The Great Negro Plot (12 page)

THE MONSTROUS INGRATITUDE OF THIS BLACK TRIBE

CUFFEE AND QUACK WERE ESCORTED into Court together.

Cuffee knew he had no hope. Quack knew he would fare no better.

"May it please your honours," the prosecutor began, "Gentlemen of the jury, this is a cause of very great expectations, it
being, as I conceive, a matter of the utmost importance that ever yet came to be tried in this province.
Gentlemen,
there is a conspiracy of black and whites, and these two are at the center of it. They met at John Hughson's.

Quack's own confessions to others proves his guilt. Cuffee is no better."

Cuffee, who was Kofi. Quack, who was Quaco, sometimes referred to as Kwaku, sealed together for eternity. The court was trying
the enslaved two at a time, because it was more expedient that way.

"Gentlemen,
it is in you, the people, in general, place their hopes and expectations of their future security and repose; that they may
sit securely in their own houses, and rest quietly in their beds, no one daring to make them afraid."

After all that waiting, Cuffee would have his day in court, perhaps, in the end, sooner than he might have wanted. Witnesses
were called. Arthur Price retold his tale of Cuffee's jailhouse banter, Sarah Higgins testified she had seen Cuffee in his
blue coat lurking behind Philipse's storehouse with three others before fire broke out. John Peterson placed Cuffee at the
site of the fire right when it erupted, having handed him a bucket himself, despite Adolph Philipse's assertion that his slave
was elsewhere working. Isaac Gardner took it further, saying Cuffee joined in the bucket brigade only to dump the water on
the ground as he laughed with the other slaves, the firm dirt around him turning to mud. Jacobus Stoudenburg retold his roof
sighting of the slave running from the scene of the crime, Cuffee's escape only slowed by a nail that caught his breeches.

Of course, the day's events would not be complete without some words spoken by Mary Burton, she, who by this time, had become
the veritable foundation on which the whole of the case laid. Not to be outdone, Mary arrived with something new to offer
the court in addition to her past testimony.

"Three weeks after I arrived at Hughson's," she said, "about midwinter's last, the Negroes were there talking of the plot."
The gathered crowd that filled the courtroom hushed to hear the latest of the young woman's revelations. "Some of them said
perhaps I would tell, and Cuffee said, 'No, she will not, for I intend to have her for a wife!' Then he ran up to me, and
I had a dishclout in my hand, which I dabbed in his face, and he ran away."

The full room emitted a collective gasp at the sexual outrage of it. The sheer audacity!

By law, slaves were allowed to give testimony only against other slaves—not white people—and this was explained to the court
before Sandy was brought forth to attest to Cuffee's bragging of the intended act of burning the storehouse. Then came another
slave, Fortune, stepping forward to recount his story of Quack's dragging him to the fort with the false promise of punch,
and his gloating afterward that the fort had been turned into cinders.

" 'Don't you remember what I told you, there would be great alterations in the fort?'" Fortune said Quack had reminded him,
and this recounted utterance, the seeming realization of personal vengeance and power, now served only to reduce Quack further.

Witnesses were called for the defense—white slave owners who had the respect of the court—but their testimony proved weak
and awkward. The most damaging of which for Cuffee would come from his own master, the prominent Adolph Philipse himself,
who was feeling particularly uncomfortable with the position considering the politicized nature of the court (as well as the
fact that one of the judges in the case, Judge Philipse, was his own nephew). Adolph stated only that he had left Cuffee sewing
a vane aboard his boat, adding damningly, "As to his character I can say nothing."

For Quack, the final blow would be delivered by John McDonald, a soldier at the fort who on the day of the fire had stood
sentry at the gate.

McDonald was sitting at his post as usual, he said. The fort itself was relatively empty, what with the troops off in the
Caribbean fighting the Spaniards. Quack had come up to the gate, and asked to come in. This, in itself, was not much of a
surprise, Quack's wife was the lieutenant governor's cook, and this was the only way he could see her. But that was precisely
why her employer didn't want him coming in; Quack was distracting his help. In fact, the last time he tried to get in, McDonald
testified he had had to push Quack down to the ground to keep him from shoving past, and the guard had ended up with a punch
in the face from the slave for his efforts. After all that, the slave had run to the kitchen anyway. So on the morning of
the fire, it had been time for a different approach.

"The lieutenant governor has for some time forbid you from coming to the fort," McDonald said he had informed him.

"I am free now and have liberty to come," Quack answered. So the soldier, not wanting to be bothered with drama that he didn't
really care about in the first place, just let Quack pass into the fort despite his order.

When McDonald spoke as much to the court, nothing was said about why Quack ran to find refuge in the kitchen after the ruckus
had begun. No mention was made of the fact that Quack was not in actuality trying to storm the fort, but
visit his wife.
This was an investigation into neither the source nor the validity of the man's anger.

"Gentlemen," the prosecutor beseeched the court. "The monstrous ingratitude of this black tribe is what exceedingly aggravates
their guilt. Their slavery among us is generally softened with great indulgence. They live without care, and are commonly
better fed and clothed and put to less labour than the poor of most Christian countries."

Within the paradigm of the English language there are some acknowledged great words: Hypocrisy. Gall. Delusion. Perversion.
Grotesquery.

Really, one can choose from any number of these words to give character to the views that were spewed on the part of the court
that day. From a distance of centuries, however, their absurdity is overwhelming, breathtaking. What similar comments made
by our own contemporary courts, politicians, and leaders of industry will strike similarly putrid chords centuries down the
line? What will revolt our descendants as much as this bile meant to justify one of the greatest acts of inhumanity of the
millennia?

"They are indeed slaves, but under the protection of the law, none can hurt them with impunity," the judge declared, as he
and the court did just that. "They are really more happy in this place than in the midst of the continual plunder, cruelty,
and rapine of their native countries. But notwithstanding all the kindness and tenderness with which they have been treated
amongst us, yet this is the second attempt of the same kind, that this brutish and bloody species of mankind have made within
one age."

The whites were indignant, generally confused. How could these black bastards be so ungrateful after all that had been done
for them?

There were some things the jury would have no trouble deciding. They were out for mere minutes.

"You both now stand convicted of one of the most horrid and detestable pieces of villainy that ever Satan instilled into the
heart of human creatures to put in practice," the third of the three judges took the initiative to address the now convicted.
He was brimming with indignation at the Africans' lack of appreciation for the benevolence of their people's kidnapping, rape,
and life imprisonment.

"Ye that were for destroying us without mercy, ye abject wretches, the outcasts of the nations of the earth, are treated here
with tenderness and humanity. And I wish I could not say, with too great indulgence also, for you have grown wanton with excess
liberty, and your idleness has proved your ruin, having given you the opportunities of forming this villainous and detestable
conspiracy. A scheme compounded of the blackest and foulest vices, treachery, blood-thirstiness, and ingratitude. Be not deceived,
God Almighty only can and will proportion punishments to men's offences."

The punishment of man assessed: Cuffee and Quack were to be taken the next day to the stake and burnt alive for their crimes
against white people.

The crowd gathered for the execution was massive, overwhelming, boisterous. They had come to see blood, Negro blood, to see
meat broiled on the bone. To witness the source of their suspicion and terror now burning itself in hateful fires. Despite
the impending doom of the condemned, Cuffee and Quack's captors never ceased in trying to get the two men to confess to their
crimes.

"Your eternal souls are in the balance," the white men in charge told them. "There is still a chance to save yourselves from
such a horrific demise—or at least this day from it."

At about three o'clock, the two convicted were brought to the stake. The split wood was set out and piled high, ready to claim
their bodies once they were tied above it. The people, many of whom had arrived hours before, were impatient, screaming at
the top of their lungs for the show to begin, calling openly to the doomed men for retribution. Mr. Moore and Mr. John Roosevelt,
a butcher at the Fly Market, led Cuffee and Quack to their fate, taking notice that both seemed as petrified about the upcoming
event as the crowd seemed hungry for it. Sensing the two captives' willingness to talk, yet the reluctance of each to be the
first to begin, their captors had the bright idea to break the two Africans up, and question them individually. It worked.

At the brink of being burned alive, and thinking that his fellow had already saved his own skin by declaiming freely, each
man cracked, spewing desperate, last-second confessions. Their white captors struggled to hear their words over the bloodthirsty
roar of the crowd. Dictating their admissions for prosperity as the mob screamed and waved for murder just beyond.

"John Hughson started everything," Quack cried, hoping against hope that this information would save him. " 'Twas Hughson
that brought Caesar and Prince and Cuffee for the scheming of it, along and twenty others."

Those twenty other poor souls, the desperate Quack proceeded to doom one by one, providing their names to Butcher Roosevelt.

"Hughson wanted what the Negroes could bring to his house from the fires, bragging that he would bring in more enslaved by
the boatload from the country to assist their plan."

Quack was asked, "What view did Hughson have in acting in this manner?"

"To make himself rich," came the African's desperate response. Quack said there were around fifty involved in the conspiracy,
although he didn't have names for them all. For Sandy and Fortune, though, he had special admonishment.

"They were as involved as any, and that Sandy can name the Spanish Negroes who as a group had been involved."

As so many had accused him, Quack even admitted to the firing of the fort.

"At eight P.M. that night, with a lighted stick taken out of the servants' hall I did do it," Quack offered, convinced that
nothing but a complete acceptance of guilt would do. "I went up the back stairs to a top bedroom, sticking it outside in a
gutter."

Fearing for his own safety in this suspicious time, the sentry guard, John McDonald, emerged from the crowd and stormed the
stage during the confession to demand his own name be cleared before these judges focused their mad gaze on him.

"Tell them! Tell them my own confession was honest," McDonald demanded of the condemned man.

"It was true, he told the truth," the broken Quack managed through his tears. "I also tried to light the fort up the night
before the fire, on Saint Patrick's Day while the troops drank, but the firebrand I placed in the garret had failed to catch.
But my wife, she is innocent. Please, sirs, she should be pardoned."

Cuffee's confession mirrored Quack's in regard to the guilt of Hughson, the size of the conspiracy, and the hypocritical nature
of Fortune and Sandy, the latter of whom had ties to the Spanish Negroes. Cuffee added more to the post as well, including
his own confession as to Philipse's storehouse.

"I ran from the boat I was working on when Adolph Philipse went to the coffeehouse, then sprint back to the storehouse with
a lit ember held in my pocket inside an oyster shell. Then I placed it by the ropes and boards in the storehouse and then
came running home again," he told them.

That was all good, but that was just the petty act of one slave toward his master, what of the great conspiracy?

"Many who had been planning are worried they will now be discovered because last winter a constable [Constable North, it was
later identified] broke up our meeting at Hughson's and had seen
all
of us," Cuffee added.

In the end, as historical document, in the written accounts by their separate interrogators, Quack and Cuffee's confessions
are so similar that it's clear that Butcher Roosevelt and Mr. Moore were checking each other's progress, putting them together
to avoid contradiction.

Amid the yells and chaos, the stories given were considered satisfactory. As he had promised the terrified slaves, Mr. Moore
asked the sheriff to delay the execution until the governor could be notified that the guilty parties were now turning into
witnesses for the King. It seemed at last that Cuffee and Quack would be saved, having finally found a sliver of mercy in
the white man's judicial system

While the crowd, annoyed by the delay, continued to roar, Mr. Moore met with His Honor to present this new situation. Unfortunately,
before the two slaves could be removed from harm's way, the sheriff came to the decision that it didn't matter what the judge
said or promised, informing Moore of his decision on his return.

"We can't do that," Moore argued. "We promised these boys we'd spare them if they talked."