Chains (32 page)

Historians recently discovered the remains of slaves found in the African Burial Ground near today's City Hall in New York City. By studying the skeletons, scientists discovered that the slaves of New York suffered from poor nutrition, disease, and years of backbreaking labor. Most of them died young.

What were the differences between servants, indentured servants, and slaves?

Servants were usually working-class white people, often recent
immigrants, who were paid wages for their labor. Servants could quit their jobs if they wanted.

An indentured servant was a person, usually white, who promised their labor for seven years or so, often in exchange for passage to America. If they left their master before their term of service was up, they could be arrested. They did not have all of the freedoms of a nonindentured white person, but they had many more rights and protection than slaves.

Slaves were people of African descent who were not paid for their work and had to do everything demanded by the person who owned them. They had no rights and little protection from cruel treatment and inhumane living conditions. Slaves were not allowed to marry and children were frequently sold away from their parents.

Why don't we hear much about the Revolution in New York City? What was the city like back then?

Maybe because the British occupied the city for nearly the entire war.

Before the Revolutionary War began, New York was the second largest city in the American colonies with approximately 20,000 residents, smaller than Philadelphia (34,000 residents) and larger than Boston (15,000). It took up less than a square mile at the southernmost tip of Manhattan, then called York, or New York Island, stretching a little more than a mile north to south, and about a half mile, east to west.

The rest of Manhattan, called the Outward, consisted of forest and marshes dotted with small hamlets, such as Greenwich Village, farms, and a few grand summer estates. Fort Washington, eleven miles to the north of the small city of New York, was located between what we today call West 183rd and West 185th Streets, in the Hudson Heights neighborhood. Today's New York City Hall, where Broadway, Park Row, and Chambers Street intersect, was
built on the area known as the Commons during the Revolution, which was then at the northern edge of the city.

When the British occupied New York and the region around it, Patriot supporters fled and Loyalists poured into the city, seeking the protection of the king's army. Life in the city was very hard for most people. They struggled to find firewood and affordable food, while the British officers and wealthy Loyalists enjoyed comfort and luxury.

The city was in a strategic position for the British, located between the Patriot hotbeds of Boston and Philadelphia, but they never figured out how to use it effectively to squelch the rebellion.

Are you sure there were slaves in New York back then?

Absolutely.

The earliest slaves were brought to New Amsterdam (later called New York) by the Dutch in the 1620s. When the British took over New York in 1664, about 10 percent of the population was of African descent.

The number of slaves skyrocketed as the British kidnapped thousands of African men, women, and children and brought them to the city. By 1737, 20 percent of the city's population was enslaved—more than 1,700 people. By the middle of the century, New York had the second highest percentage of slaves in the colonies after Charleston, South Carolina. Historian Shane White analyzed census data, tax records, and directories and found that every street in New York had slave owners on it, and most people lived a few doors down from slaves, if they didn't own one themselves.

Historians estimate that about 5,000 African Americans, nearly 22 percent of the population, lived in and around New York in 1771. Very few of them were free. By the end of the American
Revolution, thousands had fled to the British or run away, but thousands more continued to live in bondage.

In 1799 New York passed the Gradual Emancipation Act, which set out the very slow timetable for freeing the children of slaves, after they had given nearly thirty years of servitude to the people who owned them. The law was changed in 1817, freeing the rest of the slaves of New York on July 4, 1827.

On July 5, 1827, thousands of free African Americans marched down Broadway, following an honor guard and a grand marshal. In front of the African Zion Church, they listened as abolitionist leader William Hamilton announced, “This day we stand redeemed from a bitter thralldom.”

The African Americans of New York were finally free after two hundred years of bondage.

Did that huge fire really destroy part of New York in 1776?

The fire was a terrible disaster that affected the city for years. No one has ever proved if it started by accident, or was the work of Patriots angry that the British had driven them out of the city. It started near the tip of the island and was spread by strong winds up the west side, burning through the night as panicked families rushed into the streets.

When the flames finally died, nearly five hundred buildings—a quarter of all the homes in the city—had burned to the ground. In the chaos that followed, no one counted the dead. They were buried as quickly as possible, then thoughts turned to survival.

With winter approaching, finding shelter for the homeless was critical. Families were forced to let British soldiers live with them, and homes abandoned by fleeing Patriots were taken over by the army. Poor people lived in the remnants of cellars and built so many hovels in the burned-over district that it was known as “Canvastown.”

Since the Revolution, Manhattan has expanded, reaching farther into the two rivers that flow by it as developers added landfill so they could erect more buildings. Two centuries after the war, the World Trade Center Towers were built. Part of the complex stood on the land that was devastated during the Great Fire of 1776. When the World Trade Towers were destroyed during the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the same region of the city suffered.

St. Paul's Chapel, a small Episcopalian church in that neighborhood, somehow survived both disasters.

Were conditions for the American prisoners of war really that bad?

The conditions suffered by the American soldiers captured by the British in and around New York were almost too horrible to describe. They were stuffed into jails, churches, warehouses, and decrepit ships in the harbor and left to rot. Their cells had no heat. They used a corner or a bucket for their toilet and were never allowed to bathe. They did not have blankets, warm clothes, or medical care. They had to drink dirty water. Their meals were raw pork, moldy biscuits infested with maggots, peas, and rice.

About half of the two thousand Americans captured at Fort Washington died from disease and starvation within weeks. If the British had not allowed the citizens of New York to bring blankets and food to the prisoners, the death toll would have been higher.

Captured officers, however, were treated differently. They were allowed to stay in boardinghouses, to work, and to walk around the city as long as they did not try to escape. The British felt that officers were gentlemen and deserved to be treated according to their higher social class.

More than 10,000 American prisoners of war died in British captivity.

What happened to King George's head?

After the Declaration of Independence was read to a crowd of Patriots on July 9, 1776, the excited Americans rushed down Broadway to the Bowling Green and pulled down the gilt-covered lead statue of King George and his horse. The statue was dragged up the length of Manhattan to Fort Washington. Some historians believe that the king's head was displayed in front of the Blue Bell Tavern, near what is today the corner of Broadway and 181st Street.

Most of the statue was melted into 42,088 bullets by the women of Litchfield, Connecticut. Other fragments of the statue were stolen and hidden. Over the next hundred years, pieces of it turned up in fields and swamps. A number of families kept bits of the statue as a reminder of the day.

Loyalist spies were outraged at the treatment of the image of their king. They stole back the head and delivered it to Captain John Montresor, a British engineer. Thomas Hutchinson, former Loyalist governor of Massachusetts, claimed he saw the head—the head of the statue, that is—in London, England, in 1777. He said the nose didn't look so good.

I was blessed by the kind assistance and advice of many fine people as I worked on this book.

I am extremely grateful to Christopher Paul Moore, historian and research coordinator for the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; Sherrill D. Wilson, PhD; and Kathleen Hulser, public historian of the New-York Historical Society, for reviewing the manuscript for historical accuracy. Any mistakes of fact or interpretation that remain are mine alone. Special thanks go to Judith van Buskirk, PhD, professor of history at the State University of New York at Cortland. Not only did Dr. van Buskirk read the manuscript, but she generously allowed me access to her own research notes. Thanks also to Sheila Cooke-Kayser, educational specialist at the Boston National Historical Park, for sending me a copy of the National Park Service's report, “Patriots of Color.” Thank you Forrest Ainslie of Philadelphia for the information about the treatment of epilepsy during the Colonial era and Tobias Huisman in the Netherlands for help with the Dutch translation.

The African Burial Ground National Monument pays tribute to the thousands of New York slaves who lie buried in lower Manhattan. Deep thanks to Park Supervisor Tara Morrison for managing the magnificent monument and for helping me find the proper experts to review this book. Thanks also to the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance & Abolition and the New-York Historical Society for providing
online and real-world resources that helped me grasp the insidiousness of slavery during the American Revolution.

Amy Berkower of Writer's House is not just my wonderful agent, she is a trusted and much appreciated friend. Because of her efforts, I have a wonderful team to work with at Simon & Schuster. I extend my deepest thanks there to Rick Richter and Rubin Pfeffer for allowing me to pursue my dream of seeking out the seeds of America's stories. Thank you also to editorial assistant Julia Maguire for steering a river of paperwork safely past shoals and rapids.

Of all of the books I have worked on with my brilliant editor, Kevin Lewis, this is the one that lies closest to our hearts. Thank you, Kevin, for the long conversations about our nation's history, the scars and legacy of slavery, and our responsibilities to our readers. Kevin also gets a loud “Huzzah!” for his careful reading of all the drafts of this story and for encouraging me to take it to the next level.

Authors of historical fiction would be out of a job were it not for the angels who are disguised as librarians. Thank you to the staffs of the Penfield Library of the State University of New York at Oswego, the Bird Library of Syracuse University, and the New York North Country Library System. Special thanks to the charming and patient women of my hometown library, the Mexico Library in Mexico, New York.

My friends and fellow authors Deborah Heiligman and Martha Hewson again offered suggestions about the early drafts of the book. Thank you, Genevieve Gagne-Hawes, for your insight; Greg Anderson for saving me from comma embarrassment; and to my younger early-draft readers: Tess Kallmeyer of California and Will Hoiseth of Wisconsin, Poland, Peru (and wherever else his family lands), for much appreciated early encouragement and suggestions.

Thank you, Mindy Ostrow and Bill Reilly (owners of the best bookstore in the country, the River's End Bookstore in Oswego, New York), for letting me write the opening pages of this story in your magic writing chair. It worked again. I also send thanks streaming through the ether to the readers of my blog for encouraging me more than they realized.

A note to our long-suffering children: Christian, Meredith, Jessica, and Stephanie. You will never again have to say “Are you
still
working on that book?!” about
Chains.
You will have to say it about my new project. Thank you for pretending to be fascinated by the historical trivia that I have been boring you with for years.

If you look carefully, you will see the faint outline of my husband, Scot Larrabee, on every page of this story. Scot did all the driving to libraries to fetch books. He brewed me gallons of tea and coffee, reheated countless meals, and never complained when I talked about the story in my sleep. Most importantly, he keeps me safe through the storms of doubt and frustration that periodically crash into my soul. Thank you, my dear, for simply everything.

Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Berlin, New York and Sydney

This electronic edition published in September 2011 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published in Great Britain in 2009 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
36 Soho Square, London, W1D 3QY