The Great Riots of New York, 1712 to 1873 — John Shaqi
The Great Riots of New York, 1712 to 1873Headley, Joel Tyler
History
The Great Riots of New York, 1712 to 1873
Headley, Joel Tyler
Draft Riot, New York, N.Y., 1863; New York (N.Y.) -- History; Riots -- New York (State) -- New York
the imagination and love of the marvellous peculiar to her race, she
added to it, it is not easy to say. She said, moreover, that but one
white person beside her master and mistress was in the conspiracy, and
that was an Irish girl known as Peggy, "the Newfoundland Beauty."
She had several _aliases_, and was an abandoned character, being a
prostitute to the negroes, and at this time kept as a mistress by a
bold, desperate negro named Caesar. This revelation of Mary's fell on
the Grand Jury like a bombshell. The long-sought secret they now felt
was out. They immediately informed the magistrates. Of course the
greatest excitement followed. Peggy was next examined, but she denied
Mary Burton's story _in toto_--swore that she knew nothing of any
conspiracy or of the burning of the stores; that if she should accuse
any one it would be a lie, and blacken her own soul.
It is rather a severe reflection on the courts of justice of that
period, or we might rather say, perhaps, a striking illustration of the
madness that had seized on all, that although the law strictly forbade
any slave to testify in a court of justice against a white person, yet
this girl Mary Burton was not only allowed to appear as evidence against
Peggy, but her oath was permitted to outweigh hers, and cause her to
be sentenced to death. The latter, though an abandoned, desperate
character, was seized with terror at the near approach of death, and
begged to be allowed another examination, which was granted, and she
professed to make a full confession. It is a little singular that
while she corroborated Mary Burton's statement as to the existence of a
conspiracy, she located the seat of it not in Hughson's tavern, but in
a miserable shanty near the Battery, kept by John Romme, who, she said,
had promised to carry them all to a new country, and give them their
liberty, if they would murder the whites and bring him the plunder. Like
Mary Burton's confession, if truthful at all, it evidently had a large
mixture of falsehood in it.
On Saturday, May 9th, Peggy was again brought in, and underwent a
searching examination. Some of her statements seemed improbable, and
they therefore tested them in every possible way. It lasted for several
hours, and resulted in a long _detailed_ confession, in which she
asserted, among other things, that it was the same plot that failed
in 1712, when the negroes designed to kill all the whites, in fact,
exterminate them from the island. She implicated a great many negroes
in the conspiracy; and every one that she accused, as they were brought
before her, she identified as being present at the meetings of the
conspirators in Romme's house. The court seemed anxious to avoid any
collusion between the prisoners, and therefore kept them apart, so that
each story should rest on its own basis. By this course they thought
they would be able to distinguish what was true and what was false.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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