In addition, countless enslaved people and White colonists were deported. In total, thirty to forty enslaved people were either hanged or burned at the stake while four Whites were hanged, including John Ury, accused as an undercover Catholic priest and agent for Spain, and John Hughson, Mary Burton’s master. The conspiracy was reported as a plot to take over the city government by White ringleaders, assisted by enslaved people who were promised their freedom.ĭespite criticism of the validity of the evidence, Horsmanden ordered executions. Many times during the deliberations Mary Burton was known to “remember” certain facts only when pressed hard enough. Much of the evidence was based on the dubious testimony of a sixteen-year-old Irish indentured servant who was promised a considerable reward for her cooperation. The accused were tried by Judge Daniel Horsmanden, an ambitious British expatriate who turned the proceedings into a Salem-like witch hunt. Nearly 200 people were arrested, including at least twenty Whites, some of whom were suspected of being Catholic saboteurs and spies. The events became popularly known as the New York Conspiracy of 1741 (also called the Negro Plot or the Slave Insurrection). Even Fort George in lower Manhattan was burned to the ground. This tension boiled over in the spring when a series of fires led White New Yorkers to fear an uprising of enslaved people. In New York City in 1741 an economic decline exacerbated conflict between enslaved men and women engaged in commercial activity and working-class White colonists who felt their jobs were threatened.
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