Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [124]
New-York Gazette; or, the Weekly Post-Boy, October 27, 1768. Notices such as this, common in colonial newspapers, typically provided as much detail as possible about the fugitives and their destinations. (© Collection of The New-York Historical Society)
A mere hint of restiveness among black New Yorkers could throw whites into a near panic. And not without justification. New York slaveowners knew full well that the price of slavery in the West Indies had been a long ordeal of racial violence and bloodshed. Between the 1670s and the 1730s half a dozen major slave insurrections and numerous small revolts took place on Barbados and Antigua alone; on Jamaica, armed bands of escaped slaves known as Maroons kept the authorities at bay for decades. New Yorkers knew, too, that slaves convicted of serious crimes in the West Indies—even arson and murder—were frequently sold to unsuspecting buyers on the mainland. Beginning in 1702 the Assembly tried to deter nonresident merchants from dumping these “refuse Negroes” on the colony by permitting local merchants to pay much lower tariffs on slaves imported directly from Africa. How many veteran insurrectionaries had ended up in New York? No one knew for sure. Everyone feared, however, that a mere handful could do terrible damage to the city and neighboring communities.
Could it happen in New York? A gang of runaway slaves allegedly robbed and terrorized Dutch farmers in Harlem in 1690. In 1706 Governor Cornbury learned that “several N’s in Kings County (Brooklyn) have assembled themselves in a riotous manner, which if not prevented may prove of ill consequence.” To make certain the turmoil didn’t spread, he ordered the arrest of “all such Negroes as shall be found to be assembled—& if any of them refuse to submit, then fire upon them, kill or destroy them, if they cannot otherwise be taken.”
Two years later, Queens County was thrown into an uproar by the slaying of William Hallett Jr., a prominent landowner and self-styled “gentleman” whose plantation bordered Hallett’s Cove in present-day Astoria. Hallett, it seems, had tried to stop his slaves “from going abroad on the Sabbath days.” In retaliation, an Indian slave named Sam and his African wife murdered Hallett, Hallett’s wife, and their five children. The culprits were quickly seized, convicted, and executed on the plains east of Jamaica. Sam was impaled and hung in chains. His wife was burned alive. Two other black men were executed as accessories. A witness reported the four “were put to all the torment possible for a terror to others.”
The city got its first taste of servile rebellion in 1712—less than a year after the municipal slave market opened for business. One night in early April, two dozen slaves who, Governor Hunter reported, “had resolved to revenge themselves, for some hard usage, they apprehended to have received from their masters,” gathered in an orchard of Mr. Crook, “in the middle of the town.” According to John Sharpe, the Anglican chaplain, the majority were unchristianized Kormantines and Pawpaws from the Akan-Asante society of the Gold Coast—probably imported within the previous year or two (so much for the assumption that newcomers from Africa were more docile). They had pledged themselves to secrecy “by Sucking ye blood of each Others hands” and attempted to make themselves invulnerable by rubbing their clothes with a powder supplied by one Peter the Doctor, “a free negroe who pretends Sorcery.” Arming themselves from a secret cache of stolen muskets, swords, knives, and hatchets, the conspirators set fire to a nearby building and ambushed residents who rushed to put out the flames. Nine whites were shot or slashed to death before Governor Hunter raised the garrison and marched against them, but the rebels “made their retreat into the woods, by the favour of the night.” The next day, Hunter sealed off “the most proper places on the Island to prevent their escape,