New York Burning

by Jill Lepore

  Horsmanden had good reason to make this change: admitting Sandy and Fortune’s evidence had been controversial. In colonial courts, which were otherwise rather lax about rules of evidence, quite particular evidentiary rules applied to slaves: “Negro Evidence” was generally not allowed. Slaves could not be deposed or serve as witnesses because oaths could only be administered to Christians. In most criminal cases, including the burglary trial of Caesar and Prince, that slaves could not swear oaths was no bar to their conviction because the testimony of whites was usually sufficiently damning. But the prohibition on slave testimony did affect the courts’ ability to prosecute slaves for conspiracy, where slave witnesses were indispensable.

  Frustrated by this obstacle, some colonial legislatures had mandated exceptions to the exclusion of “Negro Evidence.” In Maryland after 1717, slaves could testify in criminal courts, but only against Indians or blacks. Virginia altered its laws in the 1720s to make it possible to punish slaves for perjury by administering a special, godless oath, backed by biblical punishments: “You are brought hither as a witness; and, by the direction of the law, I am to tell you, before you give your evidence, that you must tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and that if it be found hereafter, that you tell a lie, and give false testimony in this matter, you must, for so doing, have both your ears nailed to the pillory, and cut off, and receive thirty-nine lashes on your bare back, well laid on, at the common whipping-post.” No such fearful oaths were required in South Carolina, where, after 1740, non-whites could testify, but, again, only against other non-whites. In the conspiracy trials held in Antigua in 1736, slave testimony was allowed because, as the prosecutors reported, “it is expressly left by any Act of our Island, to the Discretion of the Justices, to examine any Slave, as Witness against another Slave, and give what Credit to his Testimony he thinks it in Conscience deserves.”7

  In New York, “Negro Evidence” was strictly circumscribed: not only was it only allowed against other slaves, it was only admissible in cases of conspiracy, arson, and murder, according to the province’s 1730 law “for the more effectual preventing and punishing the conspiracy and insurrection of negroes and other slaves.” It was this law that was brought to bear in the courtroom in New York on May 29, 1741. Both Horsmanden’s Journal and the Clarke manuscript agree that before calling his “Negro Evidence” to the stand at the trial of Quack and Cuffee, Joseph Murray addressed the court and read aloud the portions of the 1730 New York law decreeing that Negroes Evidence is good against each other . . . no Slave or Slaves shall be allowed as Evidence or Evidences in any Matter Cause or thing whatsoever excepting in Cases of Plotting or Confederacy among themselves, either to run away Kill or distroy their Master Mistress or any other Person, or burning of houses Barns, barracks or Stacks of hay or of Corne or the Killing of their Master or Mistresses Cattle or Horses and that only against one another, in which Case the evidence of one Slave Shall be allowed good against an other Slave.8

  When Sandy and Fortune took the stand on that spring day, neither took an oath. Instead, the justices “put them under the most solemn Caution that their small Knowledge of Religion can render them capable of.” Each repeated what he had said in his earlier depositions. Sandy testified that he had heard Cuffee say, “hang him or burn him, he would set fire to the Town.” Fortune said that after the fort fire, Quack told him, “The Businessis done.” According to Horsmanden’s Journal, Fortune said that Caesar, Prince, and Cuffee had asked him “to go with them to Hughson’s; but that he never did, but was told they had a Dance there every other Night.” And there his testimony ends. But according to Clarke’s minutes, Fortune said something else, which Horsmanden left out: “that the Prisoners had asked him to go to Husons house where they frolick’d often, but remembering the free Masons Club who were punished for meeting he declined it and did not go there.” 9

  In 1742, when he set about compiling his Journal, Horsmanden copied the same minutes of Quack and Cuffee’s trial that Clarke’s copyist had transcribed in June 1741. He made only very slight alterations: reordering witnesses, adding a detail to Burton’s testimony, and deleting Fortune’s reference to Freemasonry. The first two changes were an attempt to silence his critics. By the time Horsmanden was writing, the court had been condemned, even ridiculed, for its reliance, first, on the testimony of Mary Burton, a glib young girl; and second, on “Negro Evidence,” which had long been controversial. But why bother lopping off Fortune’s testimony?

  Fortune said that he declined Quack and Cuffee’s invitation to go to Hughson’s because he remembered “the free Masons Club who were punished for meeting.” In deleting this remark, Daniel Horsmanden buried a story crucial for any understanding of what happened in New York in 1741: the story of the black Freemasons, who were caught and punished in 1738.

  On the night of January 27, 1738, Cuffee, along with Caesar and Prince, had broken into Richard Baker’s tavern, on the corner of Wall and Water streets, just opposite the slave market. From Baker’s cellar, they stole several barrels of Geneva liquor, better known as “gin.” As a badge of their success, they christened themselves the “Geneva Club.” They may have hidden their takings in John Hughson’s house; in 1738, he lived on Dock Street, just a few blocks away from Baker, and was already notorious for “entertaining Slaves.”10 It was, in any event, a robbery much like the one they would later perpetrate at Rebecca Hogg’s shop.

  The next night, Saturday, January 28, Caesar, Prince, and Cuffee were arrested. They confessed to robbing Baker’s tavern. No trial was necessary. The following Thursday the men of the Geneva Club were paraded through the city on a cart, stripped to the waist, and whipped at every street corner. Three days later, William Bradford printed an account of their crime and punishment in his New York Gazette. It was probably written by Daniel Horsmanden, who, like Recorder Francis Harison before him, wrote the Gazette’s politically sensitive news. In a deeply satirical essay, the Gazette reported that the Geneva Club was actually a lodge of black Freemasons:

  Last Saturday Night was Discovered here a New Club, Lodge or Society of Free Masons (as they called themselves) being a Company of Blacks or Generation of Vipers assembled together to carry on their private and obscure Works of Darkness. At a Meeting of a Lodge of Black Masons, held the 28th Day of January last, an elegant Entertainment being provided, some of the Fraternity having the Night before broke open a Cellar and stole a large Quanitty of strong Liquor in order to make themselves merry. When at this Meeting or Lodge, Mr. Don Dago, Master of this Lodge and Dishonourable Society of Black Masons, being about to depart this Province, had the Honour to Resign his Office in Form.

  The Gazette’s account of the “Dishonourable Society of Black Masons” was aimed at the city’s white Masons. A New York lodge of the Ancient and Honourable Society of Free and Accepted Masons first formed in New York City in early 1737, just after the near–civil war over Clarke’s assumption of the governorship after Cosby’s death. Although Masons were supposed to rise above party divisions, the New York lodge was a vehicle for the Country Party. The Gazette’s account of the Geneva Club quite closely mimicked an account that had been published in Zenger’s Weekly Journal the week before, of a white Masonic meeting. On the night of Saturday, January 21, 1738, New York’s grand lodge of Masons held a dinner at the Black Horse Tavern in honor of lodge master David Provost, Jr., James Alexander’s nephew, who was about to leave the colony to open up an import business in Savannah, Georgia (where he would also found a Masonic lodge).11 In Provost’s place, the lodge elected Captain Matthew Norris, Lewis Morris’s son-in-law (the man who had raised the huzzas in City Hall at the announcement of Zenger’s acquittal in 1735). The Masons, in white aprons, marched down the street to Norris’s house to mark his ascension. In a celebratory notice in the Weekly Journal on January 24, Alexander reported on the festivities: “Last Saturday, Mr. David Provoost jur. Master of the Lodge of the Ancient and Honourable Society of Free and Accepted Maso
ns in this Place, gave an Elegant Entertainment to the Fraternity at the Black Horse.”

  In its account of the “Dishonourable Society of Black Masons, ” Bradford’s Gazette mocked what Alexander had described as the white Masons’ “further Mark of their Unanimity and Concord” in a “well regulated and decent Procession” to Norris’s house. The Gazette’s satire (again in the guise of a report on the whipping of Caesar, Prince, and Cuffee), continued:

  As a further Mark of Honour and Respect due to this Fraternity or black Guard, their two Masters were waited upon the Thursday following by two Carts one after another, in a well regulated and suitable Procession round the Town, attended by a Number of Spectators of all Degrees Ages and Sizes, and were continually complimented with Snow Balls and Dirt, and at every Corner had five Lashes with a Cowskin well laid on each of their naked black Backs, and then carried home to Gaol. Sundry others of the Brother-hood were lashed at the Publick Whipping-Post, according to the Antient and Honourable Practices of this Place, for punishing the Members of such a vile and wicked Society of Hell-Cats.

  James Alexander took considerable offense at the Gazette’s conflation of black thieves and white Masons and the parallels drawn between slaves’ public whipping and a Masonic parade. In Zenger’s Weekly Journal on February 13, Alexander—writing, as always, anonymously—chided his “Brother Scribler” for having gone too far: “IT has always been laid down as a constant Rule among the Polite Authors, That even in the severest Satyrs there is a certain Limitation or Standard for Good Manners, from which no one can depart without rendring his Writings not only less poignant but disagreeable to the Reader.” Alexander called the Gazette’s satire not only witless but “downright Bawdy” and complained at the paper’s continued abuse of Freemasons. “Not to mention the Encouragement this elaborate Performance gives to the pampered Insolence of the Slaves, I must confess my self at a Loss to find a Cause for the many groundless and idle Reflections often cast upon a Fraternity, to whom I could never learn any other Objection, but that valuable Quality of Knowinghow to keep a Secret.”

  The day after Alexander called the satire “downright Bawdy,” his “Brother Scribler” pointed out that the general tone of Zenger’s Weekly Journal in the turbulent years of its publication had been just as vicious:

  I was extreamly surprized that Mr. Zenger (or his Correspondents) above all others, should censure so hard, as to call out Bawdy, Billingsgate, &c. at some harsh Expressions made use of in Mr. Bradford’s Gazette . . . relating to a piece of Wickedness carried on by a Company of black Slaves. I would recommend Mr. Zenger to look back but a few Months into his past Journals, and there see and compare whether his recommending of Politeness, and advice of using good Manners, proceeds from any inclination he has for either? or whether it is only to Reproach Brother Scribler?

  Still more ardently, the Gazette’s correspondent (probably Horsmanden) attacked Zenger “or his Correspondents” (Alexander) for defending, of all people, criminally convicted black slaves: “I must indeed confess my self at a loss, in what sence he ascribes the Encouragement given to the pamper’d Insolence of the Wicked Slaves, when, on the contrary, their Punishment was just, and justly due, and the infliction highly approved and commended, and their Wickedness highly censured, on which occasion some harsh Expressions have slipt out of the Pen.” More important, “Brother Scribler” pointed out that his essay was only partly satire since what he reported was essentially true—Caesar, Prince, and Cuffee and their friends actually had formed a Masonic lodge—“for it is sufficiently known in this City, that as one of this black Guard was brought down to receive his Punishment, he was so impudent as to cry out, Make Room for a Free MASON.”12

  And there the exchange ended, and the case of the 1738 “Confederacy of Negroes” came to a close. The incident failed to touch off fears of slave insurrection; it didn’t even generate an investigation. Instead, the Geneva Club was put to use fanning the flames of continued political tensions among whites, between the Gazette and the Weekly Journal, between Bradford and Zenger, between Horsmanden and Alexander, between Court and Country Party. In 1738, the city was still “in the midst of Party flames.” When Caesar, Prince, and Cuffee robbed Baker’s tavern, whites were too distracted with their own factiousness, now inflamed by Freemasonry, to worry that the robbery was part of a vast slave conspiracy. But in the winter of 1741, when Quack and Cuffee invited Fortune to John Hughson’s tavern, he, “remembering the free Masons Club,” kept away. And on May 29, when Fortune took the stand at their trial as “Negro Evidence,” he reminded the court and the jury of the black Masons. But in 1742, when Horsmanden prepared Fortune’s testimony for publication, he made sure the “Dishonourable Society of Black Masons” would be forgotten.

  QUACK AND CUFFEE conducted their own defense. Together they called ten witnesses, in an unsuccessful attempt to establish alibis for the time of the fires. Next, according to Horsmanden, “The Prisoners being asked, what they had to offer in their Defence; they offered Nothing but peremptory Denials of what had been testified against them, and Protestations of their Innocency.” The defense was hopeless; the most interesting thing about it is that Quack and Cuffee, who were legally not even people, were given the opportunity to conduct it, as the prosecution was keen to point out. “The Prisoners have been indulged with the same Kind of Trial as is due to Freemen,” William Smith reminded the jury, “though they might have been proceeded against in a more summary and less favourable Way.”

  According to the Clarke transcript, Bradley then “summ’d up,” but Horsmanden attributed the closing statement to the jury to William Smith. Smith was said by his son to have had “the natural advantages of figure, voice, vivacity, memory, imagination, promptness, strong passions, volubility, invention, and a taste for ornament.” He was a captivating speaker. 13

  “Gentlemen,” Smith began, “No Scheme more monstrous could have been invented; nor can any Thing be thought of more foolish, than the Motives that induced these Wretches to enter into it! What more ridiculous, than that Hughson, in Consequence of this Scheme, should become a King! Caesar . . . a Governor! That the White Men should be all killed, and the Women become a Prey to the rapacious Lust of these Villains! That these Slaves should thereby establish themselves in Peace and Freedom in the plunder’d Wealth of their slaughter’d Masters!” Smith proceeded to review the question of “Negro Evidence,” reminding jurors that although it was impossible to administer an oath to “Pagan Negroes,” the testimony of Fortune and Sandy was damning. The witnesses, he argued, had offered “FULL PROOF” that Cuffee had set fire to Frederick Philipse’s storehouse and Quack had burned Fort George.

  The jury withdrew to deliberate, attended by a constable, sworn to “suffer no person whatever to speak to them” and to keep them “without Meat, Drink, Fire or Candle light” until “they are agreed on their verdict.”14 It didn’t take long. The jury returned and declared Quack and Cuffee guilty as charged. Before adjourning, Philipse deferred to Horsmanden to deliver the frightful sentence: “you shall be chained to a Stake, and burnt to Death.” When Mills brought the two men back to the dungeon, Cuffee, passing John Hughson in his cell, seethed at him, “I may thank you for this.”

  BURNING AT THE STAKE was a punishment reserved for those who committed “petty treason” by defying the relationship between ruler and ruled, in this case, slaveowner and slave. It was an atrocious way to die, but, by contemporary standards, it was a grisly kind of restraint. Compared to the men and women convicted of conspiracy in New York in 1712 and in Antigua in 1736, Quack and Cuffee were objects of mercy. In 1712, Robin, who had killed his owner, Adrian Hoghlandt, was hung by chains until he starved to death; Claus, convicted as accessory to Hoghlandt’s murder, was broken upon the wheel, to languish until dying of his wounds; and Tom, owned by the bolter Nicholas Roosevelt, was, for shooting Andries Beekman with a pistol, sentenced to be roasted to death slowly, over a closely tended fire, to be tormented for eight to ten hours,
until his body was consumed to ashes. In Antigua in 1736, the punishments were just as fierce: hanged in chains, some men convicted in Antigua lived for days before dying of hunger and thirst; one man fell out of his irons “by his Body being wasted,” and was hoisted back up “into his old Birth” to suffer still. Court, the king of the slaves, was “broke on the Wheel, his Head cut off, and put on a Pole at the Gaol Door, his Body burnt.”15

  In Clarke’s transcript of Quack and Cuffee’s trial, the sentencing is omitted, but Horsmanden, in his Journal, having deleted Fortune’s mention of the Freemasons, added Burton’s dishcloth slap, and downplayed the importance of “Negro Evidence,” concluded his record of the trial by reproducing his own speech in its entirety. The Third Justice addressed the prisoners in rhetoric more florid even than Smith’s, stressing both the fiendishness and the futility of the plot:

  YOU both now stand convicted of one of the most horrid and detestable Pieces of Villainy, that ever Satan instilled into the Heart of human Creatures to put in Practice. . . . I know not which is the more astonishing, the extreme Folly, or Wickedness, of so base and shocking a Conspiracy; for as to any View of Liberty or Government you could propose to yourselves, upon the Success of burning the City, robbing, butchering and destroying the Inhabitants; what could it be expected to end in . . . but your own Destruction?

  On Saturday morning, May 30, a minister visited Quack and Cuffee in the dungeon and urged them to confess. They protested their innocence. 16 At three o’clock, Sheriff William Jamison came for them, placed them in shackles, carried them upstairs and outside, loaded them onto a cart. A parade of New Yorkers followed to a site at the edge of the Negroes Burial Ground, just south of the Little Collect. There, Jamison chained the two condemned men to tall wooden stakes, rising like ship’s masts from a sea of faggots. The crowd was huge. Jamison called it a mob. It was near to rioting. New Yorkers flocked to see Quack and Cuffee “surrounded with Piles of Wood ready for setting Fire to, which the People were very impatient to have done, their Resentment raised to the utmost Pitch against them.”