WEBVTT NOTE 8. Slavery in New York 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.480 Volume 2, Chapter 8, Slavery in New York 2 00:00:05.480 --> 00:00:12.040 Of all the northern colonies, New York had the most trouble with Negro slave rebellions. 3 00:00:12.040 --> 00:00:20.120 In 1702, New York found it necessary to outlaw any assembly of slaves or even to allow their 4 00:00:20.120 --> 00:00:27.720 testimony in court, in view of frequent confederations of slaves to plan escapes from their fate. 5 00:00:27.720 --> 00:00:35.120 However, in a remarkable bit of loading the legal dice, the testimony of slaves was to 6 00:00:35.120 --> 00:00:40.400 be acceptable when acting as informers on their fellows. 7 00:00:40.400 --> 00:00:46.240 Three years later, the death penalty was decreed for all runaway slaves found more than forty 8 00:00:46.240 --> 00:00:52.040 miles north of Albany, and hence headed toward freedom in New France. 9 00:00:52.040 --> 00:01:00.840 In 1706, slave restiveness in King's County led Governor Edward Hyde, Lord Cornberry, 10 00:01:00.840 --> 00:01:06.820 to issue a proclamation ordering the justices of the peace to seize all Negroes who had 11 00:01:06.820 --> 00:01:15.120 assembled themselves in a riotous manner or had run away. If any Negroes refused to submit, 12 00:01:15.120 --> 00:01:20.440 then the officials were to fire on them, kill or destroy them, if they cannot otherwise 13 00:01:20.440 --> 00:01:28.840 Two years later, in 1708, a group of slaves in Newtown, Long Island rebelled and killed 14 00:01:28.840 --> 00:01:36.160 seven whites. Four of the rebel slaves, including an Indian woman, were executed, the woman 15 00:01:36.160 --> 00:01:42.200 being burned by the authorities. A subsequent law in New York allowed judges to sentence 16 00:01:42.200 --> 00:01:50.040 local slaves to death in any manner they might deem best to attain public tranquility. The 17 00:01:50.040 --> 00:01:56.000 The fear of slave rebellion was clearly acute among the white masters. 18 00:01:56.000 --> 00:02:02.120 Early in 1712, a group of negro slaves in New York City formed a massive plot for an 19 00:02:02.120 --> 00:02:04.320 armed uprising. 20 00:02:04.320 --> 00:02:09.640 In the spring, a group of about thirty of the slaves obtained arms and then set upon 21 00:02:09.640 --> 00:02:14.120 a party of whites, routing them and killing nine. 22 00:02:14.120 --> 00:02:20.720 The slaves soon crushed the mutiny, however, arresting 70 negroes as conspirators, one 23 00:02:20.720 --> 00:02:26.840 of whom was convicted after being once acquitted and placing the city under arms. 24 00:02:26.840 --> 00:02:32.080 Twenty-one of the slaves were executed en masse, the governor taking advantage of the 25 00:02:32.080 --> 00:02:39.620 new law to perform the execution in a particularly brutal manner, as the most exemplary punishment 26 00:02:39.620 --> 00:02:45.380 that could possibly be thought of. Perhaps the most instructive lesson learned by the 27 00:02:45.380 --> 00:02:52.380 discerning was the brutality and savagery at the very core of the slave system. It is 28 00:02:53.180 --> 00:02:58.860 part of the Western heritage that when something unpleasant happens, a new law is passed in 29 00:02:58.860 --> 00:03:05.120 a hurried attempt to cure it. The new legislature therefore once more quickly tightened its 30 00:03:05.120 --> 00:03:13.120 Laws Punishing Slave Conspiracies. By 1740, New York City had the substantial number of 31 00:03:13.120 --> 00:03:20.600 2,000 Negro slaves among a total population of 12,000. The proportion soon reached one 32 00:03:20.600 --> 00:03:28.920 third in Kings and Queens counties. In 1740, hysteria spread through the city over an alleged 33 00:03:28.920 --> 00:03:33.320 The Slave Plot to Poison the White Water Supply 34 00:03:33.320 --> 00:03:38.680 For some time afterward, most New Yorkers allayed their fears by buying spring water 35 00:03:38.680 --> 00:03:46.680 from street vendors. The ensuing winter of 1740-41 was a hard one in New York, with the 36 00:03:46.680 --> 00:03:53.480 price of wheat and bread high and much suffering among the poor. Fires began to rage frequently 37 00:03:53.480 --> 00:04:00.480 throughout the city, some perhaps set by Negro slaves and white sympathizers. The slaves 38 00:04:00.500 --> 00:04:05.800 in accordance with the revolutionary nature of the weapon used concentrated their arson 39 00:04:05.800 --> 00:04:11.840 on the homes and offices of government officials and all the barracks of the soldiery. Several 40 00:04:11.840 --> 00:04:17.380 suspicious fires also broke out in Hackensack, New Jersey, for which at least two slaves 41 00:04:17.380 --> 00:04:24.380 were themselves burned in retaliation. The response to the fires was mass hysteria 42 00:04:24.580 --> 00:04:31.580 by the whites, expressed in indiscriminate arrest indulged in by the New York government. 43 00:04:31.580 --> 00:04:38.580 No fewer than 150 slaves and 25 whites, including 17 soldiers, were arrested. Interestingly 44 00:04:38.580 --> 00:05:08.580 were arrested. Interestingly enough, the main focus of white fear and hatred centered on a group of Spanish Negro prisoners of war, who upon capture had been sold from freedom into slavery in New York City. These Negroes were, understandably, particularly bitter at such treatment accorded to prisoners of war, as the greatest and most recent victims 45 00:05:08.580 --> 00:05:15.180 In terms of injustice, they drew the hottest fire of the guilty whites. All of these Spanish 46 00:05:15.180 --> 00:05:22.580 Negroes were imprisoned in the wave of arrests. In the mass arrest, city officials presumed 47 00:05:22.580 --> 00:05:29.740 to make a house-to-house search for suspicious-looking characters, who were ordered summarily arrested 48 00:05:29.740 --> 00:05:37.340 on suspicion. Eventually, every Negro at large was picked up by the police. The hapless Negroes, 49 00:05:37.340 --> 00:05:43.140 The set by torture and by promise of relief for accusing others could not find a single 50 00:05:43.140 --> 00:05:49.600 lawyer to defend them. One reason was that every lawyer in the city was directly associated 51 00:05:49.600 --> 00:05:56.460 with the prosecution. In his summing up, prosecutor William Smith had the gall to denounce the 52 00:05:56.460 --> 00:06:04.660 base ingratitude of the mutinous Negroes. Four of the white prisoners were executed, 53 00:06:04.660 --> 00:06:11.100 Including an innkeeper and his wife, as was a clergyman, the Rev. John Ury, accused of 54 00:06:11.100 --> 00:06:17.180 swearing in the conspirators. Ury stated that he was an Anglican minister, but the government 55 00:06:17.180 --> 00:06:23.500 insisted that he was a Spanish Jesuit priest, and a New York law of 1700 provided for the 56 00:06:23.500 --> 00:06:29.620 hanging of any Roman Catholic priest found in the province. The Attorney General, summing 57 00:06:29.620 --> 00:06:36.520 up the prosecution, took the occasion to denounce the iniquities of the Church of Rome. Refusing 58 00:06:36.520 --> 00:06:42.700 to believe that Uri was not a Catholic, New York carried out the execution. Of the slaves 59 00:06:42.700 --> 00:06:50.060 arrested, thirteen were burned alive, eighteen were hanged, and seventy banished to the West 60 00:06:50.060 --> 00:06:57.140 Indies. Every one of the unfortunate Spanish Negroes was killed. While waiting to be burned 61 00:06:57.140 --> 00:07:03.320 at the stake, a few Negroes were persuaded to confess and tell the truth, that is, implicate 62 00:07:03.320 --> 00:07:09.100 others, in exchange for a delay in the hope of a pardon, but their desperate maneuver 63 00:07:09.100 --> 00:07:16.100 was to be of no avail. The crowd became enraged when hearing of a delay, and, at its insistence, 64 00:07:16.580 --> 00:07:23.580 the Negroes were immediately burned to death. It is instructive to learn from the adamant 65 00:07:23.580 --> 00:07:30.580 In addition, the trials were marked by so-called confessions, extracted either by torture or by promises of large rewards for informing on others, methods which can hardly lend credence to the truth. 66 00:07:53.580 --> 00:08:00.820 Testimony. Indeed, the mass frenzy greatly resembled the Salem witch trials. And, as 67 00:08:00.820 --> 00:08:06.940 in the Salem case, only when confessions, especially those of the star witness, Mary 68 00:08:06.940 --> 00:08:14.180 Burton, began to implicate well-known and wealthy people, did the wave of arrest and 69 00:08:14.180 --> 00:08:21.020 executions suddenly subside. One happy consequence of the New York slave 70 00:08:21.020 --> 00:08:27.480 of Slave Frenzy was that it stamped the psyches of the residents with fear of further slave 71 00:08:27.480 --> 00:08:34.960 revolts, which led to a steady decline in the number of Negro slaves kept in New York 72 00:08:34.960 --> 00:08:35.460 City.