New York Burning

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by Jill Lepore


  John Hale was a minister from Beverly who had been involved in the witchcraft trials but had almost immediately regretted that involvement. He began writing his Modest Enquiry in 1697 in order “to prevent for the future such sufferings.” He explained, “Among Satans Mysteries of iniquity, this of Witchcraft is one of the most difficult to be searched out by the Sons of men,” but in their search in 1692, grievous errors had been committed, including the court’s reliance on spectral evidence. “What grief of heart it brings to a tender conscience, to have been unwittingly encouraging of the Sufferings of the innocent.” Hale completed his book in 1698 but was reluctant to publish it. He died in 1700. Two years later, his Modest Enquiry was finally printed.

  By 1741, Modest Enquiry had been out of print for almost forty years. It was a rare book. But whoever wrote that anonymous letter to Cadwallader Colden had a copy handy. Whoever wrote to Colden not only owned Hale’s Modest Enquiry; he also understood legal matters, knew Latin, read Boston newspapers, followed foreign news closely, and—the most difficult criterion to satisfy of all—believed in the essential humanity of Africans: “who are flesh & blood as well as we.”

  Such sentiments had long been voiced in New England: in 1700, the Bostonian Samuel Sewall had argued that “Ethiopians, as black as they are,” are “brethren and sisters of the last Adam, and the offspring of God.” Elsewhere, such views were expressed most often by Quakers, as part of an emerging anti-slavery movement. The London Yearly Meeting condemned slave trading as early as 1727. Two years later, Benjamin Franklin printed a tract by a Philadelphia Quaker, Ralph Sandiford, entitled A Brief Examination of the Practice of the Times, in which he called slavery “the most arbitrary and tyrannical oppression that hell has invented on this globe.” (Sandiford’s book was reprinted the following year under the title The Mystery of Iniquity; for Sandiford, the problem of evil was slavery itself, not slave rebellion.) In 1738, Franklin printed a call by another Philadelphian, Benjamin Lay, addressed to All Slave-Keepers, That keep the Innocent in Bondage. Lay, an ascetic who lived in a cave, railed against slavery at Quaker meetings throughout the middle colonies. In New Jersey in 1738, he hid a bladder filled with pokeberry juice in a hollowed-out book and called out to the meeting, “Oh all you Negro masters who are contentedly holding your fellow creatures in a state of slavery. . . . It would be as justifiable in the sight of the Almighty . . . if you should thrust a sword through their hearts as I do through this book!” With that, he drew a sword and stabbed the book, which burst, splattering the crowd with pokeberry juice blood.

  In 1741, John Bell in London warned Quaker slaveowners in the colonies that the “Vials” of God’s “Wrath shall be poured forth upon the Unmerciful, the cruel Oppressors, and all the Workers of Iniquity.” Five years later, the colonial Quaker John Woolman, in his essay “Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes,” reminded readers “that all nations are of one blood.” Like Bell and George Whitefield, Woolman also warned of God’s vengeance: “Many slaves on this continent are oppressed, and their cries have reached the ears of the Most High! Such is the purity and certainty of his judgments that he cannot be partial in our favour. . . . Should we now . . . neglect to do our duty . . . it may be that terrible things in righteousness God may answer us.”9

  Whoever wrote that letter to Cadwallader Colden echoed all of these writings when he warned: “For we have too much reason to fear that the Divine vengeance does & will pursue us for our ill treatment to the bodies & souls of our poor slaves.” But the writer also appears to have been a slaveowner himself.

  MOST OF THE MASSACHUSETTS COMMISSIONERS understood the law, knew their history, and several had Salem connections. But, as the historian Douglas Winiarski has recently discovered, the letter turns out to have been written not by one of the commissioners but by Josiah Cotton.10 Cotton, a Plymouth judge, was summoned to appear before the boundary commissioners in June. As he reported in his diary, he was disappointed with the result, complaining that the commission had “determin’d the Matter much in Favor of Rhode Island.” Cotton graduated from Harvard in 1698, read Boston newspapers, preached to the Indians, and considered himself a man of humanity and compassion. He was also a slave owner; in 1739, he had been distressed by “the Running away of Our Negro Man Quominuk,” whose flight had surprised him. “I had always some secret Hopes that he would be of his own Accord return again,” Cotton wrote, “Considering the Privileges and Liberty he here enjoyed, & his two Children left in Our hands.” (In 1741, Cotton travelled to Connecticut to see whether “a Stray Negro taken up & imprisoned at Fairfield” might be his runaway. He was not.) Classically educated, trained in the law, and a somewhat ambivalent slave owner, Cotton was also all but obsessed with the Salem witchcraft trials. Not only had he read Hale’s 1702 Modest Inquiry, he had tried, in 1735, to have the dozens of unbound copies of it lying around in a Bostom printer’s shop bound and distributed, free of charge, as “a Service acceptable to God & profitable to future Generations.”

  Descended from a family of Puritan divines, Cotton was twelve years old in 1692, and he had believed the Salem witches guilty. In 1729, he reflected on his error, and on the childishness of such beliefs: “The Notions that the Common People have imbibed concerning Witchcraft, & which Men of Learning also have by far too much given in to, are as it Seems to Me monstrously Absurd, Incredible & Impossible, & Yet Such Notions I did (as it were) Suck in with my Mothers Milk . . . till Meeting with Mr. Hales Book many years ago.” By the 1730s, the specter of Salem had become still more personal for Cotton, as he fought superstition in his own community, especially after enduring a lawsuit regarding a house he owned in Plymouth whose tenants believed it was haunted.11

  In the spring and summer of 1741, Cotton was himself haunted by the news he heard from New York. In July, he sent his letter to Colden, anonymously, and copied it into his account of his life for that year: “New York in the Summer past has been the Scene of a Terrible Tragedy; . . . Whereupon I wrote & Sent the following Letter to a Gentleman of that City.” So appalled was Cotton by Ury’s execution in August (“he is as innocent as the Child Unborn”) that, in September, he decided to make the letter—if not his authorship of it—public. “One would think the solemn Declaration of the poor Romish Priest at the point of Death shou’d open their Eyes and given them a terrible Shock,” he wrote in The New York Weekly Journal on September 29, 1741. The newspaper printed Cotton’s letter in full, along with his remarks about how “the late terrible Combustion at New York,” like “Our New England Tragedy at Salem,” “must needs be shocking to any one that has the last Spark of Humanity residing in his Breast.”12

  Cotton’s attitude reveals the range of thinking about race and slavery in the northern colonies in 1741. In a world where it was possible to burn black men at the stake as monsters, it was also possible to see them as humans unjustly oppressed, the victims of foolish delusions. Cadwallader Colden was apparently not surprised by the latter point of view, nor did it strike him as particularly far-fetched; indeed, he thought it came from nearer to hand: he believed the writer of the letter was a New Yorker disguising himself as a New Englander. He was wrong. But his suspicion points to just how much New Yorkers must have been grumbling, in the summer of 1741, about the direction of the investigation, and bridling at Mary Burton’s accusations against men “of higher degree & better circumstances & Characters.” Much the same conclusion was reached outside the city. For Cotton, nothing confirmed the comparison with Salem more than the abrupt conclusion of the trials in New York as the result of Burton’s accusations against “People in Ruffles.” In September of 1742, a year after it all ended, Cotton wrote, “I have lately heard that the Accusations of a Person nearly related to One of the Superior Gentlemen of that Government put an End to the Prosecution.” As in Salem, only when men of consequence stood accused would the travesty come to a halt. But no one, not Colden, not Cotton, not Horsmanden, ever named the gentlemen in question.

  “THE DESIG
N” of the letter was “to endeavour the putting an end to the bloody Tragedy.” By the time Colden received it, on August 8, that tragedy had run its course. But the letter did ensure that the trial proceedings would be published. As Colden wrote to Clarke, “I am of Opinion it may be Proper to publish the Priests Tryal & the other Material Evidences of the Plot to prevent the prevailing of such an Opinion.” 13 Horsmanden himself had written on August 7, “We come under a Necessity of making a Sort of Stand.”

  In November 1741, the Assembly voted to pay Daniel Horsmanden £250 to research and digest the laws of the colony, in order that they might be printed. Horsmanden accepted the payment, but used it, instead, to collect and prepare the conspiracy proceedings for publication—and not just Ury’s trial, as Colden had suggested, but the entire investigation. Out of loyalty to DeLancey, Horsmanden was willing to defend Ury’s conviction, but if he were to bother to vindicate the proceedings, he was keen to detail Hughson’s Plot, with its political message about the dangers of party. Still, he despaired of persuading those who said “That there was no Plot at all!” “( for that would have been a vain Undertaking; the Æthiopian might assoon [sic] change his Skin).” If Horsmanden was motivated largely by political concerns, he also wanted to rehabilitate his reputation, and he hoped to earn some money.14 But Horsmanden also wrote to rescue Mary Burton’s reputation, and to ensure that she would receive her reward.

  After the trials ended, Horsmanden took a break before picking up his pen. “It was some Time before the Compiler could submit himself to undergo a Drudgery of this kind,” he explained to his reader, for “the Task was not very inviting, and he had borne a sufficient Fatigue, under an ill State of Health, in the Share he had in the Proceedings themselves.” (What ailed him was never mentioned.) In the days, weeks, and months immediately following Ury’s execution, Horsmanden, Philipse, and DeLancey tied up the loose ends of the investigation. On August 31, the Irish soldiers and assorted poor whites named by William Kane—John Corry, Andrew Ryan, Edward Kelly, Edward Murphy, Peter Connolly, John Coffin, and David Johnson—were discharged. On September 24, under Clarke’s order, the city marked a Day of Thanksgiving, to give thanks to God for “the Deliverance of his Majesty’s Subjects here from the Destruction wherewith they were so generally threatned by the late Conspiracy.” A month later, John Hughson’s father and brothers were pardoned, “upon Condition of their leaving the Province.”

  Meanwhile, Mary Burton, who had been promised her freedom, remained a servant. She had left Hughson’s house on March 3, 1741. For a few nights, she stayed with the jailkeeper James Mills in his garret apartment at City Hall. Sometime before the fire at the fort, on March 18, she had been placed in the house of a man named Thomas Wilson, and became his servant; Wilson must have paid Hughson for her indenture. On June 19, 1741, the Common Council paid Wilson £10 “for the time of his Servant Mary Burton: and for the Cloaths he has purchased for her.” Why Wilson chose to sell Mary Burton is unclear. But, in buying Burton’s “time”—the remaining years of her indenture—from Wilson, the Common Council did not free her. Instead, Burton became a servant of the Corporation of the City of New York.

  Mary Burton believed she was due the reward that the Common Council had promised, in a proclamation of April 11, 1741, “to any white person. that Shall Discover any person or persons lately Concern’d in Setting fire to any Dwelling House. or Store House in this City. (So that Such person or persons As be Convicted thereof) the Sum of One hundred pounds.” But it seems likely that the Common Council, which proved unresponsive to her request, believed she was not eligible for the reward since her most substantial discoveries—exposing the plot and naming Caesar, Prince, Cuffee, the Hughsons, and Kerry—had come before April 11. Over the summer, when Mary Burton was being damned in the streets, she knew better than to press her case. But she must have bridled at her continued servitude, as did Daniel Horsmanden.

  By winter, Horsmanden had begun stirring up fears of slave rebellion once again. A January 1742 letter, signed by Clarke but undoubtedly written by Horsmanden, lamented that “the Insolence of the Negroes is as great, if not greater, than ever.” “One would think our signal Preservation could never be forgot,” Clarke remarked, warning that more conspirators were at large: “though we have felled the Tree, I fear it is not entirely rooted up.” Over the next two months, Horsmanden tried to generate interest in conducting more prosecutions, especially after a fire broke out at a house near the Old Dutch Church in February. A slave named Tom, owned by Mrs. Divertie Bradt, was arrested and tried in the municipal court. A jury of five freeholders, including James Alexander, found him guilty. On March 2, 1742, Horsmanden, in his capacity as Recorder, delivered the sentence before “a large Audience,” taking the occasion to remind New Yorkers of the nature of their slaves and to “awaken the People to a Sense of their Danger.”15 His hatred of blacks was, if anything, even more zealous than it had been the year before. “You Negroes are treated here with great Humanity and Tenderness,” Horsmanden said to Tom, but Such worthless, detestable Wretches are many, it may be said most, of your Complexion, that no Kindness can oblige ye; there is such an Untowardness, as it should seem, in the very Nature and Temper of ye, that ye grow cruel by too much Indulgence: So much are ye degenerated and debased below the Dignity of Humane Species. . . . even the very Dogs . . . will, by their Actions express their Gratitude to the Hand that feeds them, their Thankfulness for Kindnesses; they will fawn and fondle upon their Masters; nay, if any one should attempt to assault them, they will defend them from Injury, to the utmost of their Power. Such is the Fidelity of these dumb Beasts; but ye, the Beasts of the People, though ye are cloath’d and fed, and provided with all Necessaries of Life, without Care; in Requital of your Benefactors, in Return for Blessings ye give Curses, and would scatter Firebrands, Death and Destruction around them, destroy their Estates and butcher their Persons. Thus monstrous is your Ingratitude!

  It’s hard not to suspect that Horsmanden’s remarks about monstrous ingratitude were also aimed at those in the city who would doubt Burton’s credibility, and withhold her reward. Four days after Horsmanden made this speech, on March 6, the Common Council “ORDERED that the Indentures of Mary Burton be Delivered up to her: and that She be Discharged from the Remainder of her Servitude: AND ORDERED the Mayor Issue his Warrant to the treasurer to pay to the said Mary Burton or Order the Sum of Three pounds Current money of this Colony: in Order to buy her Necessary Cloathing.” Finally freed, Burton was handed only £3 in cash, not the £100 reward.

  On the gallows on March 15, Tom confessed, and was hanged nonetheless. Horsmanden hoped that a fuller investigation would be made, especially after more fires erupted. When the Supreme Court opened its regular session on April 20, DeLancey ordered a grand jury to inquire into the fires; but the grand jury refused to return any indictments against anyone, and the matter of the slave conspiracy of 1742 was, rather quietly, entirely dropped. Meanwhile, Mary Burton, who could not read or write, filed a petition seeking her reward, probably drafted by Horsmanden himself.

  It was at just this point that Daniel Horsmanden began collecting new testimony about the 1741 conspiracy. In April 1742 he busied himself collecting depositions that, while ostensibly gathered for his Journal, clearly served to support Burton’s petition. That petition was referred to the Supreme Court on April 9, 1742. On April 13, Horsmanden took a deposition from Ann Kannady, to whom Burton had first talked of the plot; and the next day, he deposed Rebecca Hogg. Kannady’s evidence highlighted Burton’s crucial, early role in the investigation. Still the Common Council dragged its feet, reluctant to pay Mary Burton even a shilling. In May she applied to the mayor “for the payment of One hundred pounds to her: as being the person that made the first Discovery: of the persons formerly Concernd in Setting fire to Some houses.” Meanwhile, the Common Council ordered “That if any person will Appear: before this Board and Make it Appear: to the Satisfaction thereof: That Such person is Entituled to Either
of the Rewards: Mentioned in the said Request: and Proclamation: That they will thereupon Order a Warrant to Issue to the treasurer of this Corporation: for the payment of Such of the said Rewards: as Such person Shall Appear to be Entitled unto.”

  But still Burton did not receive her money. On July 15, Horsmanden secured another deposition, this one from Susannah Masters, a young woman who had befriended Burton when she lived at Wilson’s house, just down the street from where Masters lived with her husband, Daniel. Kannady had depicted Burton as a helpless girl, terrified of John Hughson. Masters made her more vulnerable still. All through the summer of 1741, Masters said, Burton had been “crying and bemoaning herself.” Far from the deceitful and avaricious young woman Burton’s critics had complained about, Burton was merely a girl with “no Friends or Relations in this Country to advise with upon her Case, or to protect her.” Susannah Masters was “very much affected, and could not but take great Compassion of her.”

  On September 2, with these depositions before them, and with Horsmanden, as Recorder, in the room, the Common Council finally handed Mary Burton £81, her £100 reward minus the £19 paid to Wilson to purchase her indenture and buy her clothes.16

  And then, Mary Burton disappeared.

  “I’M GLAD I’VE got an Opportunity of a little Relaxation from this intricate pursuit,” Horsmanden had written to Colden in August 1741, just after Ury’s trial, “tho’ at the same time from the length of my Letter you may take occasion to imagine I’m not quite tired of it.” In truth, Horsmanden wasn’t tired of it at all. He spent much of 1742 stirring up renewed fears of slave conspiracy and securing new depositions about the 1741 conspiracy, both to vindicate the court—to prove that there really had been a plot— and to help Mary Burton gain her reward. At what point it occurred to him that better vindication could be achieved by making the proceedings public is unclear. There is no mention of the Journal before July 1742, when printer James Parker solicited advance subscriptions on the purchase price, 10 shillings, promising that the book “is now almost ready for the Press” (although, of course, it wasn’t ready at all and wouldn’t be published for two more years). Subscriptions were taken in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia.17

 

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