The Great Negro Plot

by Mat Johnson

  The Africans died very stubbornly, Horsmanden wrote, refusing to confess to the last breath. Then, after all breathing was behind them, the body of Caesar was removed from the gibbet. Shoved into an iron cage, it was then rehung by the powder house as a warning to all the other slaves of what might very well befall them.

  In the end, the judges didn't need Caesar or Prince to talk. The sight of the once notorious enslaved, Caesar, proud and defiant, rotting perpetually before their eyes through the weeks ahead, would open more than enough mouths on its own.

  For others, it was the smell that did it.

  GOD DAMN ALL THE WHITE PEOPLE"

  JOHN ROMME HAD NOT RUN OFF into the bush of Cape Fear to lose himself in the humid southern swamp. Neither had he scurried off into Mohawk country seeking asylum amongst the natives, busily rubbing mud into his face to hide his pinkness from the world. Nor had Romme left the country for some unnamed tropical island with a cache of Negroes in tow, ready, as promised, to start the great slave rebellion. No, none of that for John Romme. As it turned out, he had remained a bit closer. John Romme was in New Jersey.

  There a magistrate encountered him, identified the hapless shoemaker, and seized him for the New York authorities. Within a few days Romme was back in Manhattan, stewing in a jail cell. The "mastermind" was brought before the court to meet the charges against him. Standing in front of the judges, he hardly seemed the criminal genius of the paranoid imagination. Still, knowing how serious the case had become, Romme made no attempt to deny he was some kind of criminal.

  "In regards to these accusations, I only agree to knowledge of the firkins of butter, as they were brought forth to mine house by Negroes," Romme admitted.

  "So you admit freely then, as your goodly wife, Elizabeth, testified before this court before, that you received said stolen goods from these Negroes?"

  "Me?" John Romme responded out of a cloud of faux confusion. "She said that / was the one to receive the firkins? Oh, no, sir, there seems to be an error. It was not I, not I at all."

  The judges paused and looked up, caught off guard by this unexpected last-minute turn.

  "It was not you, you say? Well then, who do you say received these thieving Negroes?"

  "Well . . ." Romme paused, almost sheepishly. "My wife, sirs. I quite innocently, I assure you, knew absolutely nothing of the matter."

  In hopes of clearing matters, his wife, Elizabeth, was brought back to court for further questioning, and it soon became fairly obvious to her the gist of her husband's testimony.

  Later, when Elizabeth Romme passed her husband in his cell on return to her own, John stuck his head out of the wicket to greet her.

  "My darling, alas, we are reu—"

  Smack!

  Elizabeth "civilly saluted him with a smart slap on the chops," Horsmanden later gleefully reported.

  Peggy Kerry's only hope now was to keep talking. With Caesar, her lover, already executed for his crimes (real and imagined), she saw no reason to hold back.

  "It was Caesar, the Negro who I'd seen, who stole the firkins of butter," Peggy now proclaimed.

  After all, there was no more damage they could to him now. His rotting corpse, hanging mere yards from the courthouse, gave testament to that fact.

  "Truth be known, 'twas a week before that I did hear John Romme planning the deal with Caesar, directing the slave to the site of the butter, haggling over the cost per firkin."

  "Are you certain, Peggy Kerry, that on this day you tell the whole truth?"

  " 'Tis the truth. True sworn," Peggy responded immediately to the judge. Pointing across the courtroom at John Romme, she said, "Caesar had stolen for Romme that very overcoat that he wears. He took it off a boat in the docks along with some cash he gave to Romme to cover his drinking tab."

  In unison the crowded room all turned to have a gawk at the coat in question, while John Romme did his best to sink his head and disappear within it.

  * * *

  News of Mary Burton's gossip made for quick and easy gossip itself. Just a day or two after her first examination by the grand jury, acid tongues were already busy on the cobbled streets of New York. The sole person remaining free from her former circle, Mary was casually walking past Mr. Vaarck's door. There, at this home of the late Caesar, another of Vaarck's slaves, the boy, Bastian, and the enslaved, called Tom Peal, loitered.

  "Have you discovered anything more about the fires?" Peal taunted Mary as she passed.

  "No," Mary quickly answered.

  "Damn you," Bastian threatened, "it is not best for you, for fear you should be burnt next."

  This, Mary Burton told the court at yet another deposition, after which she went on to identify a number of additional slaves she claimed had been past visitors to Hughson's tavern, including Quack. Mary Burton was indeed learning how to please these powerful men who gave her so many compliments, gifts of ducats, and promises of freedom. On this day what they needed from her was a connection of Hughson with Romme, to make sense of the contradicting story recently given.

  "The two men would often retire together, off to a room alone, talking secretively in Dutch," she complied. " 'Tis true, though I was not to hear it. Romme himself would sometimes tell Hughson that he feared my hearing."

  "You need not be afraid of her," Romme responded, according to Mary, "for she is bound to me and dare not tell, for if she did I would murder her."

  The court would soon find yet another teenager whose mouth, once pried open, stayed open. This time, unlike Mary, the compliant one was male and a slave, which gave Sandy (also known as Sawney) even greater credence when addressing the court and speaking of the center of the conspiracy. In Sandy, the judges had another child eager to do their bidding, someone they had no trouble manipulating to their own ends.

  Sandy came to the court's attention through another, having been implicated by a young slave of Mrs. Carpenter who had come on his own to the authorities to report that Sarah, the slave wench of the Niblet household, had confided in him that Sandy was involved in the fire at the fort, as well as the fire next to his master's house and the one at Alderman Bancker's. This Sarah, when brought in front of the court said, as she trembled violently in terror, that she, too, was committed to the plot, despite her initial denials.

  Sandy's owner claimed the suspect boy was in Albany, then pleaded, "I know no harm of him." Sensing his expensive human property was in jeopardy of being seized and, perhaps, even destroyed, Mr. Niblet reluctantly complied, and the enslaved boy was returned to the city, and brought in to court a week later.

  Knowing his terror would make him pliable, the court let young Sandy simmer for a week in the putrid conditions of the jail, soaking in the sheer fear of so many others, before even bothering to talk to him. Still, despite the stultifying experience, Sandy came forth with nothing more than denials. He knew nothing, he claimed. He did nothing.

  "I was involved in no way," he insisted.

  The judges instructed him to tell the truth, and he did, but it was not the truth they wanted to hear. So he was sent back to his cell again. For one . . . two . . . seven more days. Letting the reality of his situation become even more forboding, the wants and desires of the court to become his wants and desires. After which, when a worn and exhausted Sandy stood before the judiciary once more, he still stuck by the same denials.

  The judges, utterly single minded, decided it was because fear still held his tongue.

  "Young man, you have no fear with cause, and no foul swear can truly bind you. You will be pardoned in the eyes of this court and God if you simply tell them the truth," he was told. But young as he was Sandy was smart enough not to take the hollow word of the judges for granted.

  "The time before, when the Negroes told all they knew, then the white people hanged them," Sandy replied. The ghost of 1712 hung thick in the room. The judges knew to what he referred, and expressed outrage and indignation.

  "These 1712 confessors whom you reference were merely pardoned and
sent off," he was lectured, the judges either lying outright, or deliberately ignorant to the whole truth.

  Finally, Sandy, knowing his predicament, knowing he was trapped, decided to give the court what they wanted. A confession tailored to keep these madmen at bay.

  About three weeks before the fort fire, Sandy told the court, he was approached by Quaco (as he knew Quack) on the street. "The fort—I will see it burnt," the older slave purportedly said. "But it is a big job and you must help me."

  Sandy said he responded no. "I would not run the risk of being hanged," he explained, "but I might go to hell and be damned."

  Later, joining the discussion, Cuffee made his own intentions known to Sandy as well.

  " 'We shall burn Philipse's storehouses to the ground. Damn him, that hang me or burn me, I will set fire to the town,' " Sandy said Cuffee told him.

  To hear Sandy tell it, these were not the only two people at the ready for an arsonists' rebellion. According to him, there was a legion eager to start their own fires as well: Curacao Dick, Bosch's Francis, Gomez's Cuffee, English's Patrick, Moore's Cato. Sandy's recitation of names went on, in all listing fourteen slaves and their specific arson projects. Four of his accused were Spanish Negroes. Sandy even had Captain Lush's William declaring, "If they do not send me over to my own country, I will ruin the city."

  But this performance, for Sandy, was but a warm-up. Back in the cage for another three days, Sandy had even more to offer. The Philadelphia Quakers were right: It was amazing what solitary confinement could do for the soul.

  After his slight respite, brought back in front of the court, Sandy continued his testimony. Going by Comfort's one Sunday night a month before the fires began, he said, he felt a tug on his arm from the shadows. Suddenly, Sandy swore, he found himself in a room packed with twenty of his fellow enslaved.

  "Have a drink, you lad," he said he was encouraged. And once he pulled a dram to his lips, someone said, "We want you to burn some houses."

  Stunned by the request and not prepared with an answer, Sandy alleged he stood speechless.

  "Damn you if you refuse your task," Burk's Sarah swore at him.

  Others joined in, some pulling out their rusty knifes and threatening him.

  "You're to burn the Slip Market, boy. They'll be no refusing. Now swear the oath, as we have all done."

  A book was brought forth, and Sandy's brown hand forced on to it.

  "May God Almighty strike us dead with the first thunder if we betray one this plot." They swore, and the oath, according to Sandy, was meant literally.

  The only thing Sandy didn't help the court with was the location, having never been to either Hughson's or Romme's. To make up for his shortcoming, he offered up Machado's Diana, instead, who he placed setting fire to the shingles of her master's roof.

  "She's a mad one," Sandy insisted. "Her hatred is so that she had before taken her nursing baby from her breast and purposely laid it in the cold to die rather than let it come to her master."

  Based on this fourteen-year-old's allegations, four more slaves were rounded up, including Sarah, Burke's enslaved, whom he testified cursed him. This, Sarah denied, along with all involvement.

  Sandy was placed before her in hope of loosening her tongue, in order to show her the resolve and resources of the judges.

  "Do you deny having contact with this boy?" questioned the prosecutor.

  "Indeed I did, down by the water pump, where he talked to me recently."

  "What did he say, Sarah?"

  "Sandy said, 'God damn all the white people, for if I had it in my power, I would set them all on fire.' " Saying this Sarah looked right at Sandy, extracting from him what she knew would be her own bit of revenge.

  With all this happening in such quick order, it seemed as if the only person not talking anymore was the low thief, Arthur Price.

  But that was only because he had run out of people to squeal on. The last bit of information Price would deliver to the court was that Cuffee, the Long Bridge Boy, sat in his jail cell, reading sometimes, waiting for the inevitable.

  "I know I am to suffer death," Price said Cuffee lamented. "I wonder why they have not brung me to my trial, for I am sure I am to go the same way the other two went."

  Shortly after that, according to Price, Quack was brought in. Cuffee saw him and he knew. As his blood began to drain and his bowels boil, he must have finally realized. Looking at the Smith's Fly Boy limp past him to his cell, Cuffee undoubtedly realized it had been his own comments to Arthur Price that had been the cause of Quack's arrest.

  Cuffee never mentioned again anything of the fires to Price. The only thing Arthur Price heard from Cuffee after that, he attested, was the frequent sound of Cuffee's sobbing.

  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.