History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol 1: Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as CitizensWilliams, George Washington
History
History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol 1: Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens
Williams, George Washington
African Americans -- History; Liberia; Sierra Leone
On the 2d of July, one Will was produced before Chief-Justice James
DeLancy. He plead guilty, and was sentenced to be burnt to death on
the 4th of July. On the 6th of July, eleven plead guilty. One Dundee
implicates Dr. Hamilton with Hughson in giving Negroes rum and
swearing them to the plot. A white man by the name of William Nuill
deposed that a Negro--belonging to Edward Kelly, a butcher--named
London swore by God that if he should be arrested and cast into the
jail, he would hang or burn all the Negroes in New York, guilty or not
guilty. On this same day five Negroes were hanged. One of them was
"hung in chains" upon the same gibbet with Hughson. And the Christian
historian says "the town was amused" on account of a report that
Hughson had turned black and the Negro white! The vulgar and sickening
description of the condition of the bodies, in which Mr. Horsemanden
took evident relish, we withhold from the reader. It was rumored that
a Negro doctor had administered poison to the convicts, and hence the
change in the bodies after death.
In addition to the burning of the Negro Will, on the 4th of July, was
the sensation created by his accusing two white soldiers, Kane and
Kelly, with complicity in the conspiracy. Kane was examined the next
day: said that he had never been to the house of John Romme;
acknowledged that he had received a stolen silver spoon, given to his
wife, and sold it to one Van Dype, a silversmith; that he never knew
John Ury, etc. Knowing Mary Burton was brought forward,--as she always
was when the trials began to lag,--and accused Kane. He earnestly
denied the accusation at first, but finally confessed that he was at
Hughson's in reference to the plot on two several occasions, but was
induced to go there "by Corker, Coffin, and Fagan." After his tongue
got limbered up, and his memory refreshed, he criminated Ury. He
implicated Hughson's father and three brothers, Hughson's
mother-in-law, an old fortune-teller, as being parties to the plot as
sworn "to burn, and kill;" that Ury christened some of the Negroes,
and even had the temerity to attempt to proselyte him, Kane; that Ury
asked him if he could read Latin, could he read English; to both
questions he answered no; that the man Coffin read to him, and
descanted upon the benefits of being a Roman Catholic; that they could
forgive sins, and save him from hell; and that if he had not gone away
from their company they might have seduced him to be a Catholic; that
one Conolly, on Governor's Island, admitted that he was "bred up a
priest;" that one Holt, a dancing-master, also knew of the plot; and
then described the mystic ceremony of swearing the plotters. He said,
"There was a black ring made on the floor, about a foot and a half in
diameter; and Hughson bid every one put off the left shoe and put
their toes within the ring; and Mrs. Hughson held a bowl of punch over
their heads, as the Negroes stood around the circle, and Hughson
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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