Rebellion, Persecution, or Both?

 

A review of Jill Lepore’s New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan (2005)

                Jill Lepore’s New York Burning is about a little-known story in American colonial history. It is an amazing story that should be better known.  In the middle of 18^th century Manhattan, a generation before the American Revolution and a few decades after the Salem Witch trials, a different type of hysteria was taking place.  The belief of an organized slave rebellion that was going to lead to the burning of the city, the murder of the most the white populace, and the establishment of a black dominated new society to replace it.

                This led to the arrest over a hundred seventy people and later execution of over thirty people, often by burning at the stake.  Like with the Salem Witch Trials a lot of the accusations came from the few against the many.  Confessions that themselves were coerced.  As part of their conspiracy these rebels were going to install their leader, a white tavern keeper named John Hughson, as their King.  King John would then appoint the slave Caesar as his governor and declare Catholicism the new state religion.   

The fate of New York

      

“What those eighty-one New Yorkers confessed to was a plot dripping with plot, ripe to bursting with familiar characters and contrivances.  Smith delivered his speech in the very era in which the novel was born; not surprisingly, his argument echoed conventions established not only in early English novels but also in England’s vast store of quasi-fictional tales of rogues and pirates, whores, and mutinies, and ruthless gangs of highway robbers, as well as in growing literature of alarming reports from the colonies of rebellious slaves and bloodthirsty Indians.” (pg.10)

Trial, but not fair

One hand the plot seems like a downright bizarre fiction made up of over imaginative 18^th century white people.  Of course, the slave rebellion would have to be led by a white man, in their common world view there is no way a black man could have been their leader.  The recognizable fear of the rival Christian religion of Catholicism.  However, unlike the witch trials, which were absurd as witches are not real, slaves do not want to be slaves.   The idea that they will rebel is not a crazy conclusion to come up with in a society that practices slavery. 

“Plots to burn the metropolis flowed freely across the Atlantic, and up and down the seaboard.  When they were true, they were terrifying.  When they were delusions, they were droll.  In June 1738, New Yorkers received word that Jamaicans had been deluded by ‘a Discovery of a Plot concerted by the Negroes at Kingston, but by good Information, we find it to be no more than intended Meeting, to drink the Memory of an old Negro Felow, dead some time agoe, whom they used to call their King.’” (pg. 56)

brutal executions 

In modern times a slave rebellion is cheered not frowned upon.  So, for the modern readers we are curious to see if there was any truth here.  Was there steaming beneath the surface an actual attempt by the oppressed to overthrow their oppressors?  It is hard to say, it would not have been uncommon for there to be one. However, it would not have been anything like the disaster that we saw in New York. 

“If there was nothing else to be learned from the confession extracted in New York City in the spring and summer of 1741, there would be this: while slaves in Manhattan lived and worked alongside whites, they sought out other slaves, for news, for companionship, for love, and they found it, all over the city.  Forever conducting errands, fetching water, visiting friends and family scattered across the city, slaves circulated, even more than free whites, who lived in the same house as their husbands, wives, and children.” (pg. 149) 

                 Lepore’s main primary source is the writing of Daniel Horsmanden one of the main investigators into the conspiracy.  From him Lepore is able to piece together a narrative of an involving mystery.  Now I did enjoy this book better than her previous work on King Philip's War, however the narrative still goes down lots of rabbit holes that were not entirely relevant to the main event.  For example, I find Francis Williams the Jamaican scholar interesting but I am not sure that he had to do with the rest of the story.  The book is worth reading regardless.   

[Video is from the YouTube channel Raw American History]