New York Burning

by Jill Lepore

  In the afternoon, Murray and Horsmanden together interrogated Jack at City Hall. Just as Adam had suspected, Jack betrayed him. Murray’s Jack confessed that he had been to Comfort’s for tea water and, from there, went to Hughson’s for the “Great Feast” in January. “As he was going home with the Tea-Water,” he said, “he met Adam, his Fellow-Servant, by old Mr. DeLancey’s House, and he told Adam where he had been and what had been talked of, and what Company was at Hugh- son’s . . . Adam thereupon ordered him to set his Cag down; which he did, and gave it in Charge to one of Mr. DeLancey’s Negro Wenches, and said they would go down there and drink some Punch.” He added that he and Adam had sworn to the plot and “expected the French and Spaniards here, and then they would fire and plunder the Houses and carry all to Hughson’s, who was to carry them off into another Country, and make them a free People.” Both men had also attended the great meeting at Comfort’s. There, Adam had agreed to kill Joseph and Grace Murray and their housekeeper Mrs. Dimmock and her daughter, while Jack had agreed to kill Murray’s three other slaves: Caesar, Congo, and Dido.

  When Murray returned home later that afternoon, he found Adam “running backwards and forwards like a distracted Creature.” Murray called Adam to his study “and charged him as one concerned in the Conspiracy.” Adam denied it. Murray attempted to persuade him to confess and “used many Arguments, to prevail with him.” When Adam continued to protest his innocence, Murray “delivered him to the Constable.”

  That night, two of Murray’s law clerks went to City Hall to see Adam in jail. They, too, tried to convince him to confess. He told them he was innocent and that “it was Nothing but damn’d Lies that brought him there; that he knew who was the Author of them, and would be revenged if he died for it.” He asked them to name his accuser, and they said Jack. Adam banged his head against a beam and declared, “ then I am a dead Man.”

  Before the two clerks left, Adam gave them his silver “Shoe- and Knee-Buckles” and asked them to give them to Caesar. They urged him again to confess. “What they would have him to say?” he asked. “They would have him speak sincerely, whether he was guilty or not.” “Why then,” Adam said, “to speak sincerely, I am guilty.”

  The next morning, Saturday, June 27, Adam’s formal interrogation began. It lasted several days: “the Information that he gave came from him slowly and by piece-meals, which was very tiresome,” Horsmanden complained, “and gave so much Trouble, that he was several Times remanded to Jail, and told that what he said would do him little Service; but as the Constable was taking him away, he would beg to stay, and say he would tell of all he could recollect.”

  In the end, Adam finally admitted that at Hughson’s he had seen “ a littleshort Man,” the newest, and final, villain: the priest.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Blood

  SUMMER CAME and with it, mosquitoes, sucking blood. “These little animals can disfigure a person’s face during a single night,” one itchy visitor to the city complained. Against a hazy sky, the harbor filled with ships while boys jumped from rocks into the East River, keeping clear of lines cast by lazy fishermen from the sun-warmed pebble beaches of its banks. The wind blew hot. In the streets, hogs sweated and dogs panted, seeking the shade of doorways and market awnings and the smooth coolness of the marble steps of fashionable houses, only to be shooed away by broom-wielding servants and house slaves. At dusk, couples strolled on the Bowling Green and dined on lobsters and watermelons. In the evening, with its unbearable humidity, well-heeled New Yorkers sought relief on their rooftop balconies, cursing the city’s teeming population of tree toads, whose clamorous croaking drowned out the songs of birds.1

  Meanwhile, on a small island in the still waters of the Collect, the rotting corpses of John Hughson and Caesar hung from chains, stinking and oozing in the sun. Caesar’s body had been gibbeted on May 11, Hughson’s on June 12. The air was heavy, and the ground wet, with their decay. The cobbler who would be king and the slave who would be governor fermented and dripped, long since found by birds, beetles, flies, and worms, pecking, sapping, gnawing. By the end of June a rumor had spread that the two corpses had changed, had exchanged color: Hughson had turned black and Caesar white. Curious New Yorkers flocked to find out. Those who could bear the smell discovered, on rowing or wading out to the island, that Hughson’s “Face, Neck, Hands and Feet, were of a deep shining Black, rather blacker than the Negro placed by him.” Not only his skin but his hair and nose and even his lips had changed: “the Hair of Hughson’s Beard and Neck (his Head could not be seen, for he had a Cap on) was curling like the Wool of a Negro’s Beard and Head; and the Features of his Face were of the Symmetry of a Negro Beauty; the Nose broad and flat, the Nostrils open and extended, the Mouth wide, Lips full and thick.” Caesar, at his side, a man who before his death “was one of the darkest Hue of his Kind,” had “turned whitish,” “bleach’d” by the sun.

  The spectacle “drew Numbers of all Ranks, who had Curiosity, to the Gibbets, for several Days running, in order to be convinced by their own Eyes.” Some considered it miraculous proof of both men’s guilt, of the perversity of their transgression, of their devilish allegiance. More moderate people attributed the change to the natural course of decay, the blood pooling, purplish black, in Hughson’s hands and face while Caesar’s features took on the ghastly pallor of putrefaction. But all “Beholders were amazed at these Appearances.” All summer long, Hughson and Caesar provided “Matter for much Speculation.” And more matter for maggots.

  Like the mercury, the number of jailed slaves climbed. “The Season began to grow warm, as usual,” Horsmanden observed, “and ’twas to be expected that the Heat would be increasing upon us daily.” From their chambers on the second story of City Hall, Horsmanden and Philipse worried about the poorly vented cellar dungeon below them, which housed more than a hundred prisoners. James Mills, responsible for “Emptying the Ordure Tubbs,” must have cursed his job, and perhaps he didn’t do it as often as he ought. The overcrowded dungeon clearly constituted a public health emergency. As Horsmanden explained, “ ’ Twas feared such Numbers of them closely confined together, might breed an Infection.” The judges worried less about the prisoners’ welfare than about the possibility that an epidemic might spread beyond the walls of the dungeon and “breed a Sickness in this City.”2 Philipse and Horsmanden called a meeting of the city’s lawyers for Saturday, June 27, to hasten the collection of confessions, hoping to empty the jail, one way or another, as swiftly as possible.

  Just before they were to meet, Othello, James DeLancey’s most valued slave, entered the city in irons. He had accompanied DeLancey to New England in March, when the Chief Justice led a delegation mediating a boundary dispute between Massachusetts and Rhode Island. In mid-June, while still in Providence, DeLancey questioned Othello about the conspiracy, the news of which he had followed closely, and urged Othello to confess, promising that “he would use his Interest with the Governor to save his Life,” but warning that if Othello returned to New York without confessing, “he would leave him to Justice without Mercy.” Othello denied everything. On June 22, Horsmanden sent word to DeLancey that Pompey, owned by the Chief Justice’s brother Peter, had accused Othello of having sworn to the plot. DeLancey had Othello shackled, and boarded him on a ship heading for New York. When Othello’s vessel docked, on June 27, he was carried through the city streets and thrown into the dungeon.

  Horsmanden began his day, Saturday, June 27, questioning Joseph Murray’s slave Adam, at City Hall. He told him that Othello had been arrested, and Adam, “hearing that, he immediately said, Othello was concernedin the Plot; as if naturally concluding that some Body else had impeached him; for till this Accident, he had not mentioned his Name.” Adam said that Othello had known about the plot since it was first hatched in 1738, and had agreed to kill the DeLanceys. When Adam and Jack were finished butchering Murray’s family, Adam said, they were to help Othello “in murdering the Chief Justice’s.”

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p; In pointing out the suddenness of Adam’s impeachment of Othello, Horsmanden, for once discriminating, cast doubt on Adam’s confession. He was not pleased at the prospect of prosecuting Othello on the eve of DeLancey’s return. Horsmanden knew Othello well. He “had more Sense than the common Rank of Negroes,” Horsmanden allowed, “and great Influence amongst the inferiour Sort.” Othello was a common name among slaves, but DeLancey’s Othello may have been the boy that his brother-in-law, Peter Warren, had bought at the auction of John Montgomerie’s estate in 1732; if so, Horsmanden had known Othello for almost a decade, as the liveried slave of the colony’s most eminent men. As a boy, he served the governor himself. At Montgomerie’s auction, Warren won the bidding on Othello, at £36. Sometime afterward, Othello may have come into DeLancey’s hands; DeLancey managed a £6,000 trust for his sister, Susannah DeLancey Warren.3 Perhaps, as Warren was often at sea—from 1735 to 1742 he commanded the Squirrel, and from September 1740 to August 1741 he patrolled the Caribbean—his wife found she had little employment for Othello, and gave or sold him to her brother.4 Whether or not Warren’s Othello was the same man as DeLancey’s Othello, Daniel Horsmanden had known DeLancey’s Othello for years, having “had frequent Opportunities of seeing this Negro at his House” when he visited the Chief Justice.

  After interrogating Adam on the morning of June 27, Horsmanden attended his scheduled meeting with the city’s attorneys, to better divide the labor of conducting interrogations and expedite the emptying of the dungeon. At the end of that meeting, Horsmanden rushed to question Othello. Othello insisted that he had never heard of the conspiracy. On Monday and Tuesday, Horsmanden returned to City Hall, repeated his inquiries, and reminded Othello that Clarke’s promise of pardon required slaves to confess “on or before the first Day of July”—the following Wednesday.

  Finally, on Tuesday, June 30, Othello was ready to talk: he had been at the feast at Hughson’s at Whitsuntide, 1740, he told Horsmanden; he had been at the “Frolick in the Bowry last Summer,” dancing to fiddle music with free black women; he had talked about the plot with Adam, Cuffee, Prince, Pompey, and Albany at Coenties Market; “and he agreed to join to burn and kill, &c.” It wasn’t much. Othello would not admit to attending the “Great Feast” at Hughson’s at Christmas. And everyone he named was either dead or had already confessed, except for Hanover, the mayor’s coachman, who was apparently beyond reproach and was never arrested. What’s more, it seemed to Horsmanden as if Othello had bided his time in jail. When the Third Justice asked him why he hadn’t confessed on Saturday, “He answered with a Smile, ‘Why, Sir, I was but just then come to Town.’ ” Horsmanden scoffed, “ He was willing to spy the Land first, to see how it lay, to inform himself of how Matters stood, what he had been doing, and to consider whether there could be Room for his Escape.”

  But there was little room for escape, unless it came with the return of his master, who was even then on his way back to New York. On Wednesday morning, Horsmanden sentenced ten convicted men to be hanged. That afternoon, DeLancey finally arrived. On Thursday, July 2, DeLancey entered the courtroom for the first time since the Supreme Court opened its session in April.

  With a long face and delicate features framed by a tumbling, curled wig, DeLancey had a bearing more elegant than either of the two lower judges. In court, he first faced Will, the watchmaker’s slave, who had confessed and been pardoned in St. Kitt’s and Antigua, had pled guilty on June 25. The justices ruled that “it was thought high Time to put it out of his Power to do any further Mischief”: without ever having been tried, Will was sentenced to burn.

  On Friday, DeLancey did not attend court; perhaps he met with Clarke, to report on his travels. That morning, he probably attended the hanging of Prince (Duane), Tony (Latham), Cato (Shurmur), Harry (Kipp), and York (Marschalk). “At the Gallows, two of them died seemingly very Penitent, but none of them acknolwedg’d any Guilt,” Zenger reported. “One of them (to the greatest Surprise of the Spectators) after he had hang [sic] the common Time, or rather longer, when he was cut down, shew’d Symptoms of Life, on which he was tied up again.”5 Even less fortunate was York, whose body was brought to the island near the Powder-house, and hung next to those of Hughson and Caesar.

  James DeLancey, by Gerardus Duyckinck, 1728. Collection of The New-York Historical Society.

  The next day, Saturday, DeLancey and half the city went to watch Will’s execution. Chained to a stake, Will confessed. He said that Othello’s friend Quack, owned by the butcher John Walter, had plotted with two Irish soldiers from the fort, William Kane and Edward Kelly. Comfort’s Jack “was a true Evidence,” Will said—the “Negro Plot” was real— but Cato, owned by alderman John Moore, was not to be believed. Cato had confessed on June 22; he had corroborated Jack’s testimony about the meetings at Comfort’s but had also said that he had attended “a Supper at Hughson’s” with forty or fifty other black men, including Will. In all, Cato had accused twenty-six men. For this, he had been pardoned. In jail, Cato had advised Will “that he would be certainly burnt or hanged if he did not confess; but that if he brought in a good many, it would save his Life; for he had found it so himself; and must say, he was to set his Master’s House on fire, which would make the Judges believe him.”

  Will, who was “expert at Plots,” knew that whatever he said at the stake, his life was beyond saving. His confession brought him no reprieve, not even a reduction of his sentence to hanging. “The Pile being kindled,” Will “set his Back to the Stake, and raising up one of his Legs, laid it upon the Fire.”

  When James DeLancey arrived in New York, he found Othello in chains in the crowded and fouled dungeon, having admitted to plotting to burn the Chief Justice’s house and murder his family. Within four days of his return, DeLancey saw five men hanged, one man gibbeted, and another man burned at the stake who, with his dying breath, insisted that while what Jack had said about what happened at Comfort’s was true, everything else was a lie. Maybe DeLancey had seen enough. And maybe he wondered whether Horsmanden and Philipse, in his absence, had really followed Clarke’s orders. “I desired the Judges to single out only a few of the most notorious for execution, and that I would pardon the rest,” Clarke had reported to the Lords of Trade in June.6 That few, it seemed, had become too many, at considerable cost to the city’s slaveowners, who had lost a good deal of money watching their property go up in flames.

  Just after Will’s execution, DeLancey called a meeting with Philipse and Horsmanden, to examine the list of slaves who had confessed and “to mark out such as should be thought proper to recommend to his Honour the Lieutenant-Governor, to be pardoned.” It was natural that this should be done at precisely that moment; Clarke’s offer of amnesty had just expired. But it seems important that DeLancey’s first major act in the proceedings was processing pardons. On July 4, forty-two men were recommended for pardon and transportation, their owners to pocket the proceeds of their sale in faraway colonies. Five days later, the first of these men were marched from City Hall to the docks and boarded a ship, the Mayflower, headed for Madeira. 7

  James DeLancey’s return marked the beginning of the end. There would be only one more day of trials, on July 15, and only eight more men executed. Of these eight, one, Juan de la Silva, had been convicted in DeLancey’s absence, and another, Othello, was essentially unpardonable, as it would have been more than unseemly for DeLancey to spare his own slave. After DeLancey’s return, the court steered its attention away from the city’s slaves and toward a different threat: papists. On Sunday, July 5, DeLancey began participating in the investigation in earnest, and steered it on a different course. He and Horsmanden together interrogated William Kane, the soldier, who had been named by Will at the stake, and who told a story altogether different from any other testimony that had come before.

  Now the end was near, for now was discovered the final plot. In just a month’s time, Othello would be dead, the last of the slave executions would be over, and Daniel Horsmanden would
happily conclude, “the Old proverb has herein . . . been verifyed That there is Scarce a plot but a priest is at the Bottom of it.”8

  IN THE SECOND WEEK of June, Lieutenant Governor Clarke received a letter from General James Oglethorpe, from South Carolina, warning of “a villainous Design of a very extraordinary Nature, and, if true, very important, viz. That the Spaniards had imployed Emissaries to burn all the Magazines and considerable Towns in the English North-America, thereby to prevent the Subsisting of the great Expedition and Fleet in the West-Indies,” that is, to deny provisions to British vessels fighting a sea war with Spain. “And that for this Purpose,” Oglethorpe warned, “many Priests were employed, who pretended to be Physicians, Dancing-Masters, and other such Kinds of Occupations; and under that Pretence to get Admittance and Confi- dence in Families. ” Oglethorpe had not been able to confirm this “intelligence” and could not give credit to it, “since the thing was too horrid for any prince to order,” but he was sufficiently alarmed to issue the warning.

  On June 20, Clarke forwarded Oglethorpe’s letter to the Lords of Trade and reported, “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 confest.” On June 18, Tom, owned by the English sailmaker Benjamin Moore, had confessed that when he told Cuffee (Philipse) he wouldn’t go to Hughson’s any more because “what they were going about was a very great Sin . . . Cuffee then called him a Fool, and told him, that if he thought it a wrong Thing, or a Sin, there was a Man that he knew, that could forgive him.” Only a priest would promise such a thing, and it was a thing Protestants abhorred; absolution gave priests license to encourage depravity. “There was in Town some time ago a man who is said to be a Romish Priest, who used to be at Huson’s,” Clarke reported, “but [he] has disappeared ever since the discovery of the conspiracy and is not now to be found.” 9