The Great Negro Plot (14 page)

Perhaps the most sympathetic testimony of the trial came from a witness for the King, a former neighbor who said he often
chastised Hughson for his late-night revelries. The neighbor complained, after one such night of debauchery, he spoke once
more to Hughson about the offending behavior.

"It's my wife, isn't it?" the witness reported Hughson told him. "She dragged me away from my quiet country life of farming
and shoemaking for the chance at more money in the city, but my gains have been so small, and my family so large, that they
soon run away with what we have. My wife, she's the chief cause of having the Negroes in the house."

"The witnesses declare," Horsmanden clarified for all still unable to discern, "the principal contriver of those mischiefs
to be that wicked man, John Hughson, whose crimes have made him blacker than a Negro: the scandal of his complexion, and the
disgrace of human nature! Whose name will descend with infamy to posterity!"

At that point, the judge informed the jury they had all the pertinent information needed, and that now they needed to make
their decision.

"But on the other hand," the judge continued, "as the evidence against them seems to be so ample, so full, so clear and satisfactory,
if you have no particular reason in your own breasts, in your own consciences, to discredit them, if that, I say, is not the
case, if you have no reason to discredit them, then I make no doubt but you will discharge a good conscience, and find them
guilty."

And so the jury did, wasting very little time at it.

John Hughson and his wife, Sarah, along with Peggy Kerry, were convicted of three guilty indictments, daughter Sarah of two.
The self-righteous, racial indignation of the good white people of the city of New York was on full display as the sentence
was handed down.

As it turned out, it was John Hughson's failure as a traitor to whiteness that was as much his crime as the more fanciful
charges alleged against him.

"Yours are indeed as singular, and unheard of before, they are such as one would scarce believe any man capable of committing,
especially any one who had heard of a God and a future state; for people who have been brought up and always lived in a Christian
country, and also called themselves Christians, to be guilty not only of making Negro slaves their equals, but even their
superiors, by waiting upon, keeping with, and entertaining them with meat, drink, and lodging, and what is much more amazing,
to plot, conspire, consult, abet, and encourage these black seed of Cain to burn this city, and to kill and destroy us all.
Good God!"

The three whites were sentenced to be hanged by the neck until "severely dead" on June 12, 1741. After death, the infamous
John Hughson was still to receive special treatment. His corpse was to be removed from its noose and rehung in chains next
to the body of his nefarious slave comrade.

Caesar's corpse silently awaited the company.

Four days later, on the day of his scheduled execution, Hugh-son declared from his jail cell, "I deserve death for the stealing
of Hogg's property, but as to the rest! As for the rest I am innocent!"

It was good that John Hughson could agree, at least in part, to his sentence, but regardless, he was about to die. That much
was obvious, foregone, and highly anticipated.

"Yet listen to my prophecy—a great sign from God will occur to prove me so," he insisted.

"Just come out of your cell, John Hughson," the guard ordered. "You will have all the audience you desire on this day."

John Hughson emerged from his cell with his head held high. Not simply to show his enduring pride, but also to show off his
latest affectation: two shilling-size red marks on his face, one adorning each cheek. It was a painful bit of performance
art, shoving his dirty and ragged fingernails into the tender flesh of his rum-softened face, but it was worth the effort.
As the crowd turned out to watch the condemned be pulled down the road in open carriage, the sight of John's self-inflicted
stigmata sent the spectators atitter with the spectacle. A great preview of things to come.

Finally given an opportunity to truly play to the crowd, Hughson made sure that the citizens of this New York would have a
good look at him in his majesty, standing in his cart the whole way to his hanging. He had become a symbol, and knowing that
performed as one literally.

"Sit your bloody arse down, are things not as bad as they can be?" his wife beseeched him, but he remained undaunted. One
hand straight up in the air as high as he could manage, his forefinger pointing as a beacon, John Hughson became a vision
to be remembered, as surely as he intended.

"Will you look at that, he marks his destination in the heavens above, making his peace with the God he knows," came a whisper
through the crowd.

"Don't be a fool—he's signaling for his rescuers, for the revolution to begin!" Darting eyes swept the street searching for
the first glimpse of the apocalyptic mob of armed Africans.

But none appeared. The wheels on the horse-drawn cart bounced forward on the uneven cobblestone road without halting. John
Hughson kept his finger in the air, but no dark hordes would come to his rescue. The wheels on that cart did not stop until
they reached the gallows.

His wife, Sarah, was resigned, immobile, "a lifeless trunk," as the coarse hemp rope was placed around her neck and then thrown
over a stout tree limb. Despite her cooperation and confession, Peggy Kerry found herself right beside her. The crowd, for
its part, roared. "We die as innocents," Peggy declared. "We know nothing of this conspiracy which has been imagined. It not
be more true for our deaths."

And then the rope went taut, and the three had nothing more to say in the matter.

Legs kicked. Bodies spun. Pendular mortality giving its parting dance, and the crowd cheering at the sight of it. Quieting
only to witness the next victims, slaves Albany, Curacao Dick, and Francis, fitted for their own nooses.

In death all motion stilled. John Hughson's lifeless body was cut down. As prescribed, only to be restrung in chains for permanent
display alongside Caesar's. Mates in life, death, and history.

" I'VE BEEN A SLAVE LONG ENOUGH"

THE CITY OF NEW YORK had gotten so good at killing Negroes, they were doing them five at a time. Peck's Caesar, Gomez's Cuffee,
Comfort's Cook, Comfort's Jack, Ellison's Jamaica were brought to trial together. Men without whole names, their very identities
enslaved by their masters'. They were marched in together and this was how they were convicted as well, largely on the death
scene confessions of Cuffee and Quack as told via Mr. Moore and Mr. John Roosevelt once more. Black confessions, born under
duress, now filtered through the voices of white men for the appearance of legality. The court had lost its facade as balancer
of guilt and innocence.

Sandy appeared again on the witness stand and told the judges, "Peck's Caesar bragged to me, TU kill the white men and drink
their blood to their good health.' "

By now Sandy had grown accustomed to testifying in front of the court, liking quite well the attention and personal safety
it offered him. In fact, Sandy liked talking so much that even after his final appearance was over, and he was being shipped
out of town and far away, he was still yapping, his tale growing so large and extravagant with each retelling, that some of
his shipmates believed that the trials had only touched the tip of the bother.

Five Africans brought in front of the New York court of inquisition, five guilty verdicts waiting to be pronounced. Only Jamaica
proved to have any mitigating circumstances.

"Jamaica is not concerned that I know of, but he was frequently at Hughson's with his fiddle," Quack had declared in his final,
desperate confession. The magistrates chose to ignore Quack's dying words, however. Thanks to Mary Burton.

"Oh yes, I know that one," she declared. "He said he'd dance or play over the whites while they were roasting in flames. Tve
been a slave long enough,' was what he said."

Still, in the end Jamaica was the fortunate one. While his fellow enslaved were quickly sentenced to be chained and burned
at the stake, Jamaica was spared the torture. Instead, he was sentenced to a relatively comfortable hanging. A considerable
break, since by giving up others, Jamaica was able to convert his sentence into expulsion to the West Indies.

The more slaves brought in, the more names named. The more names named, the more slaves brought in. The more slaves brought
in, the more the story grew. And grew. And grew.

In just a few months, half of the city's male slaves over the age of sixteen had been implicated in the plot.

Antonio de St. Bendito, Antonio de la Cruz, Pablo Ventura Angel, Juan de la Sylva, Augustine Gutierez, Spanish blacks all,
pled not guilty before the court, as if their pleas mattered. Insisting that their
real
surnames be used and not the names of their kidnappers, the group was clearly not attempting to endear themselves to the jury.
For these men, their time in front of the court was opportunity to finally discuss their unlawful slavery.

Cuffee and Quack had said that Sandy could tell the court about the Spanish Negroes, and Sandy did not disappoint. Neither
did Comfort's Jack or Mr. Moore, who was called to the stand to repeat Cuffee's and Quack's confessions.

"Damn that son of a bitch. If he does not carry us to our own country, we will ruin the city and play the devil with him,"
Antonio de St. Bendito, pointing to Captain Lush's house, was said to have muttered to the other Spanish enslaved.

"We'll burn Captain Lush's house with him tied to a beam inside it, roast him like a piece of beef," de St. Bendito allegedly
continued to strategize. "Let us stay in New York for a month and a half to wait for the Spanish to arrive. If they did not
come, we'll begin taking control of the island by ourselves."

Sandy said he heard his contribution just passing by the Spanish Negroes as they were speaking to each other. It's an interesting
excuse. Question: why would these men be speaking to one another about such a sensitive topic in
English,
loud enough for a random passerby like Sandy to hear them? Either Sandy was lying about hearing anything, or lying about his
own involvement. The court didn't care which one. The court didn't care about anything but confirming their own nightmare.
That there was a sleeper cell ready to take the city down in blood and fire.

The issue of whether the accused Spanish blacks were even legal slaves at all was brushed aside with the testimony of a sailor
who swore that he had traveled with Antonio de St. Bendito's brother. The sailor claimed that he knew a man who had bought
Antonio's brother in Havana, relaying assurances that the African's family was from Cartagena, and all were slaves. This third-party
account from a man of foreign birth and residency, completely unknown, to the court was all they required to damn all of the
"Spanish Negroes."

Realizing he was about to be relieved of his hefty investment, Antonio de St. Bendito's enslaver, merchant Peter De Lancey,
jumped in to try and protect his investment.

"It may interest the court that my Antonio was away from the city, north at my farm in the country, during much of the time
in question," the merchant began. "It should also be known that Antonio had also suffered from frostbitten feet and was completely
lame at the time, not returning to the city until after the fort was burnt."

In light of this revelation, the court considered excluding Antonio de St. Bendito from the sentencing. But then the master
of Antonio de la Cruz stepped forward with an almost identical alibi, declaring that his slave had been completely homebound
with frostbitten toes from November to the middle of March.

Then a witness for Pablo Ventura Angel forswore that
he
had been sick until March. By the time a witness for Augustine Gutierez declared that he had suffered in February from ague,
the health excuses were so worn as to render them all ineffectual.

It took a half hour to convict the lot of them.

The question of whether the men were even slaves in the first place was finally dealt with by selling them all to slave traders
headed for the West Indies. It was the opinion of the court of New York that these Spanish blacks could go argue for their
freedom elsewhere.

In the end, approximately one hundred and sixty of New York island's Africans would be thrown into jail and questioned. Seventy-two
would be banished from the life they had known in the colony altogether, forced to start over again in the tropical islands
to the south or on the Portuguese coastal island of Madeira. Eighteen would feel the coarse rope of the noose tighten around
their necks. Thirteen would be publicly roasted alive for the pleasure of the crowd. Fire having begat fire, their only fortune
was to die poetically.

"HE SEEMED VERY LOATH TO DO IT"

NEGROES WERE STUPID CREATURES, Servile, childish, incapable of higher thought—common knowledge not worthy of debate in the
enlightened year of 1741. That said, like children they were prone to their tantrums, their outbursts, their petty acts of
rebellion; any slaveholder could tell you that. This was the knowledge that informed the direction of the court in these trying
times, but this was also the contradiction. How could a group of incompetents such as composed this blackened race manage
to convene a conspiracy of such stunning size and complexity? It was inconceivable. Everyone knew it was scientifically impossible
that hundreds of the infantile, bestial Negroes could have organized themselves to such purposes. One only need read David
Hume's recently published essays to find expert proof of that. God had placed the Negro, like the ox or the hen, on earth
to serve white man's needs. The truth was, therefore, inescapable. There must be a conniving white man behind all the chaos.
Someone whose fair skin hid a dark heart beneath. Someone so powerful as to make the Africans turn against their own divinely
ordained nature.

John Hughson, certainly, could not be that person. John Hughson was a buffoon, a bumpkin, a low-class fool barely able to
imitate humanity during his own trial. There was no way he could have been the maestro. What this case needed, what this ambitious
court needed, was to capture the mesmeric genius who all the other testimony hinted at. This true ringleader must be found,
this shadow conspirator whose tentacles took such great hold that even doomed slaves had kept his name snugly under their
dying tongues.

So, Horsmanden and the assembled judges of the colony of New York were forced to ask themselves who would that perfect villain
be? Of what must the man be composed? That he would be male was beyond question. That he was a stranger to the city—for how
could one of their own possibly be guilty of such a heinous atrocity—was most probable, someone new to the area who had brought
the trouble with him. That he would be a true God-fearing person was highly questionable. No, he would surely be a heathen,
or even worse, a papal spy. An emissary sent to the New World by the pope himself to continue the Vatican's quest for global
domination.

Into this situation walked John Ury.

John Ury, British-born schoolteacher, had recently arrived from Philadelphia. A modest but intellectual man of limited resources,
of late he'd formed a business with Mr. Campbell, the schoolmaster, teaching their pupils classical linguistics. With few
friends and a prudish, bookish manner that didn't endear him to the masses in this rough town, in the brief time he'd been
in the city, John Ury had kept pretty much to himself. Most people who saw him would have taken little note. Now the court
turned their attention to this slight man and observed:
A stranger!
And even more ominous to the judges, a stranger who taught and, therefore, spoke
Latin.
An almost definite indicator that the man was a Roman spy sent to overthrow the island in the name of the Catholic Church.

In light of such overwhelming evidence, John Ury was grabbed off the street and, after "not giving a satisfactory account
of himself," thrown in jail.

Mary Burton was brought in the next day to seal the indictment for the prosecution. Burton had, since her first manipulated
confession, proven herself continually helpful to the court. In fact, Mary Burton had been so extraordinarily helpful, that
the initial group of some two dozen Africans she'd made reference to had now grown so far beyond her initial description that
the sheer number of them would have made it physically impossible for all of them to fit into any single colonial home or
even outbuilding at the same time—but why fret the details?

Despite the fact that she had once claimed that the only whites in Hughson's tavern were the proprietor himself and his wife,
Romme, and Peggy Kerry, Mary Burton now expanded the list to include John Ury, per the court's most earnest beseechment. The
judges were very thorough in the matter, bringing Burton through in the morning to view Ury in his cell to make sure she got
a good look at the man. Despite this effort to educate the witness before the fact, Mary, in her later testimony, had trouble
getting the name right.

"Yes, it was him," she pointed, declaring, "that man Mr. Jury that I had seen."

The prosecutors exchanged looks among themselves, understandably a bit uncomfortable for the moment.

"Miss Burton, are you sure about that, about the name of the accused?"

"Oh?" looking around as to astutely gauge the room, "No, no, I am mistaken. 'Twas another. It was, maybe Doyle. Yes, Doyle."

Mary faced the sudden rustling of the court, that look of disapproval she had previously avoided, and shifted again.

"No, not Doyle," she stammered. "That was not it, I remember now. But it was something. I recall clearly now. Some of his
names had . . . one syllable."

In the end, Mary decided that the man suspected of being a Roman Catholic priest went by all three names, and that she'd seen
him conspiring with Hughson since Christmas last. Not wanting to take all credit for the death sentence she had handed this
man, Mary parted with a statement that the remaining Hughson detainee, daughter Sarah, had waited on him more than she, and
could help the prosecution further.

As pathetic as this latest condemnation was, it was still possible that, after the immediate fervor subsided, John Ury might
have been released. Even for these compromised proceedings, Mary Burton's testimony had been woefully inadequate, particularly
when it was to decide the fate of a white Englishman.

John Ury's problems, however, extended beyond Mary Burton.

Two weeks later, Will, once enslaved by Mr. Ward, was in the process of being prepared to roast alive after his own guilty
conviction when he came to that last resort, what had become that rather common and banal idea of the moment: confession.
The unique innovation that Ward's Will brought back to the game of self-preservation was that having heard the rumors and
talk scuttling through the cells, he added Europeans back into the realm of the suspect. Slaves were still legally forbidden
from testifying against whites, but the executioner's pit was surely not a court of law, and anyway what be law in times of
terror?

"Kane and another soldier, Edward Kelly, asked Quack to burn the fort so that they would be free of their obligation," Will
desperately declared. "Even Kane's wife is guilty. She once pawned a stolen silver spoon. He did not care if the fort was
burnt down."

Will talked and talked, and the sheriff, for his part, paused to listen. And Will was right, his confession bought him time.
Time enough for the executioner to stoke a good fire beneath where he was held. Tied with his back to the stake, Will lifted
his legs one at a time from the fire as long as he could, his confessional cries eventually being replaced by cries of agony.
Will was talking, then he was screaming, then he was burning. Raising his arms and eyes to the heavens above he cried for
mercy. But no mercy came.

William Kane was a forty-year-old soldier in the British Royal Service. Born in Athlone, Ireland, he now found himself incarcerated
and bound before the court of New York.

" 'Tis true, I took part in the stolen spoon bit, but I've never been at Hughson's establishment in my life," Kane insisted.

"Then you deny that you are a conspirator in the recent uprising, that you do not take orders directly from your Catholic
pope?"

"I owe allegiance only to the Church of England, sirs. I am a Protestant born and lived, and have never had any association
with the Papists."

Kane was adamant, insistent, and by coming clean on his surely provable guilt in regard to the stolen silver spoon incident,
seemed to be setting a believable defense for himself in regard to the most serious charges. It might have actually worked,
too, if Mary Burton had not been in the building, poised to make yet one more accusatorial appearance.

In the middle of William Kane's impassioned denial, a sudden outburst interrupted the courtroom, putting a stop to the proceedings.
The under-sheriff addressed the judges. "Mary Burton, gentlemen, is outside the courtroom declaring that she had often seen
William Kane at the Hughsons', too."

The judges ordered Mary brought back into the courtroom, where she immediately began repeating her accusations.

"He'd been consorting with them," Mary insisted when called to the stand. "With the blacks, talking of conspiracy!" It was
another remarkably coincidental memory recall on behalf of young Mary, but for once it did not go unnoticed.

In what Horsmanden would later describe as
"an awful and solemn manner','
the chief justice, a recent addition to the proceedings after having been away on a special commission in Providence, interrupted
Burton.

"Must I inform you, young girl, as to the nature of an oath, and to the consequences of taking a false one?" the senior official
warned.

"Thank you, sir, but I know exactly what I'm doing," Mary continued self-righteously.

At first, William Kane continued to insist upon his innocence in regard to the conspiracy. There is hope in all of us that
the truth is our greatest defense, and Kane clung to this until it was made perfectly clear to him that this room wanted something
different. "You must not flatter yourself with the least hopes of mercy," the prosecutor warned him, lest he get any ideas
from the chief justice. "Your only salvation will be through confession."

There was nothing William Kane could do, but what had been done before. To betray everyone, even himself.

"[His] countenance changed, and being near fainting," Horsmanden noted. Kane went flush, weak in the face of the reality of
his situation. Visibly, he paused to compose himself. His life depended on a confession, a confession composed and strong
enough, with performance to match, in order to save his life.

"May I have some water?" Kane requested, buying time, waiting for inspiration to strike.

Water swallowed, thoughts settled upon and composed, Kane declared, "I am ready to tell the truth now."

"Though at the same time he seemed very loath to do it," Horsmanden noted of the several hours of confession that followed.

William Kane did not disappoint, implicating several other whites as he wove these innocents into the newly tooled, general
mythology of Hughson's sinister plan. Led by prosecutors, Kane would cooperatively corroborate this involvement of the recently
arrested suspected papal spy John Ury to the mix, answering the court's leading questions, taking them exactly where they
wanted to go.

It was John Jury! Yes, it was John Jury! John Jury had been training these whites in the dark arts of the Catholic Church.

John Ury was found guilty, and William Kane provided the damning testimony against him, even though he never could quite get
his name right.