The Great Negro Plot (11 page)

"This is all you know, you are swearing here under oath?" prodded the judges.

"Well, I must confess that Cuffee's father did on occasion store game fowls at our house. And brought the victuals. And sticks
of wood during the long winter. And, yes, the Negroes did come to our home to drink drams on a few occasions, but rarely more
than past the legal limit of three. And rarely that many."

Elizabeth added, "But when there were three, it was usually the same group of characters. Cuffee, but also Prince, and Vaarck's
Caesar, who was a regular customer," correcting the biggest omission from Peggy's earlier testimony, and thereby placing Peggy's
Caesar back in the center of it all.

The jail was brimming, veritably overflowing with Negroes. Yet, they would have to make room for more on the way. The newest
and most important slave to become resident, aside from the two who had already been convicted and sentenced to death, was
Philipse's Cuffee. The judges already had their secret weapon, and with the new focus on Cuffee they were quick to use it.
Arthur Price was dispatched to do his magic again.

Cuffee didn't know Arthur Price was a traitor. To Cuffee, Price was just another white, lowlife character, recognizable from
the underworld of this little village. Cuffee had not prepared himself, he was not on guard. He was just scared and bored
and lonely. So Cuffee talked to the man.

"Why is Peggy called down so often?" Cuffee nervously observed to Price. It must have seemed considerably suspicious to him,
particularly as he was made to sit and wait for days on end to be formally brought before the court for the first time. Not
helping matters was Peggy's manner toward him. She should be forgiven in this respect, however. After all, she was the one
who'd implicated him in the first place.

"I think she is discovering the plot about the fire," Price confirmed for him.

"She can not do that unless she forswears herself. I know, for he that had done that was sworn after she was in prison. I
left my master's house in the evening and went along the wharves to the Fly Market, and waited there till one Quack came out
of his master's house. We went to the house of John Hughson, where we met nobody but Hughson, his wife, and daughter Sarah.
We called for a tankard of punch, and Hugh-son swore Quack three times."

"I believe I know this Quack," Price bluffed. "He lives with a butcher."

"No, he doth not live with a butcher, he lives with a painter who lives within a few doors of a butcher," Cuffee told him,
unaware he was being manipulated by Price. "Quack is married to a Negro woman who is cook to the fort. To the governor, as
I understand."

"How did Quack do it?"

"I don't know how he did it, but that Quack was to do it, and did do it," Cuffee insisted.

"Do you not think that the firing will be found out?" Price asked.

"No, by God, I do not think it ever will."

"Are you not afraid that the two Negroes who are to be executed Monday would discover?"

Cuffee remained confident of Caesar and Prince's integrity. "I am not afraid of that, for I'm sure that they will be burnt
to ashes before they will discover it. I would lay my life on it," Cuffee continued. But, of course, he already had.

Still, lingering on the situation, Cuffee could make no sense of it. Looking around at the jail told him immediately who had
been captured, and who remained free.

"I wonder why they only took up the Long Bridge Boys and did not take up those of the Smith's Fly? For I believe, if the truth
was known, they are as much concerned as we."

An intriguing statement, the judges thought later when Arthur Price eagerly recanted it. The Smith's Fly Boys, referencing
the slave men living in the affluent quarters of the Smith's Fly neighborhood near Pearl Street. There were two major neighborhoods
where affluent colonists lived with slaves, one on the east side and one on the west. Each had its own gang of slave compatriots,
now seemingly complicit. Based on this information, one of the Smith's Fly Boys, Roosevelt's Quack (not to be confused with
Walter's Quack, the already incarcerated slave who had uttered the line "Fire, fire") was apprehended.

On Monday, May 11, the "very wicked fellows," Caesar and Prince, were escorted out to the gallows in accordance with their
sentence. They knew they were going to die. This knowledge had been with them for a few weeks now. They also were fully aware
their deaths was going to be painful, and that it wouldn't be suffocation that killed them, but the weight of their own bodies
being launched down from the hangman's noose, snapping their necks. They knew that their bowels would empty into their pants,
but that they wouldn't smell it. Because they'd be dead.

They knew all that, and yet they were defiant. Caesar and Prince, two African men whose powerful names were a joke on their
complete lack of power. They knew, also, that regardless of any petty criminal actions they may have taken in comparison to
their purported victims they were, in actuality, the righteous ones. So, despite the continued inquisition, in the face of
the very people who had damned them, they remained adamantly silent.

"Who else is involved in this horrendous action?"

Nothing.

"Who was your master in these despicable acts?"

Not a word.

Caesar and Prince died honorably, naming no one, condemning no others, either out of fear, or out of concern for their already
doomed hides. They proved Cuffee right; there was no discovery here. The only thing Caesar had confessed to, in the end, was
his relationship with Peggy Kerry. And while Peggy never admitted that she loved him, too, she showed it by trying to omit
him from all crimes she reported. This she did at her own peril.

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.