Word: horsmanden
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That, at least, is the story according to Daniel Horsmanden, who compiled the “Journal of the Proceedings in The Detection of the Conspiracy Formed by Some White People, in Conjunction with Negro and other Slaves, for Burning the City of NEW-YORK in America, And Murdering the Inhabitants.” In spite of the official sounding title, the journal was a biased document with a clear agenda. Horsmanden served on the judiciary, and he wanted to persuade readers that the court had executed the right 34 people. To this day, the question remains: was there...
...trials were conducted in front of the provincial Supreme Court, on which Horsmanden was a justice. During the grand jury investigations, Mary Burton, a servant of the white tavern-keeper John Hughson, admitted under threat of imprisonment that her master was plotting to overthrow the government and make himself the first monarch of New York City. (Of course, New York would not have an absolutist ruler for another 152 years, when the city elected Rudolph Giuliani as mayor...
...Justice Horsmanden believed Burton’s story completely, and he distrusted and disliked blacks. However, the ambitious justice also saw an opportunity to advance his own career. Instead of holding summary executions or judge-decided trials, as was normal when dealing with slaves, Horsmanden organized jury trials before the Supreme Court. (He was no stranger to taking advantage of situations: he married a rich widow in her 70s when he was 54 to escape debt...
...trials finally ended when a Catholic priest was implicated as the brains behind the fires. Justice Horsmanden could crow, “the Old proverb has herein … been verified That there is Scarce a plot but a priest is at the Bottom of it.” Burton suddenly “remembered” the presence of a priest at Hughson’s, and other witnesses were mustered who agreed. The priest was hanged. When Burton started remembering that “People in Ruffles”–influential men who were held...
...that point, some New Yorkers were already wondering whether they had been fools “in the merciless Flames of an Imaginary Plot.” Horsmanden compiled his journal to show them the evidence. And in “New York Burning,” Lepore shows just how shoddy the evidence was that sent 13 slaves to the stake and 17 more to the gallows along with four white co-conspirators...
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