FootNote
The new kid on the block, FootNote is known for digitizing historical
documents... many of which are genealogical gems. With naturalizations,
city directories, war records, newspapers, town records, etc... this new
kid is quickly being recognized as an alternative to Ancestry.
While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
The day of execution appointed for Hughson,
his wife, and Peggy was a solemn one, and almost the entire
population turned out to witness it. The former had declared
that some extraordinary appearance would take place at his
execution, and every one gazed on him as he passed in a cart
from the prison to the gallows. He was a tall, powerful man,
being six feet high. He stood erect in the cart all the way,
his piercing eye fixed steadily on the distance, and his
right hand raised high as his fetters would permit, and
beckoning as though he saw help coming from afar. His face
was usually pale and colorless, but today it was noticed
that two bright red spots burned on either cheek, which
added to the mystery with which the superstitious spectators
invested him. When the sad procession arrived at the place
of execution, the prisoners were helped to the ground, and
stood exposed to the gaze of the crowd. Hughson was firm and
self possessed; but Peggy, pale, and weeping, and terror
struck, begging for life; while the wife, with the rope
round her neck, leaned against a tree, silent and composed,
but colorless as marble. One after another they were
launched into eternity, and the crowd, solemn and
thoughtful, turned their steps homeward.
Hughson was hung in chains; and in a few days a negro was
placed beside him, and here they swung, "blind and
blackening," in the April air, in full view of the tranquil
bay, a ghastly spectacle to the fishermen as they plied
their vocation near by. For three weeks they dangled here in
sunshine and storm, a terror to the passers by. At length a
rumor passed through the town that Hughson had turned into a
negro, and the negro into a white man. This was a new
mystery, and day after day crowds would come and gaze on the
strange transformation, some thinking it supernatural, and
others trying to give an explanation. Hughson had threatened
to take poison, and it was thought by many that he had, and
it was the effect of this that had wrought the change in his
appearance. For ten days the Battery was thronged with
spectators, gazing on these bloated, decomposing bodies,
many in their superstitious fears expecting some new
transformation. Under the increasing heat of the sun, they
soon began to drip, till at last the body of Hughson burst
asunder, filling the air with such an intolerable stench
that the fishermen shunned the locality.
As simple hanging was soon thought not sufficient
punishment, and they were left to swing, and slowly rot in
chains, so this last was at length thought to be too
lenient, and the convicts were condemned to be burned at the
stake. Two negroes, named Quack and Cuffee, were the first
doomed to this horrible death. The announcement of this
sentence created the greatest excitement. It was a new thing
to the colonists, this mode of torture being appropriated by
the savages for prisoners taken in war. Curious crowds
gathered to see the stake erected, or stare at the loads of
wood as they passed along the street, and were unloaded at
its base. It was a strange spectacle to behold the workmen
carefully piling up the fagots under the spring sun; the
spectators looking on, some horrified, and others fierce as
savages; and over all the blue sky bending, while the gentle
wind stole up from the bay and whispered in the tree tops
overhead. On the day of execution an immense crowd
assembled. The two negroes were brought forward, pale and
terrified, and bound to the stake. As the men approached
with the fire to kindle the pile, they shrieked out in
terror, confessed the conspiracy, and promised, if released,
to tell all about it. They were at once taken down. This was
the signal for an outbreak, and shouts of "burn 'em, burn 'em"
burst from the multitude. Mr. Moore then asked the sheriff
to delay execution till he could see the Governor and get a
reprieve. He hurried off, and soon returned with a
conditional one. But, as he met the sheriff on the common,
the latter told him that it would be impossible to take the
criminals through the crowd without a strong guard, and
before that could arrive, they would be murdered by the
exasperated populace. They were then tied up again, and the
torch applied. The flames arose around the unhappy victims.
The curling smoke soon hid their dusky forms from view,
while their shrieks and cries for mercy grew fainter and
fainter, as the fierce fire shrivelled up their forms, till
at last nothing but the crackling of the flames was heard,
and the shouting, savage crowd grew still. As the fire
subsided, the two wretched creatures, crisped to a cinder,
remained to tell, for the hundredth time, to what barbarous
deeds terror and passion may lead men.
Some of the negroes went laughing to the place of execution,
indulging in all sorts of buffoonery to the last, and
mocking the crowd which surrounded them.
All protested their innocence to the last, and if they had
confessed previously, retracted before death their
statements and accusations. But this contradiction of
themselves, tomorrow denying what today they had solemnly
sworn on the Bible to be true, instead of causing the
authorities to hesitate, and consider how much terror and
the hope of pardon had to do with it, convinced them still
more of the strength and dangerous nature of the conspiracy,
and they went to work with a determination and recklessness
which made that summer the bloodiest and most terrific in
the annals of New York. No lawyer was found bold enough to
step forward and defend these poor wretches, but all
volunteered their services to aid the Government in bringing
them to punishment. The weeks now, as they rolled on, were
freighted with terror and death, and stamped with scenes
that made the blood run cold. This little town, on the
southern part of Manhattan Island was wholly given to panic,
and a nameless dread of some mysterious, awful fate,
extended even to the scattered farm houses near Canal
Street. Between this and the last of August, a hundred and
fifty-four negroes, exclusive of whites, were thrown into
prison, till every cell was crowded and packed to
suffocation with them. For three months, sentence of
condemnation was on an average of one a day. The last
execution was that of a Catholic priest, or rather of a
schoolmaster of the city, who was charged with being one.
Mary Burton, after an interval of three months, pretended to
remember that he was present with the other conspirators she
had first named as being in Hughson's tavern.
His trial was long, and apparently without excitement. He
conducted his own case with great ability, and brought many
witnesses to prove his good character and orderly conduct;
but he, of course, could not disprove the assertion of Mary,
that she had some time or other seen him with the
conspirators at Hughson's tavern for the latter, with his
wife and Peggy, and the negroes she had before named, had
all been executed. Mary Burton alone was left, and her
evidence being credited, no amount of testimony could avail
him.
Although the proceedings were all dignified and solemn, as
became an English court, yet the course the trial took
showed how utterly unbalanced and one-sided it had become.
To add weight to Mary's evidence, many witnesses were
examined to prove that Ury, though a schoolmaster, had
performed the duties of a Catholic priest, as though this
were an important point to establish. The attorney general,
in opening the case, drew a horrible picture of former
persecutions by the Papists, and their cruelties to the
Protestants, until it was apparent that all that the jury
needed to indorse a verdict of guilty was evidence that he
was a Catholic priest. Still it would be unfair to attribute
this feeling wholly to religious intolerance or the spirit
of persecution. England was at this time at war with Spain,
and a report was circulated that the Spanish priests in
Florida had formed a conspiracy to murder the English
colonists. A letter from Ogilthorpe, in Georgia, confirmed
this. Ury, who was an educated Englishman, but had led an
adventurous life in different countries, could not disprove
this, and he was convicted and sentenced to be hung. He met
his fate with great composure and dignity, asserting his
innocence to the last. He made the eighteenth victim hung,
while thirteen had been burned at the stake, and seventy-one
transported to various countries.
At the average rate of two every week, one hanged and one
burned alive, they were hurried into eternity amid prayers,
and imprecations, and shrieks of agony. The hauling of wood
to the stake, and the preparation of the gallows, kept the
inhabitants in a state bordering on insanity. Business was
suspended, and every face wore a terrified look. The voice
of pity as well as justice was hushed, and one desire, that
of swift vengeance, filled every heart. Had the press of
today, with its system of interviewing, and minuteness of
detail and description, existed then, there would have been
handed down to us a chapter in human history that could be
paralleled only in the dark ages.
A swift massacre, a terrible slaughter, comes and goes like
an earthquake or a tornado, and stuns rather than debases;
but this long, steady succession of horrible executions and
frightful scenes changed the very nature of the inhabitants,
and they became a prey to a spirit demoniacal rather than
human. The prayers and tears of those led forth to the
stake, their heartrending cries as they were bound to it,
and their shrieks of agony that were wafted out over the
still waters of the bay, fell on hard and pitiless hearts.
The ashes of the wood that consumed one victim would hardly
grow cold before a new fire was kindled upon them, and the
charred and blackened posts stood month after month, hideous
monuments of what man may become when judgment and reason
are surrendered to fear and passion. The spectacle was made
still more revolting by the gallows standing near the stake,
on which many were hung in chains, and their bodies left to
swing, blacken, and rot in the summer air, a ghastly,
horrible sight.
Where this madness, that had swept away court, bar, and
people together, would have ended, it is impossible to say,
had not a new terror seized the inhabitants. Mary Burton, on
whose accusation the first victims had been arrested and
executed, finding herself a heroine, sought new fields in
which to win notoriety. She ceased to implicate the blacks,
and turned her attention to the whites, and twenty-four were
arrested and thrown into prison. Elated with her success,
she began to ascend in the social scale, and criminated some
persons of the highest social standing in the city, whose
characters were above suspicion. This was turning the tables
on them in a manner the upper class did not expect, and they
began to reflect what the end might be. The testimony that
was sufficient to condemn the slaves was equally conclusive
against them. The stake and the gallows which the court had
erected for the black man, it could not pull down because a
white gentleman stood under their shadow.
Robespierre and his friends cut off the upper crust of
society without hesitation or remorse; but unfortunately the
crust next below this became in turn the upper crust, which
also had to be removed, until at last they themselves were
reached, when they paused. They had advanced up to their
necks in the bloody tide of revolution, and finding that to
proceed farther would take them overhead, they attempted to
wade back to shore. So here, so long as the accusations were
confined to the lowest class, it was all well enough, but
when they were being reached, it was high time to stop. The
proceedings were summarily brought to a close, further
examinations were deemed unnecessary, and confessions became
flat and unprofitable; and this strange episode in American
history ended.
That there had been cause for alarm, there can be no doubt.
That threats should be uttered by the slaves, is natural;
for this would be in keeping with their whole history in
this country. Nor is it at all improbable that a conspiracy
was formed; for this, too, would only be in harmony with the
conduct of slaves from time immemorial. The utter folly and
hopelessness of such a one as the blacks testified to, has
been urged against its existence altogether. If the argument
is good for anything, it proves that the conspiracy thirty
years before never existed, and that the Southampton
massacre was a delusion, and John Brown never hatched his
utterly insane conspiracy in Harper's Ferry. There have been
a good many servile insurrections plotted in this country,
not one of which was a whit more sensible or easier of
execution than this, which was said to look to the complete
overthrow of the little city. That the fires which first
started the panic were the work of negro incendiaries, there
is but little doubt; but how far they were a part of a wide
laid plan, it is impossible to determine.
Unquestionably, success at the outset would have made the
movement general, so that nothing but military force could
have arrested it.
There is one thing, however, about which there is no doubt
that a panic seized the people and the courts, and made them
as unreliable as in the days of the Salem witchcraft. But
these striking exhibitions of the weakness of human nature
under certain circumstances have been witnessed since the
world was made, and probably will continue to the end of
time, or until the race enters on a new phase of existence.
Panics, even among the most veteran soldiers, sometimes
occur, and hence we cannot wonder they take place amid a
mixed population. Popular excitements are never
characterized by reason and common sense, and never will be.
In this case, there was more reason for a panic than at
first sight seems to be.
In the first place, the proportion of slaves to the whites
was large. In the second place, they were a turbulent set,
and had shown such a dangerous spirit, that the authorities
became afraid to let them assemble together in meetings.
This restriction they felt sorely, and it made them more
restive. All were aware of this hostile state of feeling,
and were constantly anticipating some outbreak or act of
violence. Besides, it was but a few years since the thing
they now feared did actually take place. And then, too, the
point first aimed at was significant, and showed a boldness
founded on conscious strength. Right inside the fort itself,
and to the Governor's house, the torch was applied. It
certainly looked ominous. Besides, the very wholesale manner
in which the authorities thought it best to go to work
increased the panic. In a very short time over a hundred
persons were thrown into prison. The same proportion to the
population today would be over ten thousand. Such a
wholesale arrest would, of itself, throw New York into the
wildest excitement, and conjure up all sorts of horrible
shapes. Add to this, an average of two hundred burned at the
stake, and two hundred hung every week, or more than fifty a
day, and nearly three times that number sentenced to
transportation, and one can faintly imagine what a frightful
state of things would exist in the city. The very atmosphere
grew stifling from the smoke of burning men and , while the
gallows groaned under its weight of humanity. Had this been
the wild work of a mob it would have been terrible enough,
but when it was the result of a deliberate judicial
tribunal, which was supposed to do nothing except on the
most conclusive evidence, the sense of danger was increased
tenfold. The conclusion was inevitable, that the conspiracy
embraced every black man in the city, and was thoroughly
organized. In short, the whole place was, beyond doubt,
resting over a concealed volcano, and the instinct of self
preservation demanded the most summary work. Let the
inhabitants of any city become thoroughly possessed of such
an idea, and they will act with no more prudence or reason
than the people of New York at that time did. An undoubted
belief in such a state of things will confuse the
perceptions and unbalance the judgment of a community
anywhere and everywhere on the globe.
Still, consistent as it is with human history, one can
hardly believe it possible, as he stands in New York today,
that men have there been burned at the stake under the
sanction of English law, or left to swing and rot in the
winds of heaven, by order of the Supreme Court of the city.
Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873,
Including a Full and Complete Account of the
Four Days' Draft Riot of 1863
