rewards; I doubt the business is pretty nigh
at an end, for since the Priest has been apprehended, and some more
white men named, great industry has been used throughout the town to
discredit the witnesses and prejudice the people {217} against them;
and I am told it has had in a great measure its intended effect; I am
sorry for it, for I do not think we are yet got near the bottom of it,
where I doubt the principal conspirators lie concealed.
With the collapse of the excitement through its own excess, ends the
history of the great negro "plot." Whether it had any shadow of
reality has never been determined. Judge Horsmanden, who sat as one of
the justices during the trials growing out of the so-called plots,
compiled later a record of examinations and alleged confessions whereby
he sought to justify the course of both judges and juries; but the
impression left by his report is that panic had paralyzed the judgment
of even the most honest white men, while among the negroes a still
greater terror, combined with a wave of hysteria, led to boundless
falsification and to numberless unjustified accusations.
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