by Jill Lepore
A modern reprint of Horsmanden’s Journal edited by Thomas J. Davis appeared in 1971 (The New York Conspiracy [Boston: Beacon]) and occasioned the publication of a number of journal articles which found extensive conspiracy somewhat more plausible. Most of these interpretations were rooted squarely in an emerging Afro-American Studies movement seeking historical precedent for slave resistance (as in Davis’s essay, “The New York Slave Conspiracy of 1741 as Black Protest,” JNH 56 [1971]: 17–30), and none looked for evidence beyond that contained in Horsmanden while, at the same time, dismissing him as unreliable. In 1979, Eugene Genovese added New York’s “cloudy conspiracy” to his list of worldwide slave revolts in From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making of the Modern World (New Orleans: Louisiana State University Press, 1979), pp. 26, 42. The following year, Leopold S. Launitz-Schurer, in a provocative essay influenced by the work of Genovese and John Blassingame in recovering slave resistance and slave community life, asserted that the alleged conspiracy was really an intricate black market in stolen goods and probably nothing more—Launitz-Schurer, “Slave Resistance in Colonial New York: An Interpretation of Daniel Horsmanden’s New York Conspiracy,” Phylon 41 (1980): 137–51.
Davis’s reprint of Horsmanden also brought the conspiracy to the attention of literary scholar Richard Slotkin, who offered a rare interpretation of the Journal as a work of literature—Slotkin, “Narratives of Negro Crime in New England, 1675–1800,” American Quarterly 25 (1973): 3–31. Thomas J. Davis published the first book-length study of the conspiracy in 1985: A Rumor of Revolt: The “ Great Negro Plot” in Colonial New York (New York: Free Press, 1985; pbk. ed., Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990). This work, more narrative than analytical, dismissed the conspiracy question as simplistic and distorting, instead attempting to demonstrate “beyond question that blacks in New York City during 1741 clearly talked of doing damage to the society enslaving them, expressed hopes of gaining freedom and the material benefits being denied them, and acted against the laws restraining their liberty” (p. xii). In general, historians have almost entirely failed to comment on the relationship between the Zenger and conspiracy trials. One exception is B. MacDonald Steers, whose The Counsellors, Courts and Crimes of Colonial New York (New York: Exposition Press, 1968) is a brief narrative history of the two cases.
More recent interpretations of the 1741 conspiracy include Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker’s Marxist reading asserting that New York’s slaves and poor whites were involved in a plot “Atlantic in scope . . . by a motley proletariat to incite an urban insurrection”—Linebaugh and Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston: Beacon, 2001), pp. 174–210. In their invaluable history of New York, Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace vividly tell the tale of the fires and trials and conclude, drawing heavily from Szasz and Launitz-Schurer, that although “the actual evidence” for a conspiracy “is less than convincing . . . some less widespread or well-organized coup” or arson “to cover up multiple burglaries” could have lain behind it all—Burrows and Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 159–66. Most recently, legal historian Peter Hoffer has argued that the slaves “conspired,” in the narrow legal sense of the term, but were innocent of the plot described by the prosecution—Hoffer, The Great New York Conspiracy of 1741: Slavery, Crime, and Colonial Law (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003). Serena Zabin used Horsmanden’s Journal as a chief source in her attempt to reconstruct life in eighteenth-century New York while at the same time dismissing any genuine understanding of the conspiracy as impossible (“Places of Exchange: New York City, 1700–1763,” Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 2000), an interpretation she also offers in the Introduction to her abridged edition of Horsmanden’s Journal— Serena R. Zabin, ed., The New York Conspiracy Trials of 1741 (Boston: Beacon/St. Martin’s, 2004).
Prologue
1. This scene at Hughson’s is reconstructed from confessions and trial testimony. For a complete list of the accused, and the dates of their confessions and trials, see Appendix B; for their owners, see Appendix C.
2. Details about the “hard winter” are taken from Horsmanden’s Journal as well as from Smith, Jr., History, 2:49–50, and NYWJ, December 22 and 29, 1740, January 5 and 12, 1741.
3. On this literature, see Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965); J. Paul Hunter, Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth-Century English Fiction (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990); and esp. John J. Richetti, Popular Fiction Before Richardson: Narrative Patterns, 1700–1739 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969).
4. Great Newes from the Barbados. Or, A True and Faithful Account of the Grand Conspiracyof The Negroes against the English (London, 1676). The Antigua plot was reported, in brief, in the NYWJ on December 6, 1736, and in the NYG on November 29, 1736. Zenger printed another report on February 7, 1737. “A full and particular Account of the Negro Plot in Antigoa, as reported by the Committee appointed by the Government there to enquire into the same” was serialized in the NYWJ, March 28, April 4, April 11, April 18, and April 25, 1737 (on all but March 28, the report filled the entire front page and continued onto p. 2). In 1737, the account was published in Dublin as A Genuine Narrative of the Intended Conspiracy of the Negroes at Antigua. For more on the Antigua revolt, see David Barry Gaspar, Bondmen and Rebels: A Study of Master-Slave Relations in Antigua (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), pp. 3–62.
5. Smith, Jr., History, 1:226.
6. Alexander Hamilton, The History of the Ancient and Honorable Tuesday Club, ed. Robert Micklus (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 1:33, 82–83.
7. Hamilton, Gentleman’s Progress, p. 177.
8. Hamilton, Tuesday Club, 1:133.
9. “The Confession of Cato a Negroe belonging to John Shurmur. Taken the 20th of June 1741,” CO 5/1094, PRO.
Chapter One
1. NYWJ, January 5, 12, and 19, February 2, 9, and 16, 1741.
2. NYWJ, February 2, 1741. George Farquhar, The Beaux’ Stratagem, ed. Charles N. Fifer (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1977). Brian Corman, “What Is the Canon of English Drama, 1660–1737?” Eighteenth-Century Studies 26, no. 2 (Winter 1992–93): 307–21. Farquhar’s plays were well known in the colonies, as both The Beaux’ Stratagem and The Recruiting Officer were performed at Williamsburg in 1736—Robert H. Land, “The First Williamsburg Theater,” WMQ 5 (July 1948): 372–73. Farquhar’s Works were sold in New York at the Montgomerie Library auction in 1732—Kevin J. Hayes, The Library of John Montgomerie, Colonial Governor of New York and New Jersey (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2000), p. 93.
3. MCC, 4:172, March 12, 1733; 4:221, October 1, 1734.
4. In London in 1707, the play was an instant hit after its debut at the Queen’s Theatre. “It was played twelve more times that season. For the next one hundred years, it was presented at theaters in and around London, and at Bath and Dublin, sometimes as often as fifteen or twenty times a season.” It is widely acknowledged as Farquhar’s best play—Fifer, ed., The Beaux’ Stratagem, Intro. On its stage history, see Shirley Strum Kenny, ed., The Works of George Farquhar (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 2:136–44.
5. On Masons’ theatregoing, see Richardson Wright, “Masonic Contacts with the Early American Theatre,” Transactions of the American Lodge of Research 2 (1936): 161–64. The Charleston lodge showed up en masse for that city’s May 1737 performance of Farquhar’s Recruiting Officer, a performance essentially staged for the Masons and followed by Masonic songs (p. 164). Dancing master Henry Holt, who had been a Mason in Charleston until at least 1736, was elected junior warden of the New York Masons in January 1738. Murray married Grace Cosby Freeman, daughter of Governor Cosby and widow of Thomas Freeman, in 1738. Apparently she brought the Freeman family’s slaves Adam and Jack to the m
arriage. For Murray’s interest in drama, see his purchases from Montgomerie’s library in Hayes, The Library of John Montgomerie. Murray’s purchases included Aphra Behn’s Plays (London, 1716 or 1724), 4 vols.; Robert Howard, The Dramatic Works (London, 1722); Nathaniel Lee, Works (London, 1722), 3 vols.; [Antoine Jacob] Montfleury, Les Oeuvres de Monsieur Montfleury (Paris, 1705); Nicholas Rowe, The Works (London, 1728), 3 vols.; and Thomas Southerne, The Works (London, 1713 or 1721), 2 vols. On warming pans, see Kalm, Travels, 1:624, 629.
6. NYG, December 4, 1732. George C. D. Odell, Annals of the New York Stage (New York: Columbia University Press, 1927), 1:8–11.
7. Daniel Horsmanden was more than a cousin to William Byrd. In 1681, when William was just seven years old, he was sent from Virginia to Purleigh, Essex, to be educated under the guidance of his mother’s brother, the Reverend Daniel Horsmanden, Sr.; Byrd was still in England when his uncle’s children were born: Susanna (“Suky”) (1691), Ursula (“Nutty”) (1692), Daniel (1694), Barrington (1695), and Samuel (1697). Byrd’s early life, and his relations with Daniel Horsmanden, Sr., are best discussed in Kenneth Lockridge, The Diary, and Life, of William Byrd II of Virginia, 1674–1744 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987). Byrd’s siblings, including his sister Ursula, also visited the Horsmandens in England—see William Byrd I to Daniel Horsmanden, March 31, 1685, and William Byrd I to William Byrd II, March 31, 1685, in Tinling, ed., The Correspondence of the Three William Byrds of Westover, Virginia, 1684–1776, ed. Marion Tinling (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977), 1:35–36. On the Horsmanden family, see “Purleigh, Essex, England—The Church of the Washingtons and Horsmandens,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography XV (1907–08): 314–17; and “The Horsmanden Family,” in Tinling, ed., Correspondence of the Three William Byrds, 2:830.
Daniel Horsmanden’s early life is only briefly discussed in the single biography of him: Sister Mary Paula McManus, “Daniel Horsmanden: Eighteenth-Century New Yorker” (Ph.D. diss., Fordham University, 1960), pp. 1–5. Tunbrigalia: Or, Tunbridge Miscellanies, For the Year 1719 was printed in London in 1719; the poem is reprinted in Another Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover, 1739–1741, ed. Maude H. Woodfin, trans. and collated Marion Tinling (Richmond, VA: Dietz Press, 1942), p. 406. Byrd’s diary was decoded from the shorthand and reprinted in William Byrd, The London Diary (1717–1721) and Other Writings,ed. Louis B. Wright and Marion Tinling (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958). Horsmanden appears in Byrd’s diary entries regularly for 1718 and 1719. In April 1718: “I went . . . to the park with my cousin Horsmanden and then walked in St. James’s Park and walked towards Will’s [Coffeehouse] and picked up a girl in the street and committed uncleanness with her.” In May: “Daniel and I went to see a Spaniard that made foils” (Byrd, apparently, was contemplating a duel). In August, again walking with Horsmanden in the park: “We endeavored to pick up some girls but were disappointed”—Byrd, London Diary, pp. 112, 119, 156. During the month of May 1718, Byrd saw Horsmanden for twenty out of thirty-one days, and for five more met with his “cousins Horsmanden,” which may have been just Nutty and Suky, but may have included Daniel. On only six days in the month did he not see any Horsmandens. For Byrd and Horsmanden’s exploits, including trips to Tunbridge Wells and Purleigh, see especially pp. 162–63, 170, 185. For Byrd’s assessment of his estate for Mary Smith’s benefit, see William Byrd II to Michael Bourke, Baron Dunkellin, February 18, 1718, in Tinling, ed., Correspondence of the Three William Byrds, 1:313–14.
8. Lockridge, Diary, and Life, p. 85. The line in Tunbrigalia, of course, rhymes with “more” and refers to Mary Hoar, who was also at Tunbridge Wells (see editor’s note in Another Secret Diary, p. 407), but it remains an interesting choice. Horsmanden apparently regretted prowling for prostitutes with William Byrd. After the two men traveled to Purleigh to visit Horsmanden’s father, young Daniel turned glum (disappointed by Miss B-N-y’s rejection? cautioned about Byrd’s depravity by his father?). One evening in November 1718 the cousins, having met “two ladies” at Will’s Coffeehouse, walked with them to a tavern. “We ate some roast fowl and were merry, notwithstanding Mr. Horsmanden followed us,” Byrd wrote snidely. By December, Horsmanden had become either so depressed or so pious that he had taken on a role as Byrd’s conscience: “After the play I went to the coffeehouse and drank two dishes of chocolate and talked with my cousin Horsmanden, and he walked home with me lest I should pick up a whore.” But by July 1719, Byrd’s bad habits had prevailed: “I went to Mr. Horsmanden’s lodging and carried him to Spring Garden by water, where we picked up two girls and I lay with one of them all night at the bagnio and rogered her twice”—Byrd, London Diary, pp. 192, 206, 289, 343.
9. Byrd, “Inamorato L’Oiseaux,” in Another Secret Diary, p. 276. Byrd, London Diary, pp. 160, 311.
10. DH to Charles Cotton, New York, July 2, 1756, Horsmanden Papers, NYHS, Addenda, no. 31. “He was a Gentleman by Birth and bred at Inn,” William Smith, Jr., wrote of Horsmanden, “but wasting his Fortune, & having no Hopes at the Bar he entred into a Partnership with a Chancery Collector and after a short Trial of that Business he fled from his Creditors to Virginia”—Smith, Jr., Memoirs, 2:39. Byrd left Horsmanden in charge of some of his business dealings—Byrd, London Diary, p. 343. Byrd visited England again from 1721 to 1726, but his diary for this period has never been found, and it’s impossible to know how much time he spent with Horsmanden during these years. In Tunbridge Wells in 1719, at the height of enthusiasm for South Sea stock, Horsmanden dined with the wife of the director of the South Sea Company—ibid., p. 163. Horsmanden was admitted to the Middle Temple in 1721 and to the Inner Temple in 1724.
11. Thomas Templeman, A New Survey of the Globe: Or an Accurate Mensuration of all the Empires, Kingdoms, Countries, States, principal Provinces, Counties, & Islands in the World (London, 1729). Horsmanden is listed as a subscriber on p. vii. Horsmanden’s grandfather, a Cavalier, had once been a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, which must have contributed to his determination to seek his fortune in that colony. The exact time of Horsmanden’s departure from England is in some dispute, but it appears to have been in 1729 or 1730. Horsmanden, in a brief autobiographical statement, wrote that he “had been bred to the Bar in England, came into this Countrey in the year 1729”—DH to Robert Monckton, June 4, 1763, Chalmers Papers, Papers Relating to New York, 1608–1792, IV:22–23, NYPL. Horsmanden was in Virginia with Byrd in August 1731, when his name turns up as witness to an indenture—Tinling, ed., Correspondence of the Three William Byrds, 2:475.
12. William Strickland, Journal of a Tour in the United States of America, 1794–1795, ed. Rev. J. E. Strickland (New York: NYHS, 1971), p. 63.
13. Boston’s population in 1740 was 17,000, but falling, while New York’s was rising. Philadelphia’s population at midcentury was nearly identical to New York’s—Bureau of the Census, A Century of Population Growth (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1909), p. 11. See also Templeman, New Survey, plate 1. In 1733 James Alexander’s clerk, James Lyne, “counted all the houses in New York, including churches, public buildings, store houses, stables, smith shops, etc., and there were 1473”—JA to CC, June 22, 1752, quoted in Stokes, Iconography, 6:23–24.
14. Andrew Burnaby, Travels through the Middle Settlements in North-America in the Years 1759 and 1760 (1775; Ithaca, NY: Great Seal Books, 1960), p. 80. The best history of the city under English rule is Joyce D. Goodfriend, Before the Melting Pot: Society and Culture in Colonial New York City, 1664–1730 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).
15. Bayrd Still, Mirror for Gotham: New York as Seen by Contemporaries from Dutch Days to the Present (New York: Fordham University Press, 1994), pp. 21–22. For a full discussion of the population of New York City, including the tax and census data discussed in this chapter, see Appendix A.
16. The Assembly did vote to levy a tax on slaves in 1737 and it was first collected in 1738, at 1 shilling per slave. Records of this
tax collection survive only for the single year of 1738, and only for the Outward—“Head or Title of the Tax Role,” Vanderwater MS, “New York, 1700–1760,” NYHS.
17. Smith, Jr., History, 1:226. Hamilton, Gentleman’s Progress, pp. 43–46. On New York’s trade and economy, see Michael Kammen, Colonial New York: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), chapter 7. NYG, July 24, 1732. On Adolph Philipse, see Vivienne L. Kruger, “Born to Run: The Slave Family in Early New York, 1626 to 1827” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1985), pp. 150–55.
18. In 1660 Peter Stuyvesant, having just purchased “Four Negro Boys and one Negro Girl,” argued that enslaved Africans, especially “young ones,” ought “to be preferred before Spaniards and unbelieving Jews”—quoted in Elizabeth Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America (1932; New York: Octagon Books, 1969), 3:411, 420–21. On slavery in New York’s Dutch period, see Joyce D. Goodfriend, “Burghers and Blacks: The Evolution of a Slave Society at New Amsterdam,” NYH 59 (April 1978): 124–44. These unwilling immigrants were part of what Ira Berlin has called the “charter generation” of Atlantic creoles, educated, multilingual, and cosmopolitan Africans and Luso-Africans who had served as interpreters and traders for the Portuguese. See Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 17–28. On Central Africans, see Joseph C. Miller, “Central Africa During the Era of the Slave Trade, c. 1490s–1850s,” in Linda M. Heywood, ed., Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 21–69.
