by Jill Lepore
Horsmanden never named his critics, but in this letter to Colden he suggested that they had only begun to call the proceedings into question “when it comes home to their own houses, & is like to affect their own propertys in Negroes.” This seems to have happened in July, and there is good reason to believe that among those critics was James Alexander, whose name was first mentioned in the proceedings on July 4, when William Kane told DeLancey and Horsmanden that, after the city was burnt, Hughson was to make Alexander’s house his palace. That Alexander’s slaves were not all hauled to City Hall for questioning after that remark is extraordinary, although it is easily explained if Alexander had begun to urge DeLancey to halt the trials.
Although Alexander, along with all the other Gentlemen of the Law, had been enlisted to serve the prosecution, he had all but boycotted the proceedings. He did not participate in the prosecution of even a single “York Negro.” He was listed among the “Council for the King” in only three trials: the June 4 trial of the Hughsons and Peggy Kerry; the June 17 trial of the “Spanish Negroes”; and the July 29 trial of John Ury. But, even in these three trials, he never delivered a speech, addressed the jury, or examined a witness. (In each of these cases, every other lawyer listed specifically participated.) Nor did Alexander ever minute a confession, conduct an interrogation, or contribute to the prosecution in any other way, as is both established in Horsmanden’s Journal and confirmed in surviving manuscript records. And although Alexander owned several slaves and lived in the very heart of the city, next door to where the first robbery had taken place, none of his slaves were ever accused. Moreover, Alexander’s papers, which are unusually abundant and well preserved, include almost no mention of the proceedings after April 22, the day after the Supreme Court opened its session.
If James Alexander criticized the trials, his criticism has not survived. But whoever called the proceedings into question had good cause. As a category of testimony, “Negro Evidence” had been dubious from the start. And Burton’s evidence, too, had long since strained credibility. The minute he met her, James DeLancey warned Burton not to perjure herself. But so long as Burton stuck to the same story, of black plotters at Hughson’s “Great Feast,” she was safe, no matter how many more black men she “remembered” having been there.
Publicly voiced doubts about Burton began in earnest when she accused John Ury in late June, but her credibility was much more grievously damaged “when the first Grand Jury drew near their Discharge,” that is, just before July 25, when she began hinting that prominent whites were involved in the plot: “about this time she had suggested to some, that there were white People of more than ordinary Rank above the vulgar, that were concerned, whom if she told of they would not believe her.” The grand jury pressed Burton “to discover all she knew, whoever they were; but the Girl stood mute; nor could the Grand Jury prevail with her to name any, not with Threatenings of Imprisonment.” Eventually, they handed her over to “Two of the Judges,” probably DeLancey and Horsmanden.
At first, Burton would only complain of her lot. She told them “she had been very ill used; that . . . her Life had been threatened by Conspirators of both Complexions . . . and frequently insulted by People of the Town for bringing their Negroes in question.” Petulant, Burton cried, “People did not believe what she said, and what signified speaking?” Prevailed upon, she eventually told the judges “that there were some People in Ruf-fles (a Phrase as was understood to mean Persons of better Fashion than ordinary) that were concerned.” (Kane, too, had hinted that men of refinement were involved in the plot. On July 17, he said that he had often seen “a young Gentleman with a Pigtail Wig” at Hughson’s, although he refused to identify him.) Burton said she was not willing to name names. But after being told that “she must expect to be imprisoned in the Dungeon,” 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 Credits, Fortunes, and Reputations, and of Religious Principles superior to a Suspicion of being concerned in such detestable Practices.” (And here again, it’s easy to suppose that Burton named James Alexander himself, especially if he had been publicly calling her credibility into question. Kane had already mentioned him by name.)
At this, the judges “were very much astonished.” In his letter to Colden, Horsmanden remarked, “We could not but be Shockt, the persons mentioned being beyond Suspition; & the Consequence followed, that great Clamor has thence been raised against her & now, by Some, She must be esteemed a person of no Credit.”
Now Daniel Horsmanden faced a dilemma. If Mary Burton was a liar, she had likely lied from the start, in which case Peggy Kerry, Sarah Hughson, John Hughson, and seventeen black men had been hanged for nothing, and thirteen innocent black men had been burned at the stake. Horsmanden refused to believe it. He decided to suspend credit; he had always found Burton disarming, even captivating. He believed he had rescued her, a helpless girl, from depravity. He admired her. “The things She Says, cannot but Stagger ones belief,” he wrote Colden, “but I must observe, this is not the First time her Examinations have had that Effect upon me, but Several times, from my first taking her in hand, yet til now, every thing that has come from her, has in the Event been confirmed; but here must be a Suspension of Credit for a while, & time only can clear the matter up.” 1
With the reputation of Mary Burton and the justice of the proceedings at stake, it didn’t take Horsmanden long to conclude that Burton had indeed lied about the “People in Ruffles.” But he chose to believe that she had done so only because as yet undetected conspirators had corrupted her, with the intention of destroying her credibility and halting the investigation. 2 It was not that Burton had made up the plot, but that, in July, she had been tricked, by the conspirators themselves, into naming certain eminent men.
[T]he conspirators could not have devised a more effectual Means (if they could but prevail with her) to put a Stop to further Enquiry, to procure the Names of Persons to be called in question at last, concerning this Scene of Villainy, whose Fortunes and Characters set them above Suspicion: They very well knew . . . if they could but prevail in this, they would thereby not only put a Stop to further Discovery, but likewise have some Pretence, according to their usual Custom, to clamour loudly, there was no Plot at all; ’twas a mere Dream!
That Burton must have been prevailed upon to lie, Horsmanden argued, in no way called into question any of her earlier testimony. Instead, it only provided more evidence that key conspirators remained at large.
By the end of July, New Yorkers were insulting Mary Burton on the street and crying, “There was no plot!” According to Horsmanden, the outcry came from two kinds of people: the undetected conspirators who had “tampered” with Burton; and “Owners of Slaves, who happened to humour this Artifice” in order to put a stop to their loss of property. The detection of the conspiracy, after all, had come at considerable cost, not only to private individuals but also to the city and the province. The Common Council had paid a carpenter to build gallows and gibbets, and gave jailkeeper James Mills a bonus for his extra work. By August, owners whose slaves had been accused were encouraged to avoid trial altogether, and instead arrange to sell their suspected slaves, so as not to incur the costs of their trial and possible execution. Nor did the expenses end with the closing of the investigation. There was the cost of paying the new white “Tea-Water Men,” the charge of the greatly expanded night watch, and the fees due to constables enforcing the law, passed in 1743, prohibiting “any Negro or other Slave” from buying “Victualls or provisions” at any market in the city. When the Assembly asked Clarke for crown money to pay for rebuilding Fort George, the lieutenant governor instead recommended “a Provincial Tax which would hardly be felt.” And, if the Assembly sought relief from the crown, the city sought relief from the Assembly: in 1742, the Common Council presented the legislature with a petition “Praying that the Negroes: Executed
. for the Late Conspiracy: may be paid for out of the Revenue.”3
To execute slaves was to burn money. Mary Burton was cursed on every street corner.
THE SAME WEEK that Cadwallader Colden received Daniel Horsmanden’s letter complaining that New Yorkers had come to question the proceedings, he received another letter whose author suggested that New Yorkers had suffered “in the merciless Flames of an Imaginary Plot.”
Sometime between July 15 and August 6, someone delivered an envelope, addressed “To the Honourable Cadwallader Colden Esq at New York,” to Colden’s daughter, Elizabeth Colden DeLancey, who lived in the city. Elizabeth forwarded the letter to her father, who lived sixty miles away, at Coldengham, his country estate. “I inclose a letter which I receiv’d by the Boston Post,” she explained. Colden received it on Saturday, August 8. It is the sole surviving criticism of the trials (as opposed to Horsmanden’s representation of that criticism). It is eloquent, and startling, and worth reading closely:
Sr
I am a stranger to you & to New York, & so must beg pardon for the mistakes I may be guilty off in the subsequent attempt; The Design whereof is to endeavour the putting an end to the bloody Tragedy that has been, & I suppose still is acting amongst you in regard to the poor Negros & the Whites too. I observe in one of the Boston News letters dated July 13th that 5 Negros were executed in one day at the Gallows, a favour indeed, for one next day was burnt at the stake, where he impeached several others, & amongst them some whites. Which with the former horrible executions among you upon this occasion puts me in mind of our New England Witchcraft in the year 1692 Which if I dont mistake New York justly reproached us for, & mockt at our Credulity about; but may it not now be justly retorted, mutato nomine de te fabula narratur. What grounds you proceed upon I must acknowledge my self not sufficiently informed of; but finding that these 5 who were put to Death in July denied any Guilt, It makes me suspect that your present case, & ours heretofore are much the same, and that Negro & Spectre evidence will turn out alike. We had near 50 Confessors, who accused multitudes of others, alledging Time & Place, & Various other circumstances to render their Confessions credible, that they had their meetings, form’d confederacies, sign’d the Devils book &c. But I am humbly of Opinion that such Confessions unless some certain Overt Act appear to confirm the same are not worth a Straw; for many times they are obtain’d by foul means, by force or torment, by Surprise, by flattery, by Distraction, by Discontent with their circumstances, through envy that they may bring others into the same condemnation, or in hopes of a longer time to live, or to dy an easier death &c. For any body would chuse rather to be hanged than to be burnt. It is true I have heard something of your Forts being burnt, but that might be by Lightning from Heaven, by Accedent, by some maliceous person or persons of our own colour. What other Feats have been performed to petrify your hearts against the poor blacks & some of your neighbours the whites, I cant tell; But 2 things seem impossible to me almost in rerum natura, That the whites should join with the Blacks, or that the Blacks (among whom there are no doubt some rational persons) should attempt the Destruction of a City when it is impossible they should escape the just & direfull Vengeance of the Countries round about, which would immediatly & unavoidably pour in upon them & destroy them.
Possibly there have been some murmuring amongst the Negroes & a mad fellow or 2 has threatened & design’d Revenge, for the Cruelty & inhumanity they have met with, which is too rife in the English Plantations (& not long since occasioned such another tremendous & unreasonable Tragedy at Antego) And if that be all it is a pity there have been such severe animadversions. And if nothing will put an end hereto till some of higher degree & better circumstances & Characters are accused (which finished our Salem Witchcraft) the sooner the better, lest all the poor People of the Government perish in the merciless flames of an Imaginary Plot. In the mean time excuse me & dont be offended, if out of Friendship to my poor Countrymen & compassion to the Negros (who are flesh & blood as well as we & ought to be treated with Humanity) I intreat you not to go on to Massacre & destroy your own Estates by making Bonfires of the Negros & perhaps thereby loading yourselves with greater Guilt than theirs. For we have too much reason to fear that the Divine Vengeance does & will pursue us for our ill treatment to the bodies & souls of our poor slaves and therefore Let Justice be don to your own people, whatever Treatment the People of the Massachusets may meet with when you set in Judicature about their affairs. All which is humbly submitted by a Well wisher to all humane Beings & one that ever desires to be of the mercifull side &c.
The letter was unsigned and undated. It made Cadwallader Colden’s blood boil. Two days after he received it, he made a copy, which he kept for himself, and sent the original to Clarke, in the city. Colden was certain the letter was written by “a feign’d hand.” He suspected that it had not in fact come in the Boston post, but was written by someone in New York who wanted to disguise his identity. He hinted that Clarke would do well to consult with the postmaster, who, “upon viewing the Cover [might] perhaps recollect whether such a letter really came by the Post or whether it came in the Boston bag or only by the Post man for it may have been sent to my Daughter as from the Post house tho’ otherwise.” 4
Clarke could have received Colden’s letter, with its enclosure, as early as August 9, if it was sent express, by a fast rider. Soon after he received it, Clarke showed the letter to James DeLancey, and the two men tried to guess its author. Horsmanden was by now in Albany, and unavailable for consultation. On August 18, Clarke returned the letter to Colden. (In Colden’s papers, all that survives is the copy in Colden’s handwriting.) Clarke told Colden, “I fear it will be difficult to discover the author.” But Clarke and DeLancey were unpersuaded that it had been written by a New Yorker pretending to be a New Englander, “for it seemes to be wrote by an angry man, and it may be in your Examinations you may have wrung a Conscience too close.”5
Those “Examinations” were the work of the committee on which Colden and DeLancey had served in Providence from April 1 to June 30, arbitrating a boundary dispute between Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Clarke hinted that the writer was a member of the commission, composed of delegates from Massachusetts and Rhode Island and members of the Governors’ Councils of New York and Newfoundland. Both Massachusetts and Rhode Island claimed Bristol County, on the bay of Mount Hope, once the homeland of the Wampanoag grand sachem Massasoit, and later of his two sons, Alexander (alias Wamsutta) and Philip (alias Metacom). After the English defeated the Wampanoags in King Philip’s War, in 1675–76, those lands became part of Plymouth Colony. But when Plymouth became part of Massachusetts, Rhode Island claimed Philip’s homeland.
After weeks of examining deeds and conducting interrogations, the commissioners ruled in favor of Rhode Island, and Massachusetts lost Bristol County. The Massachusetts members blamed the decision on the New York delegates—“A gentleman of the council of New-York had great influence at the board of commissioners” when he argued that Massachusetts was already too big and Rhode Island too small. It was not lost on the Bay Colony commissioners that this argument also served New York in advancing its own boundary claims against Massachusetts, which, at the time, was the larger province, as it included all of what is now the state of Maine.
Five New York members of Clarke’s Council served on the commission: Colden, DeLancey, Abraham Van Horne, Philip Livingston, and Archibald Kennedy. Any one of them could have been the “gentleman of the council of New-York” who dominated the discussion, basing his argument not on deeds and land claims but on the relative size of the two provinces. But Colden, who also served as New York’s surveyor-general, was the most likely man to make this argument, especially as he was most intimately acquainted with the importance of this dispute for his own colony.6
“You may have wrung a Conscience too close,” Clarke wrote to Colden. And he suggested that Colden, who was on the eve of a return voyage to New England to discuss an appeal of the commission
ers’ decision, might have better luck finding the anonymous letter writer there than Clarke and DeLancey had had in New York.
There is good reason to believe that Clarke was right. The letter’s penultimate sentence strongly supports the idea that its author was concerned with the work of the commission: “Let Justice be don to your own people, whatever Treatment the People of Massachusets may meet with when you set in Judicature about their affairs.” It reads as a double entendre, referring both to New Yorkers’ redrawing of the Bay Colony’s boundary with Rhode Island and to their condemnation of Massachusetts for the witchcraft trials. (In 1692, New Yorkers had condemned the trials; one New York minister wrote to Massachusetts governor Sir William Phips, “The minds of men, especially of the ignorant or depraved, can easily be and frequently are deceived by the devil.”)7
Ten Massachusetts men served on the commission. Did one of them write the letter? The best hint lies in the author’s discussion of the 1692 trials: “We had near 50 Confessors, who accused multitudes of others, alledging Time & Place, & Various other circumstances to render their Confessions credible, that they had their meetings, form’d confederacies, sign’d the Devils book &c.” Here was more than passing acquaintance with the story of Salem; this was specific knowledge. As it turns out, this description appears to be a paraphrase of a passage in Reverend John Hale’s Modest Enquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft, printed in Boston in 1702: “the . . . confessors . . . amounted to near about Fifty. . . . And many of the confessors confirmed their confessions with very strong circumstances: As their exact agreement with the accusations of the afflicted; their punctual agreement with their fellow confessors; their relating the times . . . their Witch meetings . . . their signing the Devils book.”8
