The Great Negro Plot (5 page)

"I deny that as well," Peggy said to them, ignoring the motion off to her right when Caesar's shocked gaze snapped in her
direction.

Focused on Peggy's eyes, Caesar silently begged a response as his lover forcibly tried to ignore him.

"You what?" the court continued. "Oh, I see you are being quite the villainess this day, miss. Then, may I ask, what fact
is it that you would be willing to testify to this day?"

"Only to the goodness of my landlords, John and Sarah Hughson," Peggy told the room. "They are honorable, decent people and
I am fortunate to board with them," she said, looking over to where the Hughsons sat, making sure they heard her every recommendation.
The stolen property was not the only treasure that had been removed from John Hughson's tavern to his mother-in-law's. Unknown
to the court that day, Peggy's young son was waiting for her with the old woman as well. Her only son, in the hands of the
people she was being asked to incriminate. Some said the boy was as white as any colonist's child, others that he had the
African blood in him as sure as any other mulatto. Either way, Peggy knew her only chance of protecting him would be to hold
her tongue as concerned the family that now had him.

After listening to his alleged sins revealed, his guilt reasserted, when called to testify, Caesar, too, denied all that involved
him in the crime of the stolen property of Mr. and Mrs. Hogg. Not that his denial would mean much; any hope either he or Peggy
held for being released on bail was now far gone. But when it came time to address the issue of his relationship with Miss
Kerry, Caesar, his pride evidently still intact, and despite the sure knowledge of persecution such revelation would beg,
was more forthcoming.

"Mary Burton told the truth, in that regard," Caesar told the room as Peggy took her turn to stare downcast.

He looked directly at her as he spoke, nonetheless. "I have been sleeping in the room of Peggy Kerry and I will not deny that,"
he said.

It was an admission that could surely cause his destruction, but Caesar stood proudly behind the pronouncement. Displaying
the very defiance, stubbornness, and nihilism that soon would be revealed as archetypal of his brown brethren in response
to their enslavement in New York City.

FIRE, FIRE, SCORCH, SCORCH, A LITTE, DAMN IT, BY AND BY

EXACTLY TWO WEEKS LATER, at one in the afternoon, things started getting hot. At Fort George, on the southern tip of Manhattan
isle, the glow of fire danced on the roof of His Honor, Lieutenant Governor Clarke's house. The light show came to fruition
before notice was even called to it. It started on the roof of the east side of the house, about twenty feet from the closest
building, the chapel. By the time the alarm was sounded, the blaze had ignited the entire wood-shingled rooftop, raging into
a beacon that could be seen well beyond the city limits.

The fires had started.

The chapel's bell alerted the population at large to the conflagration. Soon the city's citizenry, never known for their general
sense of community, interrupted their lives to come to the rescue. Fire was a communal event. The town's newly acquired state-of-the-art,
side-stroking, manual-pump fire engine could divert some river water out its gooseneck onto a burning structure to slow some
furies, but nobody thought that was enough, given the magnitude of the blaze. Once these wood-beamed structures really struck
afire, the community's primary duty was reduced to removing all they could of the internal contents of the building, its destruction
being a foregone conclusion. From practice, the approaching crowds knew how to set up a proper bucket brigade, to form lines
to the doors, with at least one line carrying the building's prized possessions out into the safety of the street while another
brought buckets of water in to slow the blaze. It was a group performance that was as practical as it was collective. Fire
knows no satiation, and in a city with over eleven thousand people, where buildings had been erected so close together, if
not handled immediately a fire such as this could easily grow beyond its initial source. Its hunger devouring an entire neighborhood
without pause.

Much commended in the aftermath, the gathered crowd got most of the furniture out of the lieutenant governor's home before
the blaze completely engulfed it. Fine couches brought from Europe met sooty hands in the chill late afternoon air. Oil portraits
risked becoming little more than flammables. But what did it matter? Despite their efforts, despite the eventual arrival of
the fire engines, it was soon determined that not the home, nor the chapel next door, could be saved. A violent southeast
gale had goaded the flames faster than could be discouraged.

It was decided that efforts should be diverted instead to the secretary's office, situated right outside the English fort's
gate, where the priceless records of the colony were kept, as well as the soldiers' barracks that stood across the quad from
the governor's house. With speed and diligence born of desperation, the citizens stormed the buildings, throwing records and
books out the windows on the town side to save them from destruction as the heaving winter wind blew documents chaotically
down the city's streets. Most were later recovered, and it was a good thing, too, as soon after the office building was vacated,
the roof became engulfed as well.

Chaos took hold as the contents of these rich structures were vomited, neighbors trying desperately in the confusion to save
their city from destruction. As if nature wanted an inferno, the wind continued its mischief, draped with smoke and decorated
with the floating red embers of civilization. Soon, too, the nature of man seemed to conspire for the blaze as well. When
fire ignited the roof of the nearby military barracks, not long after it took the office building, the rumor spread through
the crowd that there was now a greater danger that must be avoided: there was gunpowder in that building. The humble barracks
was now on the verge of becoming the largest bomb any had had the misfortune of standing next to.

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 Spanish 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.