The Great Negro Plot

by Mat Johnson

  As the new alarm spread, so did the crowd flee. Magically, the majority remembered previous engagements for which they were due, and silently slipped away into the shadows.

  "People! Everyone! There is no greater danger! The barracks are empty! Come back!" pleaded the lieutenant governor, but his desperation only sent those he futilely addressed further. He was not exactly an objective source, was he? And so, without human impediment, the buildings were free to burn to the ground, and did so. After the military barracks and surrounding structures had collapsed to piles of char and ember, as feared, a collection of hand grenades suddenly exploded within the devastation.

  When night fell and Mr. Cornelius Van Home, captain of the local civilian militias, organized seventy armed men to go marching around the town, many just called him a madman. A paranoid fool, they said. Yes, the fire had taken down much of the military fort, but that was no cause for storming the streets, leading an armed band in circles till daybreak. Surely there was a less sensational reason behind the incident. The lieutenant governor had only just had his gutters cleaned by the plumber that morning. Was it not possible that an errant coal from his soldering iron's pot had started the inferno? Sure, the fire seemed to have started at several places along the roof at once, but no one could account for such things. Nothing to get hysterical about, nothing to see here. Everyone just go home.

  Then, exactly a week later, a fire broke out midday near the bridge at the southwest end of town at the house of Captain Warren, brother-in-law to Chief Justice DeLancey. The fire engines came soon enough, and despite the fact that much of the roof had already been consumed, they were successful in dousing the blaze before more damage could be done. Again, it was a roof that ignited. Another fire so soon was not uncommon—so many wooden-roofed structures constructed with other flammable materials, combined with use of flame lighting, made fires a fairly common (if terrifying) event. Early inspection declared it to be the accidental firing of the chimney.

  Then, exactly a week after that, for a third Wednesday in a row, fire struck the city once more, this time at the storehouse of Mr. Winant Van Zant. The site was on the east of town, an old wooden building filled with hay, the kind of building of which a fire would make an excellent meal. Van Zant's storehouse was closely connected to many other wooden buildings along the street and it seemed assured that all would be lost, that soon at least an entire block would become engulfed in the inferno. If it wasn't for the fact that the property sat on the slip by the East River, giving both the engines and bucket carriers a close and convenient source of water, it might have been a disaster, but in the end only one house was devoured. In the early moments, before the whispers and rumors slipped in with the accompanying fear, it was thought that a pipe smoker who'd been sitting by the hay was responsible. But then questions arose. Where had the fire started? How had it spread? If it started on the one side of the building, how was it the hay on the other side began to smolder almost simultaneously?

  Then, three days after that, the now familiar fire alarm rang out once more, this time drawing people to the house of Mr. Quick and Mr. Vergeau in the downtown Fly Market. Upon running to the call, the fire was discovered to be in the middle of the cow stable behind the house, centered in a pile of hay. The fire was quickly extinguished, but as the tired, increasingly anxious colonists were returning to their lives, giving thanks that greater trouble had been averted, they were greeted by chilling alarm. Yet another blaze raged on this Saturday's dusk.

  This time the flames arose from the westside house of Ben Thomas, next-door neighbor to Captain Sarly. So another military man's property was being threatened by the recent rash. The fire had apparently begun in the kitchen, and was only discovered because of its heavy smoke. Again it was successfully put out before greater damage could be done. The source was searched for and found to be in some straw near the bed of one of Ben Thomas's slaves. The whispers continued after the embers cooled. Who could be behind this? Spanish spies, perhaps? Surely it couldn't be one of our own. What if it was even worse than imagined? What if the slaves were involved?

  And then, only a few hours later, early Sunday morning, pedestrians passing by the stables of Joseph Murray, Esq., on Broadway smelled a wooded smoke and, considering circumstances, decided to look further. Their inspection revealed a collection of dead coals left in the stable's piled feed. The dried hay around the coals had been singed, showing proof that the coals had been lit when laid there. It was the great fortune of Mr. Joseph Murray, Esq., and his many neighbors that the embers died before a true fire could be blown into existence. Here, again, great danger to the upper class of Manhattan was once more averted, as Murray's property was nestled in the bosom of an array of wealthy homes. The fire would have been provided an expensive sabbath breakfast at the expense of some of the most prominent colonists. Again, searching for clues, for some kind of understanding to belay or rationalize their growing trepidation, it was discovered that there was a trail of coal and ashes that led away from the nearby ignition site. Following the dark line back away from Murray's singed hay, an inspector arrived at the fence that led to the neighboring house that adjoined the stable. A stable inhabited by none other than this neighbor's slave. And wasn't he always a suspicious bastard?

  A few hours later into the Sunday's midday, a lady, Mrs. Abigail Earle, was enjoying a cup of tea, taking the afternoon off from church services to relish the quiet day. After such a long winter, it was a luxury to simply relax by her open window and take in the spring breeze. And there were sights to see. With so many of the respectable colonists off at church, it was common to see their unruly slaves walking the streets with the boldness of the free, and one couldn't be too careful of these unsupervised Negroes these days. So it was with particular interest that she noted three bucks strolling casually down her street as if they owned the place (which they most certainly did not). One in particular had the devil in him. As she watched with growing disgust, she heard him speak with "a vaporing air" to the other two:

  "Fire, fire, scorch, scorch, A LITTLE, damn it, BY AND BY," he said.

  Then the darky threw up his calloused brown hands at his blithe statement, laughing bitterly. Ha-Ha-Ha, his joy as great as her horror.

  And so it became official. For the good white citizens of the municipality of New York, it was now time to let the panic begin.

  "LIBERTY!"

  THE EUROPEAN IMMIGRANTS of this little trading town at the base of the Hudson had good reason to fear that their African captives might be conspiring to burn down its buildings, terrorize its inhabitants, or worse. For one, the Africans had every right to. They were treated like animals, but they were humans: a slight contradiction. Slave revolts were a constant threat in the New York territory since its founding as a European outpost, from the first uprising in 1663 when Angolan slaves and poor whites banded together to fight in Gloucester County. Between the years 1687 and 1741, a slave plot erupted on average every two and a half years. In regard to these victims of an international atrocity, daily suffering the dehumanization and physical tortures of chattel slavery, the surprise was not that the Africans might be up to something, but that it didn't happen even more often. The uprising of 1712 had not faded from contemporary memory, and despite the steady enactment of stricter and stricter slave laws since the British seized the colony from the Dutch decades before, there was also the common knowledge that the more strict the laws enacted, the more unrealistic their enforcement became. See here: the beginnings of white American fear. See here: the birth of the black boogeyman.

  It should be noted as well that the colony on a whole was one that had seen its identity and nationality change dramatically in the last century, and certainly the battle for complete dominance of the New World was far from won by the English. In the immediate era, the constant and bloody struggle for dominance of the eastern Atlantic sea between the Spanish and the English had come to a head once again. In response to England's disregard for the Assiento—the Sp
anish international pact on slave importation—as well as tensions over the British logwooding off the Spanish-controlled Honduran coast, Spain was reacting with some lawlessness of her own. When Robert Jenkins, captain of the English ship Rebecca, held up his dried, pickled ear he'd had severed from his head by the Spanish at Parliament, he became a symbol for the reason's behind Britain's declaration of war in 1739, a conflict that became known as the "War of Jenkins' Ear." The two nations were, at the time of New York's provincial crisis, involved in a battle for the dominance of the Americas, a battle at that time raging in Florida over control of that Spanish-held territory, with the southern English colonies, like Georgia, embroiled in the fighting as well.

  It was as a result of this war that six hundred of New York's troops were not stationed in the city at the time that these fires broke out. Instead, they had been sent south six months before for an attack on Cuba, leaving the city of New York with only a paltry military presence. When these fires erupted, New York was at its most vulnerable moment for armed takeover, whether from external forces or internal. It was also a well-known fact (or well-worn rumor) that the Spanish (as the French and English would do in later conflicts) was offering freedom to any African who would join their call to arms. Freedom+ Negroes = trouble for white people.

  Not far from the minds of virtually every white citizen of the day, before, and most certainly after the first occurrences of the New York fires, was the fear that this call to arms had evidently been answered by uprising Africans, with devastating results for the Europeans they happened to come upon.

  On September 9,1739, in South Carolina's Stono colony, an Angolan named Jemmy took to the streets with a crowd of other enslaved Africans, and together they started marching south, gathering more slaves, male and female, as they passed each household. Their ranks swelled to more than one hundred by nightfall. Small bands of Africans were known to have been escaping to Florida at the time, where they were promised to be rewarded not only with their freedom but also with parcels of land for their alliance. The Spanish had even released a proclamation to assure them that any slaves who deserted the English colonies to come to Saint Augustine would be likewise rewarded.

  Similar to the situation arising in New York, it was also thought that the enactment of tighter laws meant to further control the Africans might be a factor in the Negroes' increased resistance. The more suffocated the slaves were, the more desperate they seemed to breathe freedom. The passing of local security acts meant that soon all white males would be required to carry arms to church on Sunday, in response to the growing Negro threat.

  Jemmy and his followers' march, later called the Stono Rebellion, took place on the Christian sabbath, Sunday being the traditional day of rest for European immigrants, regardless of religious temperament. This is why the band of Africans were able to get so far along their trail in the first place without encountering greater white resistance. As the Europeans prayed for their souls in the houses of their Lord, the freedom-seekers walked to reclaim their bodies, each step moving them further beyond bondage.

  The march started started when, around two in the afternoon, a dozen slaves gathered in St. Paul's Parish by the Stono River, twenty miles outside Charles town. Slipping into a gun shop, the slaves seized all merchandise, and immediately tested the firearms, shooting the two clerks working in the place.

  Statement made and retreat no longer an option, the band then marched straight over to the house of Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey, killing both, and murdering their son and daughter as well. From there they kept moving, carrying banners that declared LIBERTY! Shouting the word over and over again, and drumming it as well. Pushing forward toward the promise of it.

  It was nearly daybreak when they reached Wallace's tavern, sparing the proprietor's life solely because he was known to have been humane to his slaves. After that though, it got bloody, as the rebelling Africans took all lives in the next half-dozen houses they came upon.

  Not all the slaves were willing participants: the ones belonging to Thomas Rose, for example, hid their master; they themselves were forced to join the growing mob or face similar fate to the whites.

  Others, however, joined in eagerly. It was a dream incarnate. All those days staring beyond the master's fences, and wondering what was on the other side. The few whites the rebellion did encounter as it moved on were quickly released from the mortal coil. It was the one white they accidentally let get away, Lieutenant Governor Bull, who ran to spread the word of what was happening, and led a posse of British colonists back to squash the rebellion.

  The whites, gathered and armed, found their former human property resting in a field not far from the Edisto River. The Africans had managed to get ten miles, killing about two dozen Europeans along the way. Near four that afternoon, the rebels got off two shots before the whites mowed them down in a hail of musket fire, quickly striking fourteen of the Africans dead. By nightfall, sixteen more would die, although at least thirty others had managed to run away, at least, for the moment. All would eventually be caught. And dealt with.

  Could they have been that surprised at the outcome? They were trying to walk, with just a few guns, all the way to Florida. In a rather productive day, they'd managed ten miles. There were two hundred and seventy miles more, through Savannah, and countless other white enclaves, all the way down the Atlantic coast, between them and freedom.

  Insanity.

  Or maybe the Stono Rebellion, and really all of the African rebellions that took place in America over the three centuries that saw slavery, were less about the literal attainment of freedom than the ephemeral symbol of it. That it was worth the price of one's very existence to shake off a lifetime of brutal-ization, and walk upright and uncompromising as a full human being, if only for a fleeting moment.

  Eventually there was a growing silence among the Africans as they walked south, after questions and small talk had been eliminated, as the growing reality that they were marching to their death came to realization. Repeated were the indignations rained upon them, relieved to speak outside, and in full voice of their mistreatment. Reflections on moments of joy and pleasure, summarizing lives soon to be drawn to conclusion. At the end of their march, when they'd arrived at that large open field that late afternoon, it seemed a good place to meet one's maker. In the early fall warmth it was a pleasure to sit in the tall grass after the long march, to take off the shoes that now constricted. To wiggle brown toes and stare up to see a sky above them at its last appearance in their life. Taking a moment to rest before their fate caught up to them, listening to the wrens as its harbinger. Putting their spiritual houses in order so that when their certain death came, they were prepared to welcome it.

  Though written off as mere shortsighted stupidity by some whites, the uprising was something much more complicated: desperation to its suicidal, murderous extreme. It was this nihilism, this complete absence of restraint, regardless of self-preservation, that made the possibility of slave rebellion so terrifying to the white colonists. Uprisings had a myriad of practical repercussions that made them so dreaded, but it was also, in part, this very attitude that made these incidents so terrifying. That the Africans knew they were going to die from the moment they chose to be defiant. That they didn't care. As long as they dragged down enough whites with them.

  THE SPANISH NEGROES

  AT TEN A. M. on the morning of Monday, April 6, 1741, yet another fire broke out, this time at the home of Sergeant Burns, starting supposedly in his chimney though he insisted the flue had been swept just days before. Then a fire broke out on the roof of Mrs. Hilton's home on the corner of the Fly Market, another house that adjoined the residence of Captain Sarly, evidence left behind that it, too, had been intentionally set.

  Could anyone be surprised? Captain Sarly's neighbors seemed to be particularly unfortunate. Surely this could not be coincidence; there are no coincidences in a world of fear.

  "It's his slave, it must be. The black beast is always saying he s
hould be a free man, isn't he?"

  "The impertinence!"

  "Saying he was kidnapped off his Spanish ship and enslaved. I heard Captain Sarly paid good money for him and the other Spanish Negroes, from a reputable trader. Got a bill of sale and everything."

  The enslaved, Juan, was soon caught on the street, and quickly surrounded. The crowd demanded an answer of him. "Talk, villain! Do you or do you not know the source of these fires?"

  "So now you care to know what I know," Juan responded. "I know you best look elsewhere." His tone read by the assembled mob as pure insolence. Juan was less talkative after he'd been summarily beaten and dragged to jail.

  It was a dirty, open secret that since the 1680s, when British privateers captured Spanish ships, a profitable habit was made of selling darker-skinned sailors into slavery in New York. Juan was part of a group of Africans kidnapped, just a few years before, by Captain Lush. Despite insistence of their free status, for lack of legal documentation, the group was declared human property by the admiralty and sold into slavery in homes across Manhattan. Not surprisingly, these Spanish-speaking Africans were notoriously bitter. When you included that the dark group spoke among themselves in a foreign tongue, that slave or not, they were chosen citizens of a dominion of the Vatican and its papal plans, in the eyes of the white colonists of New York City the Spanish Negroes were even less deserving of trust than the rest of the feared African hoard. If one of this suspicious band was involved in the suspicious fire, surely the others were in cahoots as well.