The Great Negro Plot

by Mat Johnson

  "The Spanish Negroes! The Spanish Negroes!" was the call cried out by the frightened whites. "Take up the Spanish Negroes!"

  And taken up they were.

  To label a person (or group) a scapegoat implies a judgment of guilt or innocence. It implies a tacit accusation against the accuser. It says what you are doing is blaming an innocent person, based solely on prejudice or convenience. But scapegoating offers more subtle pleasures as well. Don't forget the release of fear provided, freedom from anxiety through the abandonment of reason. The great thing about scapegoating is that you don't even have to believe its victim is responsible for the action in question. You just have to pretend you do, and it still makes you feel better. No more fires to worry about here, we've captured the Spanish Negroes now. The Spanish Negroes did it. The Spanish Negroes will pay for their crime. When you get hit, you hit back—the question of whether you hit the right person, or for the right reasons, or whether the entire action will have any effect on the situation is irrelevant. What's important is that the issue has been addressed. What's important is that when there's a crime, someone pays for it—who pays matters less than the debt to society. As long as that debt is paid, you can all rest, pacified. Because, let us acknowledge, it was never about the crime as much as your fear of it.

  * * *

  The Spanish Negroes were herded from across the colony, caught up and brought to City Hall for questioning by the magistrates. It was a little after four in the afternoon, and the justices gathered from their workaday lives, for once not bothered to be pulled from their commerce. The esteemed men were proceeding to the judicial building relieved, at last, to have someone from whom they could demand an explanation—DING DING DING DING DING—yet another fire alarm bell frantically rang out.

  Dear God, when would the horror cease?

  Searching out the cause for alarm, scouring rooflines for the source of the smoke above, a small streak of flame was seen running up the shingles of Colonel Philipse's roof.

  "Blimey, from the look of it, this fire must have started on the side of the roof that faced against the wind," noted one white onlooker with dread.

  The ignition point meant it was highly implausible, if not impossible, that this fire was a mere accident. Even more suspicious, the fire seemed to have started strategically in the middle of three large wooden storehouses. These buildings had no chimneys and were too far removed from any other structure to have been caused by a random spark. No, again, this must be arson. There was no other explanation.

  The colonists were still busy extinguishing this conflagration, which they had now concluded could only have been started in the building's interior, when the cry of "FIRE!!!" was heard yet again. With the storehouse blaze virtually subdued, the majority of the crowd ran off immediately in this new direction to tackle the next crisis. With the bulk of the crowd gone, and the fire, for all intents and purposes, well contained, there were only a few colonists left at the storehouse to comb over the dying embers. One of the men climbed on top of the building to extinguish anything left still burning directly from that precarious vantage point. It was risky business, but expedient, dumping his bucket down on the last of the smoldering embers. Don't bloody fall, was primarily what he was reminding himself, when through the smoke this brave soul noticed movement below. Behind the house, shielded from the view of those still on the ground, he espied the dark visage of a man. And the ebony phantom was scurrying away from the fire. From his rooftop vantage, the colonist saw this dark apparition jump out of a storehouse window onto the ground far below. Not just any man, the running man could now be seen clearly, and he was: a Negro! The African was hopping away with desperate speed, hastily jumping over the fences of the small colonial yards as he fled.

  "A Negro!" the white man on the roof called to the whites below.

  Those on the ground looked up at him in confusion.

  What are you going to do with a Negro? they seemed to be asking. Don't you mean, "A bucket of water, please"?

  "A Negro! A Negro!" the man on the roof persisted in yelling down at them until the others finally seemed to get it.

  "The Negroes are rising! The Negroes are rising!"

  The chant now rose quickly through the crowd. Finally finding ready voices among them, ready believers. Word spreading almost as rapidly as the fires had. Fear becoming fact even before the facts actually emerged. The cry of the "Negro" becoming more specific as whites who had just seen this suspect tearing through their yards joined the chorus with sure identification of the culprit.

  "Cuff Philipse, Cuff Philipse!" the mob chanted the fleeing black man's slave name.

  He had been identified as none other than Cuffee, the enslaved of the prominent owner of the burned storehouse in question.

  Soon the gathering mob stormed the house of Adolph Philipse in search of his human property. Cuffee was found at his master's door, wide-eyed, a-gawk at the white crowd, in possible confusion and definite fear.

  "What were you doing by the fire?" they clamored.

  "Why were you running? What were you running from?"

  "Who else is involved?"

  "Who is responsible?"

  A barrage of questions were yelled, but opportunity afforded not one answer. Instead, the terrified Cuffee was dragged from his enslaver's home as his muscles struggled for release. The mob grabbed frantically at pieces of him, hit whatever resisted. It was thus that the battered Cuffee would arrive at the magistrates, borne on the shoulders of those who kept him alive only for answers.

  The Negroes are rising! What had been the frantic ranting of an excited, frightened man on a smoke-enveloped roof, haunted the minds of the individuals who now comprised this new force of emotion that was the mob. The Negroes are rising!

  Rising: being down, and trying to get up.

  What a frightening prospect for those on top, indeed.

  Isn't "the other" always a scary thing? That person you don't know, nor can decipher. The further their difference from your own, the more alien their food, the smell of their breath, their perspiration, the odd way their mouth forms the most common of words . . . the more they are something to fear, something to counter. The other is different, and that crime is obvious. What other parts of its nature are hidden? Wouldn't the unknown be capable of the unimaginable?

  It wasn't long before the mob had changed their focus to a new target. Who were the seditionists? they were forced to ask themselves. The insurrection, such as it was, could not simply be emanating from the Spanish Negroes, that foreign, hostile threat. Nor could such rebellion, under any stretch of the imagination, be limited to one slave. Not even a loathsome Negro, such as Cuffee, no matter how ornery and foul his nature.

  No! It was all of the black bastards, the enemy that lived in their very homes.

  Blacks were an easy target to hit, particularly for an entity so indiscriminate. No need to wait for those already in captivity to confess to their sins when there was an abundance of Africans walking the streets that could be yanked by their necks by New York's concerned white citizens, molested into passivity, and booted through the doors of the local jail with the rest of them.

  Let chaos ensue. Let no black be spared, even those who had just minutes before been helping the colony by passing water buckets and rescuing personal wealth they could never own. Being black on the streets of New York was enough to qualify for suspicion. The disregarding of what little rights the slaves had was no great cost for the cessation of white fear. The Africans were in this country solely to serve the Europeans anyway.

  Cuffee was left to stew in his jail cell overnight before the official interrogation was to begin. It would have been a long night, too, high on anxiety and extremely low on comfort. As one colonist described his own stay in these accommodations some years later, "[N]othing but a bare floor to lay on—no covering—almost devour'd with all kinds of vermin." It could not even be called a fleabag cell because that would imply there was an actual bag to sleep on. Not that
Cuffee could really sleep anyway, given the circumstance. Given what he knew must surely lay in front of him.

  A prison in the colonial world is an expensive indulgence to spend on those in society least deserving of its funds. The cost of the building alone was prohibitive, but when you added the cost of maintenance it became a complete extravagance. Food had to be bought, prepared, and delivered. Fresh water had to be pumped and made available. Wood had to be chopped and stoked on the coldest of winter nights. And of course, someone had to be paid to make sure those inside never got out. In a colony based around commercial interests, where ambitious members of the British working class could scarcely be attracted to come in the first place, finding a white man content to spend his life babysitting the low life was impractical. The modern prison system that would be born decades later in that Quaker city to the south simply didn't exist yet. And even then, incarceration was too damn expensive. As said, New York has always been a city based around making money. So New York had no real prison in 1741, just the jail. Nobody had the time, or desire, to waste time policing, not if there was money to be made.

  The criminal punishments of the era reflect that this was a colony that was economically focused, as opposed to morally driven. Whites who committed societal misdemeanors were punished in their purses. If convicted, whites could post a bond of good behavior, their fortunes being held ransom to ensure their future actions. Some were simply fined outright, occasionally losing their entire estate for severe crimes. Those without means could find themselves sold into indentured servitude, literally working off their debt to society. It always came down to money in New York, and what was most cost effective, boiling down to what the majority of Europeans in this society cared about most. Money was the reason they had left their old lives a continent away in the first place. But when it came to discipline for severe crimes, or discipline of enslaved Africans who were both penniless and whose humanity was seen to be of the lowest sort along the Great Chain of Being, the realities of colonial punishment were much more harsh. The punishments meted were physical, fast, and dramatic. That was the attraction of public torture and execution. Instead of taking decades to punish a convicted criminal for his crime, the matter could be over in hours. Even minutes.

  For non-capital offenses, the common punishment was flogging with a rod, or whipping. That would do you. This would take place in a public place, usually on a market day so you could get a good crowd for both the prisoner's humiliation and to serve as a warning to others. In one instance of the period, constables marched an insolent slave through the entire metropolis, giving him a lash at each intersection. Quite the tour of the city, it was. A far cry from a mere spanking, it was standard for a flogging to last for at least thirty-nine lashes. Death from shock or infection happened all the time. The humiliation alone was more than some could bear. In 1743, one sensitive would-be whipping post victim cut his own throat to avoid the horror of the lash.

  For many others, a pillorying was their equally morbid fate. Marched into stocks, the convicted was required to stick his head, hands, and sometimes feet into the wooden pillory, which was then locked down in place. This made the pilloried fairly accessible, not to mention vulnerable when the crowd started throwing rocks and animal shit at their head, which of course the onlookers did. Once the crowd had exhausted its arsenal, then came the bad part. For the finale, they cut off the convict's ear. This last bit was a true crowd-pleaser, provoking victorious cheers from the thrilled spectators. After that, they let them go. It was possible afterward to still hear in that ear-hole okay (if it didn't get infected), but still. Nobody wants to be known as the crooked arse with the hole in their head for the rest of their lives, do they?

  The destruction of public property was never a casual event in New York, regardless of the 1741 affair. Prior to 1750, 71 percent of those convicted of stealing got a good flogging for their efforts. Ten percent of these thieves were killed for their crime. This would only get more severe as the century progressed, with 22 percent executed, 26 percent whipped, and 28 percent branded for their crime. Even if you made it out with both ears after being caught and punished, there were often additional prices to pay. For example, not rarely, the letter T was burned into the thieves' forehead so that the world could see their guilt from then on.

  So Cuffee had a fairly accurate idea what awaited him if they found him guilty, and that the word if was probably an overly optimistic one. There would be little weight given to his word, and even less to his human rights. In fact, Cuffee would be held for eleven days before his interrogation would even begin. By then it was known that, in addition to his initial identification and his presumed guilt, some whites had actually stepped forward and provided favorable depositions as well.

  "I was working with him, all day," a young man offered. "He only left me a moment before the second fire bell, so he couldn't have lit the first fire."

  "How was he acting?" the investigators asked incredulously. "Was there any suspicious behavior?"

  "No, as I say, he was right here, working as always. Of course, when the first fire went up I asked him if he was going to help with buckets at his master's storehouse, and the Negro declined, if you can believe it."

  "He what?"

  "He said, T've had enough of being out in the morning.' Just like that, and walked off for a rest. But then, the Negroes are a lazy breed, you know."

  Still other witnesses had Cuffee right at his master's door before the fire bell rang. One man who'd known Cuffee for years said that the slave was right next to him, watching the fire, but this fellow was old and his eyesight was piss poor on a clear day. The Negroes all looked so much alike anyway, how could the ancient white man really tell the difference? And even if all of the witnesses were correct and reliable, with slow burning, strategically placed embers, it was impossible for a timeline to be drawn that could prove absolute innocence. Cuffee could have placed the coals there early in the morning, or even the night before.

  The difficulty of uncovering any good conspiracy is that, for all the suspicion one can have, its discovery still depends largely on getting those involved in the actual events to talk. Of course, these are usually the individuals least likely to blabber; even if they are not connected directly. Who would want to link themselves to a scheme so horrifying that any whose name is mentioned might lose their life? So for investigators, ways must be found, methods and strategies discovered, to get those involved to talk. There are those out there who might not even realize that they have a piece of information that could connect into the puzzle. So a bounty was set, one that said much about the society of the period. For whites with information, a reward of one hundred pounds was offered. For free Africans, mulattos, and Indians with information, it would be forty-five pounds. For slaves, divulging information would mean freedom plus twenty pounds, with an additional twenty-five pounds allocated for their masters. This, too, might serve as a seductive source of income among the lowest to better themselves, as opposed to the opportunities for theft, advantaged by some during the latest pandemonium of the fires.

  And there had been a lot of stealing of late. When better to make an illicit acquisition than during the chaos of smoke and fear, when prized possessions were strewn by strangers' hands into the street? The theft of evacuated property was such a significant issue, the need to enforce order among the colonists so strong, that the magistrates and militia were sent to search out every home for stolen goods. While invading the space of people's houses, investigators were also encouraged to look for strangers to the colony who might be secretly responsible for the madness—surely so much destruction could not be instigated solely by one of New York's own. Yet in spite of the full onslaught of force, aside from one old slave, Cuba, and his equally elderly wife, who were arrested for owning more than they could afford, nothing nefarious was discovered.

  * * *

  It is unknown whether Mrs. Abigail Earle collected her hundred pounds for the information, but the impu
dent Negro she heard declaring, "Fire, fire, scorch, scorch, A LITTLE, damn it, BY AND BY," as his hands circled his head was identified as Quack (enslaved by Mr. Walter), and taken into custody.

  After being summarily left to stew in his fear for a few days, Quack was brought to the magistrates for questioning.

  "Slave Quack," began the interrogation, "you have been quoted as saying, 'Fire, Fire, Scorch, Scorch, a little, damn it, by and by' by a respected member of this community. There is no use denying it. So what say you to this line?"

  "Oh, your honor. You know Quack didn't mean nothing by that; I love the Englishman. Matter of fact, I was remarking to my mates about the taking of Porto Bello by that Admiral Vernon, what had just happened before. Fine seaman, he is, why he taught them Spaniards something. Them Spaniards, they can't stand to a good Englishman, no sir. Like I was telling my associates, Admiral Vernon just burned them off slow, one by one. That's how him and them admirals did it."

  The court paused to look at itself, confused. This was not the answer they were expecting. Surely the recent adventures of Admiral Vernon were something to marvel at, but still . . . the Negro had thrown them.

  "A cunning excuse, slave Quack, this we will admit, but that is all the benefit we will give you. Perhaps some abler heads have planted this story in yours?"

  Quack shrugged, offering what he could only hope was a portrait of innocent confusion to the room.

  "Fine. Fortunately, we have benefit of the presence of your slave companions on that day in our custody as well. So let's see what these men of your own complexion have to say on the matter."

  The other slaves were called for, and sheepishly they arrived, hands bound, petrified, shuffling forward as if blows were imminent.

  "You, the accused, what do you say in regard to the conversation you were so suspiciously engaged in?" the judge demanded of them.