Chapter II

Successful Administration of Col. Nichols—Recapture of Manhattan by the Dutch—The Career and Tragic End of Leisler, The People's Choice—Captain Kidd, The New York Pirate—Rip Van Dam—The Trial and Triumph of Liberty—The Negro Plot of 1741—Triumph of the Anglo-Saxon—Troubulous Times Approaching.

It soon became evident that the liberal reward offered ten days previously was destined to be fruitful in results. Those days and nights had been spent by the wretched prisoners in gloomy meditation, and nearly every one was ready to make disclosures. Among the first examined was Mary Burton, a colored servant girl indentured to John Hughson, keeper of a squalid negro tavern on the west side of the island. Mary testified that Caesar Varick, Prince Amboyman, and Cuff Philipse* had been in the habit of meeting at the house of Hughson, talking about burning the fort, the city, and murdering the people, and that Hughson and his wife had promised to help them, after which Hughson was to be the governor and Cuff king. She stated that no whites had been present at these times except her master and mistress, and Peggy Carey, an abandoned Irish woman living at Hughson's. Peggy was next brought before the court and promised pardon on condition of general confession. She, however, denied all knowledge of any conspiracy, or of the origin of any of the fires, and said that to accuse any one would be to slander innocent persons and blacken her own soul. The law at that time was that no slave could testify in a court of justice against a white person. Yet Mary Burton, a colored slave, here testified to matters implicating Peggy Carey, a white woman, which she, Peggy, emphatically denied. But the city had gone mad, and Mary Burton, who a month previous would have been spurned from a courtroom, had suddenly become an oracle, and on her testimony poor Peggy and the negroes named were found guilty and sentenced to be executed. Death now staring Peggy in the face, she became greatly alarmed, and begged for a second examination, which was readily granted. She now testified that she had attended a meeting of negroes held at a wretched house near the battery kept by John Romme, and that Romme had promised to carry them all to a new country and give them their liberty, on condition that they should burn the city, massacre the whites, and bring him the plunder. This ridiculous twaddle, evidently fabricated for the occasion, was received as proof positive, and the persons named (except Romme, who fled for life, though his wife was arrested) were severally brought before her for identification. The work of public slaughter began on the eleventh of May, when Caesar and Prince were hanged, denying all knowledge of any conspiracy to the last. Hughson and his wife having been found guilty, were shortly after hanged, in connection with Peggy, who had been promised pardon for her pretended confession, every word of which she solemnly retracted with her dying breath. We will not follow the details of this strange investigation further. Suffice it to say that, finding confession or some new disclosure the only loophole through which to escape, nearly every prisoner prepared a story which availed him nothing in the end. Every attorney volunteered to aid the prosecution, and thus left the terrified slaves, without counsel or friend, to utter their incoherent and contradictory statements and die. From the 11th of May to the 29th of August, one hundred and fifty-four negroes were committed to prison, fourteen of whom were burned at the stake, eighteen hanged, seventy-one transported, and the remainder pardoned or discharged. The loquacious Mary Burton continued the heroine of the times, deposing to all she knew at the first examination, but able to bring from her capacious memory new and wonderful revelations at nearly every sitting of the court. At first she declared that no white person, save Hughson, his wife, and Peggy, was present at the meeting of the conspirators; but at length remembered that John Thy, a supposed Catholic priest and schoolmaster in the city, had also been implicated. He was at once arrested, and on the 29th of August hanged. The panic now spread among the whites, twenty-four of whom being implicated were hurled into prison, and four of them finally executed. Personal safety appeared now at an end; everybody feared his neighbor and his friend, and the Reign of Terror attending the Salem Witchcraft was scarcely more appalling. We cannot conceive how far this matter would have extended if the incomprehensible Mary Burton had not, inflated with former success, begun to criminate many persons of high social standing in the city. While the blacks only were in danger, these persons had added constant fuel to the fire; but finding the matter coming home, they concluded it was now time to close the proceedings. The further investigation of the case was postponed, and so the matter ended. That some of the fires were the work of incendiaries (perhaps colored) there appears to us but little doubt; but that any general conspiracy existed is not probable. The silly story that a white inn-keeper should conspire with a few negroes to massacre eight thousand of his own race, that he might occupy a subordinate position under an ignorant colored king, is simply ridiculous; yet for this he and his wife were hanged. The trials and executions were a frightful outrage of justice and humanity, presenting a melancholy example of the weakness of human nature, and the ease with which the strongest minds are borne down in periods of popular delusion.

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