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By Root 8274 0

Philipse—took pains to follow accepted rules of evidence and procedure. Yet none of the accused, slave or free, had legal representation. As a result, key witnesses weren’t cross-examined, obvious exculpatory evidence was ignored, and no alternative explanation of events was ever presented to the juries. Only Ury, the suspected Catholic priest, mounted anything like an informed and organized defense, explaining that he was just a dissenter from the Church of England and had no knowledge whatever of any conspiracy. Bradley and his assistants got a conviction by haranguing the jury on the dangers of Catholicism—a “hocus pocus, bloody religion,” cried Bradley—but Ury’s calm eloquence, first in the courtroom and then on the gallows, threw a shadow of doubt across the entire business.

So, in the end, did Mary Burton herself, by hinting that the conspiracy had involved “some people in ruffles (a phrase as was understood to mean persons of better fashion than ordinary).” Incredulous, the court demanded names, whereupon “she named several persons which she said she had seen at Hughson’s amongst the conspirators, talking of the conspiracy, who were engaged in it; amongst whom she mentioned several of known credit, fortunes and reputations, and of religious principles superior to a suspicion of being concerned in such detestable practices.” Knowing that the veracity of its star witness would crumble if Burton kept talking, the prosecution began to wrap up the proceedings soon after Ury’s execution. One who escaped the hangman as a result was Hughson’s friend John Romme. “The devil couldn’t hurt me,” he had boasted, “for I’ve a great many friends in town, and the best in the place’ll stand by me.” Although he was arrested in New Jersey after fleeing to escape prosecution, the New York authorities made no attempt to bring him back.

If the official conspiracy theory cannot be taken at face value, that doesn’t rule out the possibility of some less widespread or well-organized coup—by slaves against their masters, by the poor against the rich, or a combination of both. It’s quite likely that Hughson and a number of slaves often speculated casually about their chances of getting away with some such project. Alternatively, Hughson and perhaps another half-dozen or so whites and blacks may have planned the rash of fires in February and March to cover up multiple burglaries.

Whether or not they had really planned an uprising, the mass of casual, incidental evidence—corroborative detail supplied in page after page of depositions, confessions, and trial testimony—makes it apparent that by 1741 New York’s two-thousand-odd slaves had the organizational ingenuity and the political sophistication to do so. Over and over again, witnesses testified to the inability or unwillingness of their masters to keep them under close supervision. They regularly held clandestine meetings, passed long hours drinking, gaming, and dancing together away from the prying eyes of whites, easily got away with petty larceny and the small-scale destruction of property, and even managed to own weapons.

Conspiracy or no, moreover, the Geneva Club and its mock-Masonic rituals had been real enough. The existence of two paramilitary companies said to have been formed by the conspirators—the Long Bridge Boys and the Smith’s Fly Boys—undoubtedly made perfect sense to prosecutors because they corresponded to groups or affiliations or divisions within slave society. Judging by reactions to the departure of the expedition to Cuba and the hopes of a Spanish or French attack, at least some slaves knew a good deal about international events and their ramifications for the city. Many clearly remembered or knew of the 1712 revolt, how it had been organized, and what came of it. A few had participated in revolts elsewhere; one was a veteran of risings on both St. John’s and Antigua. No doubt some of them were ready for a revolt in New York too, despite the tremendous odds against success. “G—d d———n all the white people,” one was said to have cried, “if he had it in his power, he