Three and a half decades before the city of New York witnessed the
first great battle waged by the new United States of America for its
independence, rumors of a massive conspiracy among the city's slaves
spread panic throughout the colony. On the testimony of frightened
bondsmen and a handful of whites, over seventy slaves were convicted
and a third of these were executed.
The suspected
conspiracy in New York prompted one of the most extensive slave
trials in colonial history and some of the most grisly punishments
ever meted out to individuals. Peter Hoffer now retells the dramatic
story of those landmark trials, setting the events in their legal and
historical contexts and offering a revealing glimpse of slavery in
colonial cities and of the way that the law defined and policed the
institution.
Among other things,
Hoffer reveals how conspiracy became a central feature of the law of
slavery at the same time as it reflected the white belief that slaves
were always conspiring against their masters. He draws on uniquely
revealing firsthand accounts of the trials to both retell a gripping
story and open a window on colonial American justice. He leads
readers through a chain of events involving robbery and arson that
culminated in the trials of a group of white men suspected of
inciting the slaves to revolt.
The episode, so
vital to our understanding of a time when slavery was an entrenched
institution and the law made even the angry muttering of slaves into
a criminal act, has much to tell us about current affairs as well.
African slaves in colonial times were viewed by authorities and
citizens much as some foreigners are today: inherently dangerous,
easily identifiable, and constantly conspiring.
