New York Burning

by Jill Lepore

  Eighteenth-century executions were public spectacles, attended by men, women, and children of all ages. (In Philadelphia in 1738, a five-year-old boy died after he accidentally hanged himself while imitating a recent “Execution of Negroes.”) As a very young boy, New Yorker David Grim attended the executions in New York, and he never forgot the sight: “I have a perfect idea of seing the Negroes chained to a stake, and there burned to death.” 17

  Swarms of Antiguans had watched all eighty-eight executions in 1736, out of hatred, out of obligation, out of fascination. “The Burning of the Negroes, hanging them on Gibbets alive, Racking them upon the wheel, &c. takes up almost all our Time,” one weary white Antiguan complained. “I am almost dead with watching.”18

  White New Yorkers attended with the same dedication. “The chief talk now in Town is about the Negroes conspiracy,” wrote Elizabeth DeLancey to her father. Standing in the crowd, Prince, owned by the English bolter Gabriel Crooke, was amazed by “the great Numbers of white People present.” Next to him, his friend York, owned by the Dutch baker Peter Marschalk, whispered that the gathering itself looked like a good place “ to rise” and kill whites. But Prince said it wasn’t worth it; “they might only kill one or two, and then they should be taken, and hanged for it.”

  Like imprisonment, interrogation, and trial, an execution was a pageant, intended to produce a confession. After Quack and Cuffee were chained to their stakes, George Joseph Moore, the Supreme Court clerk, and John Roosevelt, Quack’s owner, questioned them, “endeavouring to persuade them to confess their Guilt.” Moore, lying, told Cuffee that Quack had already confessed; Roosevelt told Quack that Cuffee had. Betrayed, and desperate to be spared the flames, the two men blurted out hasty confessions and together named nearly thirty other men as co-conspirators. Cuffee admitted to burning Philipse’s storehouse, setting the fire with lighted charcoal he had carried “in his Pocket between two Oyster Shells.” Quack admitted to setting fire to the fort, having carried a “lighted Stick” from the servants’ hall, through the room of his wife, Barbara, who was Clarke’s cook, and placing it “near the Gutter, betwixt the Shingles, and the Roof of the House.” His wife, he insisted, “was no Ways concerned,” and his young son, Denby, “knew nothing of the Matter.” Both men obligingly agreed that John Hughson “was the first Contriver of the whole Plot” and “that they should never have thought of it, if he had not put it into their Heads.” With “the Mob pressing forard and interrupting,” Quack could barely finish his confession. “In the Midst of great Noise and Confusion,” the confessions “were minuted down,” endorsed, “As told to me at the Stake,” and signed by Moore. Clarke sent a copy of both confessions to England.

  The written confessions were incomplete, and riddled with errors. Elizabeth DeLancey, who attended the executions, reported to her father that Quack and Cuffee had confessed “that the Spaniards are concern’d & that ours in particular design’d to have sat fire to the house & to have distroy’d us. He is still in prison.”19 But according to the original confession, Clarke’s transcript, and Horsmanden’s Journal, neither Quack nor Cuffee ever mentioned a “Spanish Negro” owned by Elizabeth or Peter DeLancey, and the only one of their slaves that Horsmanden ever reported as having been arrested, Pompey, was not Spanish, and was not jailed until June 20.

  In spite of the conditions under which such confessions were taken, Horsmanden and many of his contemporaries did not consider them suspicious; rather, they were all the more valuable because they were “particularly and expressly confirmed in the Midst of Flames, which is the highest Attestation.” Relying on a more medieval, inquisitorial view of justice than that which would lead, decades later, to the exclusion of involuntary confessions, Horsmanden considered the threat of death a badge of truth.

  By law and custom, the confessions of Quack and Cuffee ought to have secured, at the very least, a reduction of their sentence from burning to hanging. But Quack and Cuffee found no mercy in New York. The mob grew restless, and Jamison decided that the spectators, who had come to watch a burning, would not be denied. If anything, the confessions only further inflamed the crowd. The sheriff “declared his Opinion, that the carrying the Negroes back” to City Hall while a gallows was built “would be impracticable” and would have required “a strong Guard,” which was not on hand. The piles were lit, and Quack and Cuffee shortly longed for death.

  BEFORE NIGHTFALL, the men accused by Quack and Cuffee were rounded up and thrown in jail. On Sunday, a day of rest and prayer, from pulpits at Trinity Church, at the New Dutch Church, at the Old Dutch Church, and everywhere across the city, ministers preached about the lessons to be learned from these “Monsters of Iniquity” while the charred remains of Quack and Cuffee still smoked in a valley of dew-covered spring grass and wildflowers. Maybe Quack’s wife, Barbara, tried to take his body down, to bury it. Maybe Cuffee’s father and brother tried to bury his. More likely, the sheriff insisted that no one touch them, that they should serve, instead, as a monument. That night, “a Negro of [Benjamin] Pecks cut his throat.” Elizabeth DeLancey wrote to her father, “I suppose he knew himself guilty & did it to prevent a harder death.” 20 (In his Journal, Horsmanden did not report this man’s death, nor did he record his name.)

  On Monday morning, June 1, the investigation resumed. Mills fetched Sarah, “Mrs. Burk’s Negro Wench,” from her cell. She was, said Horsmanden, “one of the oddest Animals amongst the black Confederates, and gave the most Trouble in her Examinations; a Creature of an outragious Spirit.” Sarah had been arrested on May 25, after Sandy said that she and another man named Fortune, owned by John Vanderspiegle, “were to have set Fire to the Meal Market.” (The Meal—grain—Market, at the base of Wall Street, also served as the slave market.) On the day of her arrest, Sarah said “she knew Nothing of the Matter.” As Horsmanden described it, her denial was passionate: she “threw herself into most violent Agitations; foamed at the Mouth, and uttered the bitterest Imprecations.” But after it was made clear “that she could entertain no Hopes of escaping with Life” except by confessing, Sarah began to speak, and, according to Horsmanden, she “seemed abundantly easier after disburthening Part of the Secret.”

  She confessed that although she had never been to John Hughson’s tavern, she had been to a meeting of twenty or thirty black men at the house of Dutch cooper Gerardus Comfort, “about five Weeks before the Fort was fired.” Sarah proceeded to reel off a long list of names, and to paint a vivid scene of villainy—black men, and a handful of black women, at Gerardus Comfort’s house who “whetted their Knives on a Stone, some complaining, that their Knives were rusty and blunt; and some said, that their Knives were sharp enough to cut off a white Man’s Head.”

  But Sarah’s “outragious Spirit” soon returned. When her statement was read over to her, “she retracted, and excused many Persons; saying, such a One and such a One went away before the Bargain was made.” Sarah was sent back down to the dungeon.

  Later that afternoon, John Hughson, who, like everyone in that cellar, must have thought a good deal about Quack and Cuffee’s final minutes, told Mills that he wanted to “open his Heart” to one of the judges. Horsmanden, still vexed by Sarah’s retraction, summoned Hughson for an interview in chambers. Hughson asked for a Bible to offer a sworn statement, but Horsmanden refused to give him one and instead hotly “reproached him with his wicked Life and Practices.” Hughson changed his mind about confessing, “Whereupon the Recorder remanded him to Jail.”

  THREE DAYS LATER, on Thursday, June 4, Hughson, his wife and daughter, and Peggy Kerry were tried on three new charges, all of which stemmed from Quack and Cuffee’s confessions: they were indicted for entering into a conspiracy with Caesar, Prince, and Cuffee to burn the city; for aiding Quack in burning the fort; and for aiding Cuffee in burning Philipse’s storehouse. At City Hall, spectators filled the benches on the floor, crowded, standing, in the aisles, and burdened the balcony.

  Only Horsmanden’s account of this trial survive
s; Clarke did not send a copy of the trial minutes to England. Sixteen jurors were sworn, at least two of whom, Lashier and Arding, had served in the trial of Quack and Cuffee. Hughson successfully challenged one juror, “a young Gentleman, Merchant of the Town,” at which Kerry “seemed out of Humour, and intimated, That he had challenged one of the best of them all; which occasioned some Mirth to those within the Hearing of it.” Kerry, Horsmanden intimated, had provided her sexual services not only to slaves but also to white men wealthy enough to serve on a jury.

  After the indictments were read, Attorney General Bradley delivered an opening statement naming Hughson the “author” of the conspiracy:

  Gentlemen, It will appear to you in the Course of the Evidence for the King upon this Trial, That John Hughson was the chief Contriver, Abettor, and Encourager of all this Mystery of Iniquity:— That it was He, who advised and procured secret and frequent Meetings of the Negroes, and the Rest of the Conspirators, at his House, there to form and carry on these horrible Conspiracies.— That it was he that swore the Negroes Quack and Cuffee, with many others, and himself too, into this direful Plot.—That it was He who devised Firebrands, Death, and Destruction to be sent among you. . . . He—Murderous and Remorseless He! . . . Infamous Hughson!— . . . Gentlemen, This is that Hughson! whose Name, and most detestable Conspiracies will no doubt be had in everlasting Remembrance, to his eternal Reproach; and stand recorded to latest Posterity,—This is the Man!—This, that Grand Incendiary!—That Arch Rebel against God, his King, and his Country! . . . Gentlemen, Behold the Author, and Abettor of all the late Conflagrations, Terrors, and Devastation that have befallen this City.

  Fortune and Sandy were not allowed to testify at this trial, since “Negro Evidence” was not allowed against whites, which made the dying confessions of Quack and Cuffee all the more important: the prosecution called George Joseph Moore and John Roosevelt to “prove the Confessions of those two Negroes, taken in Writing at the Stake.” (In fact, it was necessary for Quack and Cuffee to die before the Hughsons and Kerry could be convicted; only their dying confessions, and not their living testimony, was admissible.) Arthur Price and Mary Burton also took the stand. When Burton testified, the defendants rolled their eyes “as if astonished, and said, she was a very wicked Creature, and protested all she said was false.” Meanwhile, Sarah Hughson had her nursing child brought to her, but even as it sucked, it “was ordered to be taken away.”

  John Hughson conducted the defense for all four prisoners. He called four rather weak witnesses, including a soldier’s wife named Eleanor Ryan, who had lodged at Hughson’s all winter, lying “sick in Bed in the Kitchen almost Day and Night.” She had seen “no Negroes there” except for Cuffee and Caesar, and “never saw any Entertainments there for Negroes.” One of Hughson’s witnesses, Adam King, proved more valuable to the prosecution. King testified “That of late he took Hughson’s House to be disorderly; for he saw whole Companies of Negroes playing at Dice there,” after which a smirking Attorney General Bradley turned to Hughson and asked, “Have you any more such Witnesses as this?”

  William Smith delivered the closing statement, echoing Bradley’s argument that in Hughson the “Ringleader” had been found. Then, lest the jury hesitate to convict, Horsmanden delivered an unambiguous charge: “I make no doubt, but you will discharge a good Conscience, and find them Guilty.” After brief deliberation, the jury returned with the desired verdict. Four days later, Philipse delivered the sentence of death by hanging, regretting only that no more severe punishment was allowable by law since the whites, unlike the blacks, had not committed “petty treason” and could not be burned at the stake (something that Elizabeth DeLancey also regretted: “I think no death can be too bad for him,” she wrote of Hughson, “he is prov’d to be a most vile wicked Wretch”). 21 Philipse took the occasion to express his disgust at what had taken place at Hughson’s tavern: “For People who have been brought up, and always lived in a Christian Country, and also called themselves Christians, to be guilty not only of making Negro Slaves their Equals, but even their Superiors, by waiting upon, keeping with, and entertaining them, with Meat, Drink, and Lodging; and what is much more amazing, to plot, conspire, consult, abet and encourage these black Seed of Cain, to burn the City, and to kill and destroy us all.—GOOD GOD!”

  ON MONDAY, June 8, six black men were tried for conspiracy: John Chambers’s Robin; Thomas Ellison’s Jamaica; another Caesar, owned by an English glover, Benjamin Peck (whose fellow slave had cut his throat in jail the night after Quack and Cuffee were burned); another Cuffee, a slave of a wealthy Portuguese Jewish merchant, Lewis Gomez; and Cook and Jack, owned by Gerardus Comfort, at whose house the slave Sarah, that “Creature of an outragious Spirit,” had said she had attended a meeting of twenty or thirty black men and women. All six men were sentenced to die. Five, including Jack, were to be burned at the stake the next day.

  That night, eyeing death, Jack sent a desperate message to the judges: “if his Life might be spared, he would discover all that he knew of the Conspiracy.”

  Daniel Horsmanden and Frederick Philipse rushed to City Hall and began their interrogation. Jack had been arrested on May 26. He had been in jail for two weeks; he had heard Cuffee weep, and had seen him and Quack taken from their cells to be burned at the stake. He knew that he, and everyone convicted alongside him, had been mentioned in Quack and Cuffee’s dying confessions. Jack was ready to confess, and he didn’t want to risk waiting until the flames licked his feet. But when the judges arrived, they encountered an obstacle: Jack’s “Dialect was so perfectly Negro and unintelligible, ’twas thought, that ’twould be impossible to make any Thing of him without the Help of an Interpreter.”

  It is difficult to know what language Jack spoke. Many city slaves spoke more than one language, having acquired over their lifetimes as many tongues as masters: English, Dutch, French, German, Welsh, and more. Adolph Philipse’s Cuffee spoke English and understood Spanish: “Venez a qui Seignior,” a “Spanish Negro” once called to him. Jacobus Vaarck’s slave Bastian spoke both English and fluent French. Only that 30 percent of the newest arrivals who came directly from Africa could “scarce speak a Word of English,” speaking, instead, one of their native tongues: Kikongo, Akan, Gã, Mandinga, Soninke, Temne, Fulbe, Sere, or any of the many other African languages heard on the streets of New York. Two of Comfort’s slaves, Cook and Jenny, spoke Akan, and Jack might have, too. Akan was, in fact, a lingua franca in West Africa. Cook, who was also called “Acco,” probably came from Accra (now the capital city of Ghana) and may have spoken Gã, a language known in the eighteenth century as Accra. Gã is closely related to Akan, and in the eighteenth century most Gã speakers could also speak Akan.22 Jack may have spoken Akan as well, and may have been born in Africa. Maybe he was once called Quack, before his name was anglicized.

  Most black New Yorkers also spoke languages that mixed Old World and New: whatever other languages Jack spoke when he talked to Acco or other black men and women, to whites he apparently talked in a “perfectly Negro” dialect, probably a creole. To whites, creolized black speech was worthy of ridicule. When Dr. Alexander Hamilton was on the road to New York City in 1744, his slave Dromo asked directions from a black woman on Coney Island. She spoke with such a strong Dutch inflection that Dromo, a Marylander who spoke an eighteenth-century black English, could barely understand her. Hamilton found their conversation so amusing that he recorded it in his journal:

  “Dis de way to York?” says Dromo. “Yaw, dat is Yarikee,” said the wench, pointing to the steeples. “What devil you say?” replys Dromo. “Yaw, mynheer,” said the wench. “Damme you, what you say?” said Dromo again. “Yaw, yaw,” said the girl. “You a damn black bitch,” said Dromo, and so rid on. 23

  Horsmanden included a similar sample of dialect in his Journal, evidently for his readers’ amusement. The first slave Jack accused was Ben, owned by Captain Marshall. In Jack’s confession in the Journal, he refers to Ben as “Ben (Capt. Ma
rshall’s Negro).” But Horsmanden, in a footnote, reported that Jack had actually identified Ben differently: “His Master live in Tall House Broadway. Ben ride de fat Horse.” This was what Horsmanden meant by “unintelligible Jargon”: a Caribbean creole, quite possibly the speech of an Akan-speaking man born in Africa who had spent time in Jamaica. It was all of Jack’s speech that Horsmanden left intact.

  Confronted with Jack’s “unintelligible” speech, Philipse and Horsmanden sought the aid of two of Gerardus Comfort’s sons-in-law, who said “they could make a shift to understand his Language.” Slowly, Jack’s confession took shape: his speech was translated, transcribed, and transformed. By nightfall, the work was unfinished, and “there was not Time to commit his Confession to Writing.” Only after questioning Jack for “three successive Days, Morning and Afternoon” did Horsmanden draft a document entitled “The Confession of Jack,” on June 10. Ten days later, Clarke had it copied and sent it off to the Lords of Trade. After the trials ended, the document was filed in the Secretary’s Office as “June 8, 9, 10. Confession. Jack, giving account of a large meeting of the negro conspirators, at Comfort’s house, naming each negro, and what each agreed to do.”24 A year later, Horsmanden copied it, and in 1744 he included it in his Journal as “Examination & Confession of Jack (Comfort’s) Before One of the Judges. ”

  The differences between Clarke’s manuscript “Confession” and Horsmanden’s printed “Examination & Confession” are more typographical than textual. A line from the “Confession,”